Finding The Fun!
Hi There,
Your mindset is the fundamental factor determining how you experience life. In this month’s DRIVEN blog post, I present four essential mindsets that, when embraced, constitute a solid foundation for successfully living your desired life.
But there are additional ways of being which set us up to enjoy the actual journey. And one of them became apparent during this week’s Playing Big coaching lab experience.
In this current module of Playing Big, called Let It Be Easy: Alternatives to Self-Discipline, author Tara Mohr challenges us to consider how to make tasks and activities, or “the journey”, easier for ourselves. After all, not only are we incredibly hard on ourselves, but some driven professionals make things unnecessarily difficult for ourselves.
A well-known antidote to this proclivity is K.I.S.S., or “Keep It Simple, Sweetheart”. One way to look at K.I.S.S. is to eliminate extra steps: nixing the ‘nice to have’ aspects of an effort while keeping the ‘need to have’ functionality.
Another helpful consideration is the visual of swimming downstream. How can we set ourselves up with a mindset and a plan to work with the current. A favorite example of this is ‘stacking work’. A DRIVEN client enhanced her effectiveness after she proclaimed that Monday’s focus activity was administrative, Tuesdays are devoted to team meetings, and every Friday contains a long-term planning block embedded right into her schedule. This eliminates the time and tension of scheduling ‘big rocks’. The result of stacking activities: her week flows more fluently!
A third concept struck a nerve within me. Tara Mohr suggested the reframing of ‘should’ goals to ‘gift’ goals. This is actually an extension of Linda Graham’s “ANTS to PATS” brain shift. Substituting words like “can” and “will” in place of “should” and “need” results in a different neurochemical reaction to the task at hand.
While I am a disciple of converting ANTS to PATS, during the Playing Big coaching lab session, I was challenged to transform my “should goal” into a “gift goal”. After some patient coaching from my lab partner and breathing through the awkward silences, I FINALLY recognized how important enjoyment is for me. If I can make an activity fun, I’m golden! This squares with the estimation that the journey should be just as delightful as the destination— my kind of fun.
And speaking of fun, I’m going to indulge in fun during July by reposting some favorite distribution messages for your reading pleasure. I’ll look forward to hearing what resonates. And don’t forget to have fun with it!
Cheers!
-Deborah
Deborah Goldstein
DRIVEN Professionals / Forbes / Linkedin
info@drivenpros.com | LinkedIn
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