In my previous life, I was deeply involved in the self-awareness and personal development industry. I worked with executives and their employees to turn around morale both individually and as an organisation to increase productivity and profits. I loved it.
I was the person that walked in, listened to the ‘people’ issues, formulated the solutions, delivered them, and walked back out again. It was both challenging and rewarding at multiple levels.
Now in my mid-40s, I have found myself in a quiet lull. Having achieved most of my goals, it recently occurred that my future was a blank canvas. If I was honest with myself, it had been that way for quite some time, and I had become content with letting myself relax into the world of no purpose. What can I say? There is something very satisfying in not having to get out of bed unless you want to, or not put on a bra or brush your hair unless you have to?
Alas, the time finally comes when you are ready to start a new chapter and stop treading water. And who else would be better at regaining focus than someone who lived and breathed personal and professional development? So out came all the old notes, training exercises, worksheets and coffee whilst I excitedly started to refresh my already advanced knowledge of the human psyche and life motivation. The prospects were endless.
Twenty minutes in, I found myself staring blankly at my notepad like a stunned mullet. Was this stuff always this hard? Is this how the people I taught felt all those years ago whilst I puffed my chest, believing I had changed lives? The paradigm shift from teacher to student was unexpected, scary, and unwelcome as I found myself unable to grasp an answer to any of the exercises and worksheets I perused. I knew all the stuff, I had all the resources, but there was no revelation. Had I lost my touch?
I pulled myself together as I made another coffee. I was not useless. If there was anything, I knew well it was business, so I decided to create a new business: Me. SWOT analysis, mission and vision statements, marketing, branding strategies, and more started running through my head as I considered how I could adapt them to a person as the product – namely, me. Hours later, I was still staring at a blank piece of paper.
I had just wasted a whole morning. Instead of doing all of these ‘success’ strategies, which I had believed in so strongly, I could have been out walking my dog and enjoying the beautiful parks near my home. Is it really so that you need to spend unrecoverable time planning your future life to succeed? Books, seminars, workshops – all of which make other people money when, perhaps, if you walked away and just spent your day creating memories, you would discover that satisfying your soul can be more rewarding than setting and reaching your goals (which, mind you, you will most likely reach along the way without even thinking about it).
As John Lennon aptly put it, ‘Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.’.