The human brain desires ease. None of us is exempt from that fact.
Recently, I have been evaluating the things I want to do and many of the things I should do but don’t really want to. Whether I want to make some outbound calls to clients or reach out to a family member or just do something that I plain and simply know is the correct thing to do, I find that my powers to avoid some crucial actions in my life are nothing short of incredible. Going one step further and practicing some metacognition on this powerful ability to avoid important actions, I realize that so much of what I “should” do but don’t is a result of a pre-crafted idea I have about being inconvenienced.
On the surface, inconvenience seems like such a mild emotion that it shouldn’t be able to stand between us and our important actions. And yet I have found that so many of us simply protect our time in a way that causes us to avoid many of the necessary “shoulds” in life.
Please hear that I am not saying we shouldn’t ever protect our time. Of course having some boundaries and protecting our time is a good thing. What I am learning, however, is that boundary-protecting can go overboard and turn into something else. We might call it “boundaries,” but it turns us into people in a near-constant state of avoidance and self-protection around something that needs to be done.
So this simple article is less about another method of getting myself to take action through a white-knuckle approach, or even proposing that we need higher and higher levels of accountability from others in order to execute on some powerfully crucial things in life.
Instead, I want to propose that each and every one of us could evaluate where and how we avoid critical action all in the spirit of not wishing to be put out.
Sometimes, I won’t make a call or do a simple chore because I have a pre-arranged thought about how much time it may take or how much brain power it will use. The truth is that when we accept that the feeling (hello… Emotional Intelligence) of loss as part of our lives, we can then get to some powerful, and often simple things that can make a night and day difference to our businesses or our very lives.
Your Lizard Brain loves the couch, and sometimes it is ok to let it go there. If you let it go there too often, you will find yourself in a position of weakness and then execution becomes something you think only others are good at.
I suspect that routing this out in our worlds will continue to bring greater and greater levels of success, irrespective of how you even define success.
What little way are you allowing inconvenience to be a part of your every day? Let me know in the comments section!
