By Trevor Hill
Copyright
(c) 2010
http://www.inspiration-at-work.co.uk
What are you doing this week that you actually don't want to do?
Clues
are when you hear yourself saying 'I have to ...', I must ...', 'I should ...'.
This is the language of reluctance, obligation and coercion. It may seem that
this is inevitable but is it?
The games we play in our heads
can tie us in knots. Can you imagine a hippopotamus down at the river wallowing
in the mud but not really wanting to? Or a lioness getting miserable because she
must hunt? We humans get stuck; we become overwhelmed; we procrastinate.
Consider
just one statistic - more than two-thirds of people don't enjoy the work they
do. That's a lot of people! The internal tension caused by repeatedly doing things
while not wanting to be doing them creates stress, drains energy and is ultimately
destructive.
There are, of course, enlightened folk who
always want to do what they do. This is something the rest of us can aspire to.
How do they do this?
Put simply, they make it a matter of
choice. They switch what they do into a choice they make, rather than a choice
that is made for them. The locus of control is with them, not somewhere else.
Control over what we do and how we do it - autonomy - is in itself a powerful
self-motivator.
Here's an example: Glen drags himself to
work each morning telling himself that he must do it otherwise the mortgage company
will make him and his family homeless. No wonder he feels pretty sick about the
whole thing. He'll probably blame the mortgage company, or his employer or the
political system or something else.
To turn this completely
round, he could make the choice himself. He could decide that he chooses to go
to work to provide for his family. The critical difference when he does this is
that now the responsibility lies with him.
Of course, this
new perspective won't change the content of his job - tasks and colleagues remain
the same - but the locus of control is now his. This change in his frame of mind
will in itself be a positive step forward. And crucially, now he is aware he is
making a choice, he can decide over time whether he is happy with that choice
or whether he would like to make a different choice.
So
how can this work for you?
Let's go back to my original
question - what are you doing that you actually don't want to do? Take one item
from the list - say X - then follow these steps:
- Hear yourself say
'I must/I should/I need to/I ought to/I have to/ do X
- Check the
physical feelings you get from this (people often report a tightening of certain
muscles, a sinking feeling, a heaviness)
- Now reword the statement
from step 1 so it becomes 'I choose to do X because ...' and fill in the best
reason you can think of (if you come up with no reason at all, why does doing
X matter?)
- Check again the physical reaction you get and feel
the difference from step 2
- Go ahead with X for now on the basis
of your choice from step 3
- Most importantly, stay open to better
choices. Because you have signalled to your brain that you are making a choice,
it will come back with potentially better choices over the next few days.
