Recently I’ve been struggling to get my head around a piece of work I need to deliver. I agreed to take on a project, to help out, and realise that it is not stuff that excites me. I am not ‘buzzing’ to get into the training room and share this information with the delegates. There are 2 reasons: One, the material is quite ‘dry’ and two, the audience are going to be tough to engage.
I am going to do my best and remove any pre-thoughts that may, inadvertently give me a self fulfilling prophecy and create exactly what I imagine! I am also going to control and influence what I can, and the rest will be what it is, but I am sure I will do my best.
My strategy is to prepare as best as I can and be ready for every eventuality. I really do hope that I find the group to be interested and engaged, motivated to learn and share, fingers crossed!
The good thing is that I have only agreed to deliver 9 days, so far, and if my experience is not great, I can remove myself from the list. I know that, for many of you reading this, sometimes that is not an option and you may have to keep doing something that really doesn’t set your world alight. I have also been in that situation and had a set of coping mechanisms in place to get me through the ordeal, but it wasn’t great knowing I had to go through it all again tomorrow!
The things that helped me were:
- Understanding why I was doing something in the first place – what did it give me?
- I looked to the future – what would this look like in 6 months time?
- I planned my exit strategy – if this situation was not great, what would be better to replace it?
- I set small achievements to keep me motivated – such as a savings pot that paid for a break away. What would off-set the feeling of dread by focussing on the reward?
- I took one day at a time, knowing this was not forever – short term pain for a long term gain.
An example of this was when I worked for a company and was on a delivery team that required us to travel a lot. This meant staying away from home, away from the family and any routines we had in place, such as the gym, weekend events etc. I enjoyed the travel, to start with, and loved visiting different countries, to start with, but then it got in the way of my life. I’d be getting home late, unpacking, re-packing and not really be present at home. I was always thinking of the next flight, next set of delegates and the challenges that delivering information across different cultures can raise.
I was home physically but not mentally or emotionally!
After a while, I had saved a pot of money that allowed us to buy a nicer house, and we moved. I slowed down on the travelling and took local projects, so I could be home at reasonable times. I spent more, and better quality, time with my kids.
Balancing your life can be tough and it’s not always easy to say no to things, but the strategies that helped me (above) made sure I brought things back into balance. I have done similar things since and worked hard and long hours which impacted my time at home, but I always make sure it is for a certain length of time before I re-balance things.
Life is short, time is precious and having the ability to ‘sense check’ your own life takes effort and sometimes means you have to jump off the train for a while, just to get a breath, re-energise, re-focus, and then you have the choice to carry on or pick a different train to board!
Enjoy your journey and have a fantastic week.