*crowd remains silent*
What if you were the first to raise your hand instead of waiting for someone else to go first?
Better yet what if you offered to help before anyone even asked?
It’s easy to follow the crowd and do just enough to be average.
But what if you decided to offer a little bit more?
It’s a very different experience when you decide to show up and care instead of just doing what’s required.
There’s got to be another way.
When it comes to work I don’t believe that you should hate it.
I don’t believe that you should drag your heels to your place of work, then exhale a deep sigh of relief as you leave on a Friday because it’s finally the weekend and you’re free.
If you don’t like where you’re at try something else and yes it is that easy. I’m not saying quit your job, that would be quite silly of me.
I’m saying if it’s really that bad, look for things you’re interested in and start applying.
How much better would it feel and how much happier would you be if you actually enjoyed what you do for a living?
Do you remember when you were your most confident self?
Common advice in challenging situations when we’re afraid is to ask ‘what would [insert name of inspirational person] do?’
I think that’s a really helpful tool but it can also just emphasise the gap between where you’re at and where you want to be instead of bridging it.
So, what if you consult your past self at peak confidence instead. If you were confidence once you can be confident again.
When you find yourself facing a challenge think of a time you were confident or did something difficult in the past. Close your eyes, visualise it, feel that feeling and keep it with you for when you need it.
Maybe it’s the memory of the solo you did in a school play that you can apply to leading your first client meeting.
When you’re caught in fear or your confidence is low it can be easy to forget that you once felt otherwise and that it’s possible to overcome that thing that scares you and feel confident again.
Which one are you?
The first kind is the one we all know and love (or perhaps just tolerate through excessive eye rolls). This person is problem focused. They find a problem with anything and everything.
What’s worse is if you offer a potential solution they’ll probably find a problem with that too.
The second person is solution focused. They’ll complain as a way to vent their frustrations but then they’ll move on and do something about it.
The first person never manages to progress nearly as much as the second.
It’s like a keystone habit but for moments.
A keystone habit is a term created by Charles Duhigg that was featured in his book The Power of Habit, in Duhiggs words it is ‘small changes or habits that people introduce into their routines that unintentionally carry over into other aspects of their lives’.
But what if that could be applied to moments that we experience.
Sometimes all it takes is a conversation to create a shift in perspective and if you follow that feeling it could end up changing your life for the better.
Imagine you’re pretty frustrated and uninspired by life then one day you meet someone and have a conversation about aspirations that moves you. So much so that you’re driven to make changes like start a project, spend more time with friends, make time for the people you live, go for that promotion at work, volunteer or pick up a hobby you’ve been meaning to try.
Chances are you have at least one conversation everyday so that perspective shifting moment could come at any time. However, it’s also important to not be too reliant on external factors in order to drive change in your life.
If you’re not happy with where you’re at you probably have some idea (no matter how vague) of the way you’d actually things to be.
You don’t need a stranger to prompt change in your life.
Anytime you’re being yourself (within reason of course).
I recently had a situation where I considered apologising. In the end I didn’t.
Instead of saying ‘I’m sorry’, I clarified my thoughts on the situation with the other person. You see after giving it some thought I realised that an apology didn’t feel like the right thing to do.
Granted, I didn’t like how the situation turned out initially but it served as a learning curve, a growth point that I needed to experience.
In the grand scheme it was a small-scale misunderstanding, not something worth regretting.
They didn’t work for me.
At the start of every month I used to write a bunch of goals (well more like to-dos), maybe around 25. At the end of every month I never failed to have at least a few things left.
28-31 days is a long time to plan for and I found myself just sort of creating a random todo list of stuff for the month that I just never stuck to.
I’d write them with good intentions but my actions for the weeks that followed were somewhat half-hearted.
Now granted the solution may have been to just get more committed but I actually just switched to weekly todo lists instead.
I’ve found that making plans for myself every seven days gives me a chance to be a lot more focused.
And as a result I’m slowly but surely getting better at getting things done.
