This post follows on from Finding more hours (or “The dark art of time manipulation?”)
“Look, there they go, another job move into a cool new role” – “Yeah, probably with a pay bump, I don’t know how they do it.”
“They’re moving to Singapore for two years, how amazing!” – “I know, I’d love to do something like that, but there’s no way I’d be able to manage that.”
We all sometimes, or frequently, look at what these we consider our peers are doing and compare ourselves to that. By doing so, we may end up feeling that there is something we are missing out on, or some pressure to “get on with things” or maybe even the edges of stress.
Maybe you know exactly what is driving the feeling pressure, or more likely it’s just a feeling you have and you can’t put your finger on what is causing it.
There is a great quote from the Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carol) that I think is useful here:
“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to. Alice: I don't much care where. The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.”
You could conclude that as the cat being sarcastically unhelpful; Alice asked for his view and he wasn’t really much help at all. OK, it’s a story, not an academic thesis, but I think the cat has very precisely summed up an obvious truth: if you don’t know where you’re trying to get to, then it doesn’t really matter what choices you make.
Looking back over my life, there are definitely periods where I felt frustrated about what wasn’t happening. The feelings weren’t necessarily driven by issues that I could clearly identify, just uneasiness that things weren’t happening.
I think when we have a clear cause for stress, then we are actually better at dealing with it. For example, for a broken leg: “6 weeks in the cast, some weeks of physiotherapy exercises and after that, I can get back to normal”. We can’t change the circumstance, we know the route we need to take and we deal with it or at least accept it.
So what am I leading to here?
Observation
Without a vision of the future we want at the back of our minds, there is a risk that we drift through periods of our life and either subconsciously, or consciously, this causes us feelings of discomfort.
So, it’s helpful to have a view of roughly how we want our life to be, currently. I say “currently” because that view changes as we grow, learn and experience new things.
Challenge
There are three mini-challenges to take on:
Spend a few weeks actively recording your idle “I wish that...” thoughts. Actually write them down, record them in a voice note on your phone, text or email them to yourself, tell Alexa, Siri or Google to remember them for you. Here are some examples: “I wish I had more time to do [activity X]”, “I wish I had a better relationship with [person Y]”, “I wish my job was more interesting”
Separately, spend a couple of hours brainstorming how you want your life to be in a few years, using as much emotional description as possible. Focus on what activities you will be enjoying, what does a ‘perfect’ week look like, how you will be feeling, who you will be spending time with, how you will make them feel, what positive things will you generate, where you will be living. Again – actually write things down, however you like – a list, mind map, manual paper-based or electronic. Try to not focus too much on the next job you will have, or role at work.
When you’ve done both, gather up the “I wish...” statements you recorded and compare them to your vision of your future life.
Did you read that and feel you had no time for this challenge? Try reading this blog first.
You’ll probably find that there are the same sort of things on both lists; this is not surprising. Now look for the “I wish...” statements that do not seem to feature in your future life brainstorm; these should be interesting.
Do you need to adjust your future life vision because you missed something out that you are wishing for?
Are any wishes a specific short term frustration that you need to decide how to deal with?
Are any wishes focused on what you wish someone else’s actions, how can you re-frame those?
Are the wishes possible, even if you currently don’t have the resources or skills to make them come true – what is the underlying drive for that wish?
A couple of examples for the last thought above:
“I wish I was 10 cm taller!” There’s not much we can really do about it. Try not to dwell on those types of wishes.
However, “I wish I could win the lottery” – you can’t control that specific outcome, but there is probably an underlying reason for this wish, here. Challenge yourself to work out exactly why you want the money; what part of your future life would this enable?
Where does this get us?
By working through the two mini-challenges, you should come up with a vision of how you want your life to be at some point in the future. Please note this is not a plan, nor a ‘forced outcome’ – things can change.
The next step is to work back from that desired outcome and work out what to do about getting there. I’ll introduce that in the next blog.