Mine doesn’t.

I was reading about whining at work a while back now and it hit me.  I am a workplace whiner.  Did you know that most of us at some time or another have to work?  Why do we think that work is such a bad thing?  For me at least being a workplace whiner teaches us a very important lesson.

Work is meant to be fun

The advanced levels of brainwashing available (at hand if you will) in most organisational psychology points us to towards ‘coping’ mechanisms at work.  Personal freedom is more than likely a myth that is couched around this idea of work being fun.  Yet for me it is fun sometimes.  However, most of the time it’s not fun… it’s actually a drag.  I find the repetitious nature of my job sometimes gets me down.  It’s in this propensity that I am apt to whine.  Why?  I thought work was meant to be fun?  Well for the majority of us … it really isn’t fun!

Why isn’t work fun?

The main reason work isn’t fun is because we don’t get the opportunity to express ourselves in the way we would like.  That right there is a spiritual matter… another post for another time. For me, most of the time it isn’t fun because of the amount of red tape I have to cut through on a daily basis.  Recently I went through hell just to get $193.  As of this writing… I still don’t have it.  Then I have the students.  A blessing and a curse.  You want to know more read this.

All of that aside I could make myself have a positive attitude and I could do it… but something inside me shudders at the thought of answering 150 emails in a three day period.  Don’t know what it is… .  I have thought about this a lot and I would have to say that work isn’t fun because we aren’t serving ourselves but our master employer.

Work is a paid slavery arrangement.  I am sure that someone is likely to read this one day (perhaps) and say that work doesn’t have to be a paid slavery arrangement but in reality most people I have met, this is precisely what work is.  A paid slavery arrangement.   However, at least it isn’t slavery slavery.   I think that we have it a lot better… yet the question remains what makes us so unhappy?

Work… don’t get me started

The problem is that we live in a society where you have to work to eat.  I know, “you don’t work you don’t eat.”  That’s just it isn’t it.  If you don’t work… you don’t eat.  You wind up amongst the fractured of society living on the scraps of the mainstream.  You just can’t get past it.  No matter where you go, you have to work.  In some parts of the world you work, and you still don’t eat!  What a horrible place this world can be.

I would hate to leave you with a downer but I am yet to read a post, magazine article, book or anything else that tells me otherwise.  Having said all that… whining doesn’t make me feel any better does it?  It makes me feel a helluvalot worse.  So should we whinge or seek personal change?  Probably the latter… though unfortunately I spend to much time doing the former!

In recent times I have found myself sensing a change in my life.  As per usual with my gammy brain I am not certain when or where or even what has to change I just sense intuitively that it’s time for changes.  I have felt like this for most of the year actually.   What caught my eye recently was how certain songs and certain sportstars have all pointed to a simple idea that most of us don’t pay attention to… you have to know when to walk away.

Why not take my word for it?  Listen to a classic and think about the words in this song.  What gets me in particular is this:

1. You got to know when to hold ‘em

2. Know when to fold ‘em

3. Know when to walk away

4. Know when to run

So have you noticed any changes in your life?  Any signs that it’s time to walk away or even run?  I have spoken about this before, but there is a real skill involved in finding out what you should be doing and knowing when to shift gears.

A key lesson in knowing when to walk away

I think the biggest sign of change comes from the intent through which you do something.  When you have a real hard time working up the energy to do what you used to love doing, then you have a key indicator from the deepest depths of your soul that change is coming.  Sometimes this means ditching friends, it means moving to a new city, sometimes … as I have done before it means removing all inhibiting factors from your life, just so you can grow.  Yet, in all these circumstances the thing that points to real growth, is knowing when to move on.  Pay attention to signs around you and how you feel.  If you have a developed sense of intuition you will know when it’s time to change.

You may get a push

Sometimes you may not have a choice and change may be thrust upon you.  Like in my job there is a lot of fear in our little pocket of the management school because the student numbers are down.  There are rumours of change, movements, forced redundancies.  If this is that case it could be God pushing you along!  Pay attention… those indicators are always there.  Other times, life just hammers you… so you have to grow whether you like it or not.  Good times

Let’s return to the song.  You have to know when to walk away… how can you really know that?  That’s sort of like saying how can you know you are a human.  You know.  Alarm bells are ringing on the inside and you haven’t been happy for a while.  Pay attention.  Remember… you gotta know when to walk away… only you know you so take some time to examine yourself and see if it is really time to change and begin to build it today.  Be courageous and have faith!

Recently I heard somebody say that they thought Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was crap because people trade things for security at the different levels they are at.  One thing that struck me was that the argument that it’s crap rests on the idea that self-preservation is worth more to us that our needs.  What do I mean?

Well, most people will trade off a certain amount of personal security to gain money and often vice versa.  People will solve a problem that makes more problems for them, simply because they don’t want to solve the key problem.  This is a form of self-preservation and I think it poisons us.  It’s a problem that I think we really haven’t found an easy answer to at any stage.   You could say it this way, “self-preservation is a problem because it makes us think, act and behave in ways that gives us an illusion of security”.

This illusion of security presents to us a false belief that by having a stable source of income now I will be more secure later.  That is, security is formed around concepts of self-preservation… which may or may not be a good thing.  In a made effort to preserve ourselves we can destroy our true potential because we may protect ourselves from growth because it may “hurt” or “cause problems”.  The question I will leave you with in this short post is this: How do you know that this pain you may experience may not be precisely what you need to grow?

At the time of writing this post I am over committed. So I thought I would share with you 5 signs that I have discovered that let you know you are over committed. In true problem solving blog style… I will also present solutions to get you back on track.

You wake up in the morning feeling tired

This can be the symptoms of many things… however when you are over committed you simply feel tired all the time. You sleep 10 hours and you are tired… you sleep 24 hours and you are tired. Personally, when this happens to me (as it is now) it’ s time to think about what I am doing. When you have a big commitment you can’t escape (i.e. work) then it’s difficult to bail out as I will discuss later. You can however, wind back over time which will gradually release the pressure.

You find it difficult to get in the car/bus/train and go to work?

As you walk to bus (for example) or go to the car you feeling a sinking feeling at the realisation of the day you have ahead of yourself. As the day drags on you find yourself becoming more and more lethargic. No matter what you do, you keep getting more slower and feel less like working than you did before. One of the main reasons you feel this way is because you have too much on your plate. I find that if I have too much to do it overwhelms me and I get almost nothing done. Getting stuff done is important but so is quality of time. You may secretly love your job but hate doing so much of it.

Sudden bursts of anger

For no apparent reason you find yourself randomly angry. This can be another symptom of working too much and being over committed. There are a billion reasons why you are angry with life and I am in no wise saying that over commitment is the only one. It is however, one of the things that drives us to anger because we have to work so hard to achieve so little. Just thinking about that right now makes me mad!

You feel a burning pressure

As pressure and stress take hold of you, you will feel it. The stuff I mentioned above, other things like loss or increased appetite, a desire to ‘break free’ of the corporate sausage maker and more than likely the feeling that you just have to work this hard are symptom of pressure. After all… if you don’t do it who will? I mean they are paying you the big money aren’t they? No!

Your body begins to tell you

You might get sudden backaches, rashes, itchiness, headaches, tension pain and so on because of over commitment. This is usually the last thing that happens before you fall over and die. There comes a point where your mind, body and soul start to take over your desire to do a million things at once. We call this burnout. Don’t let it get to the point where this happens. Here are some of the things I do to keep it at bay:

Don’t say yes to things you have no time to do

I am spanking myself here as well. There are times when you think you will have the time to do something but in reality you don’t. If you say yes… you will have to trade something off (like family time) in order to get there. Here is the lie that I almost always fall for:

If I do this it will give me more money to spend on my kids

In a word that’s nonsense because if your kids care more about money than they do you… you have a problem. Sure a good education is nice as is a flashly house… but what price are you willing to pay to have those things… your soul? Next time something comes along and you want to do it remember something has to move out of the way so you can do it. That’s life.

Working smarter

Work can be hard and you may be in a position where you can’t change. One thing you can do is begin to think about ways of streamlining your work. Put it this way: What can I do now that I could faster if I had the right tools? This may mean an investment in software, delegation or outsourcing (if you can). The alternative you keep going until you burnout. Once you go there… it’s gets pretty hard to come back.

Making life choices

A non-materialist way of looking at this is to say: I don’t have to own a house, Jaguar or BMW to be happy. I can however have peace and joy from those that love me. Sorry allow me to come back to reality for the moment and address the heading. You can work in jobs where the pressure is reduced and there isn’t as much asked of you. You can find vocations that pay less for less responsibility… you could also win lotto or fly to the moon in a self-propelled raft! There are choices (jokes aside) that you can make on a daily basis to make your life better. You can build a strategy to improve things over time. Decide to leave at 5pm instead 10. If you are asked to do something ‘extra’ for someone and you don’t have the time… don’t do it. Begin to make these kinds of choices on a daily basis… it will make the world of difference to you.

At the end of the day there are really two kinds of variables life throws us. Those which we can control (minimal) and those we can’t (everything else). The key thing is to learn about those you can control and do something and leave everything else up to God. One of these things you can control is the choices you make about your life and the direction it’s going in. If you are over commited can I encourage you today to begin to wind back? Getting up the ladder lickity split is not what life is about. Make the right choices for you and you will find a great deal more peace flowing into your life.

Yesterday I spoke about the four stages of learning.  Today, I want to point out the missing element of learning that often is overlooked by many people.  This is the part of learning that refers to your natural talent.

Your natural talent

People who excel in their area, such as Elvis, were not just hardworkers. They had a special something that made them different from everyone else around them. They had a natural inclination or gifting that guided them to the target. If you look into the history of successful people you will find somewhere in their story a natural desire to follow a certain path. You have this too and so do I.

How can I know my natural talent?

I can’t answer this with a one line answer except to add this: what you don’t have to work hard to achieve and find very easy to learn could be your natural talent. For me, it’s writing. I don’t have to think beyond writing the next word to know what I am going to say. As a matter of fact as I am writing this… it’s just flowing out of me. No planning, no forward thinking, no nothing. Just a natural flow of creativity inside me. That’s God given. Finding it, is not as easy as simply letting it flow however and that’s where yesterdays post comes in handy. You have to develop your natural talent. You may find like I did as you were developing your natural talent in one area you discovered it was actually in another area! But that’s what makes life so interesting… we all have so much potential (that’s tomorrow’s topic…).

An example of natural talent

Say you like organising people. You love to file things away, be organised and structure things. That’s a natural talent. You may be creative and ideas are always flowing out of you… that’s a natural talent. You may be drawn to cooking, sailing, fishing, running or whatever. It’s that drawing you need to develop and master on the road of life.

There are many reasons why people never realise their natural talent… none of which are important right now. What is important is that you make a committment to begin looking for that talent and start developing it. In the next post in this bunch I am talking about what potential is and how to use it. You must come back and read that if you are stuggling with your own personal development.

When you start learning anything you begin from the standpoint of what I like to call the ‘jackass’.  This means you know nothing about what you are doing and where you are going.  I was like this the first time I can to Excel. Now I can teach it without thinking about it.  So what are the four stages of learning?

Phase 1: Jackass

When you start to learn anything knew… you don’t have a clue. You are confused, angry, annoyed, tired and alone. That’s the first stage and it’s sad to say most people will give up in this early phase. You are a complete dumbass at this level and you make mistake after mistake after mistake and just don’t seem to be learning.

Phase 2: Partial Success – or from Jackass to partial incompetence

This is when you begin to get a handle on things but you are still making big time mistakes. You fumble four times instead of five instead of five. You sort of get the hang of it, or at least think you have but ultimately you still fail. There can be no worse feeling that I have ever known then to be at this stage. One minute you are high as a kite the next you are wondering where it all went wrong.

Phase 3: The emerging champion

This is when your skills begin to shine through. Now you are failing two times out of four tries and having more success than failure. If you have ever learned the guitar you know what this feels like. It’s that magic moent when you pick up the guitar and play that song you have been practicing for years. The stars align more often than not and you are there. You just do it. Tomorrow it may not come off but today you are the emerging champion.

Phase 4: The Champion – unconscious competence

This is where most mavens wind up. They are the champions of their area and almost always produce brilliance. They are the Stephen Kings, Speilbergs and so on who even on their worst day are still better than the next person. People at this level find it very hard to tell people how they got there. They use strange sayings like: “it just clicked” or “there comes a time when you just get it.” These are amongst the few people who have become so good at something that they have in tucked away in their unconscious. I am sure if you had the chance to ask Clapton or Hendrix: why are you so good… they might answer with, “I just know what works and what doesn’t.” This is where you want to be… this level of unconscious genius!

You have to accept that learning is a process. There is a way you learn and a path that you have to follow to get to phase 4. It requires committment, determination, faith and courage. Now, there is another element… your natural ability. That is the subject of the follow up post which you will read if you come back tomorrow.

As someone who is involved with a lot of people I am amazed at how people never really pay attention to themselves. We dream our way through the day, hoping for a better tomorrow yet we all find ourselves doing things that are against our natural inclinations. Do you know how many people I have met that are unfulfilled? LOTS!

You don’t need a million opinions to know what you like

All I have to do to know I am me is think about it. Really I don’t even have to do that. I know what I like and I know WHAT I am like. I know the things that turn me on and the things that turn me off. I know me. I know I don’t like administration, but have to do it and I love creativity. I like to build things and I hate to destroy anything. That’s me… you are completely different.

If you don’t know you then how the hell can you help others?

I hear it all the time. People know the direction they should be going in (i.e. away from their jobs) and yet continue to dig a deeper hole. At least dream about it and talk about it.  Cultivate the seedbed of your heart with it.  That’s another story. You must get to know what you like and spend time thinking about it. If you don’t then you can’t know your strengths or your weaknesses are. You will die inside as you get older and become a grumpy old ass like this man:

Don’t squash my spirit

My sister in law has this saying, ‘Don’t squash my spirit!’ She has a bunch of other ones too. To me, this means don’t tell me what I should be doing, when you don’t know me. Don’t stop my creativity and brilliance because you think you know better. It is always helpful to take advice but don’t take advice that stops the real you from developing… that’s just crazy.

At the end of your life only one person is going to be responsible for you… YOU! You may have a long life or a very short one but at the end… did you do the best with what you had? I know people who lived for 22 years who lived as much as people who lived 44 years and died. Don’t let anyone squash your spirit!

* Thanks to Aunty Nikki for the title of this post.

I was playing Wii Baseball the other day and all of a sudden I realised that I could hit the ball. I had what I call a ‘breakthrough’ moment. Prior to that I was swinging and missing… trying and failing. All of sudden the pitcher hurled a fastball at me and BLAM over the fence. I had a breakthrough moment.

You can have your own breakthrough moment

Whenever you are learning anything or just starting out… you are really are crap at it. You know that feeling. It’s like the first time I attempted the guitar. I am no Eric Clapton or Steve Vai but I am getting there. However, I couldn’t hammer on or pull off (or rock for that matter) when I first began. I was struggling more and more each and every day then one … I had a breakthrough moment. I could play that song I couldn’t play without thinking about it. When you are learning something stick with it. Don’t just quit when it gets hard. Push against that until you ‘breakthrough it’ to the other side.

What stops the breakthrough moment

The breakthrough moment is stalled by thinking that you will never get there. Anything is possible to them that believe it is. What’s the difference between a winner and a loser. A winner loses and gets back up again… a loser quits and stays down. One of the best sayings I have heard is this: Never give up, never surrender. If you want to be good at something you have to practice but I can assure you that there comes a moment when you breakthrough.

As for me I am the baseball champion. I smashed a 9-1 game right after a 9-0 game the other day.  Am I unbeatable?  No.  But I am a lot harder to beat now, that I can smack you out of the game before the end of the first innings.  How did I get there?  By playing it until I could time my swing right and pitch at 152km/h.  That’s fast.  The same principle applies to anything you wish to achieve and it’s not that hard to get there.  You can become good at anything by having a winning attitude.  I can assure you that you will ‘breakthrough’ to a place when you become a champion… just like me.

I was sitting here thinking about the Vmigo game and watching my daughter try and figure out how to play it. I thought about how much she really loves animals and then it occurred to me what do I like doing? A key indicator for doing things in your life that you find interesting is following up on things you like to do. Do you like your job for example? Is there something about it that makes you tick? I haven’t found very many people that like what they are doing. Why is this the case?

I was sifting through my email today and I got a paper back that I have been working on with a colleague. I felt inside that familiar sinking feeling. This all began when I started looking for the ‘Think Different‘ Challenge sent to me by the synergy institute and I will change your life.

So why did I get that sinking feeling… because inside this kind of work no longer brings me the same kind of happiness that is used to. Follow your bliss is a concept meaning that in life you should follow what you want to do, in order to ‘be’ happy. This is not always easy because it involves awakening some things that require courage and work for you to achieve. However, if you don’t do them then what you were truly created for will not come to pass. Hence we have this paradox. Either do what makes you the happiest or o about paying the bills. But is it really a paradox? I think not.

The reality is that my decision not to follow what I want to do, knowing this through inner guidance and intuition, is being held back by the false belief that I need to trade off work for pleasure. Ultimately I can find career fulfillment. In what I do because I can choose to. If I could choose to follow what I feel I should be doing then I will find a level of contentment like no other. When your heart is doing what mine is doing I would recommend following what you like to do. That’s what I am doing and I will let you know how it goes!

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