TOTALLY GEEKED!

Since I’m not a completely horrible person, when I teach my usual half-day training programs on harassment prevention or workplace violence, I give the participants a break each hour.  I’m well aware that the people listening to me need a break from the sound of my lilting tones, to check their phones, to get another cup of go-juice, or to go to the bathroom.

Once I’ve taken care of all those issues myself, I often spend time standing outside or in the room chatting with whoever walks by.  I was doing such a thing last year when a man attending my session started talking about how unhappy he was with his current job and how he was looking to leave.  I made some noncommittal comment and he continued to say that he wanted to get another job but thought he needed a degree, had never went to college, he was too old to go back now, and besides, he just didn’t have the money or the time.  I nodded politely.  Then he said, “You know, you’re really lucky you have your degrees to fall back on.”

The people who take my classes can read my bio and see evidence of my grad school education.  I rarely bring it up because I assume they assume that if their employer brought me in, I must be reasonably qualified to teach.  I’ve heard his type of comment before and I usually just smile and make some self-deprecating remark about “right place, right time.”  But this time my blood began to boil.  I said, “Let me correct you about that.  Luck had absolutely nothing to do with my four college degrees.  I worked my butt off.  A lot of people I knew during that time told me they were too busy with their work and their families to go to school like I did.  I was just as busy as them, if not more.  I worked harder than most people are willing to work, to get to where I am today.”

As I expected, he gave me the “What a Jerk” look and wandered off.  I don’t apologize for what I said (and felt) then or now.  The old saying, “If you want something done, give it to a busy person” has never been more correct today.  One of my colleagues who is a clinical and forensic psychologist says it accurately, “We’re no longer living in a ‘24-7 world’ in terms of activity, preoccupation, and stress; we’re living in a ’72-7 world.’”

And he’s right.  The idea of our old 24-hour world seems nostalgic and leisurely.  Life has never moved faster and a 72-hour day is a better definition of the time allowed and activities allotted.  The technological pace of modern living is so fast it’s dizzying. 

That said, there have never been more opportunities to self-educate yourself, improve your diet, raise your fitness, meet likeminded people (and date or marry one of them), and improve your health.  You can get a college degree from a reputable school without leaving your home.  All of those goals have never been more possible than right now.  The problem is not access, it’s momentum.

As Tony Robbins so often says (he of the happy-clappy motivational speech), “Whatever you want to do is what you’re doing.”  He’s exactly right.  People who want to go back to school and finish their degrees don’t just think about doing it, they enroll and start taking classes.  People who want to get back in shape don’t talk about going to the gym; they drive over to the building, sign up, and start going.  Ask yourself what you really want to do and then get up and start doing what will get you to that exact thing.

And if you really wanted to do it because you had to—like quitting cigarettes because they found a spot on your lung—you would, cold turkey, today and forever (unless you’re an idiot and/or an idiot with a death wish).  If you lost your job in the morning, you would start looking for a new one that afternoon.  Your motivation changed because of the urgency.  But do we have to wait for a situation to become dire before we act differently and go get what we want that is better?

The list of things that hold people back from doing what they say they want to do is long: fear of failure; fear of the extra responsibility; no real passion for the project; no desire for pain or discomfort, no matter how temporary; not enough money to be able to take the time; not enough time to go out and make the necessary money.  These are all the usual rationalizations and justifications most people need to stay firmly rooted right where they are. 

A popular bumper sticker and t-shirt back in the day said, “I used to want wine, women, and song.  Now it’s just beer, the old lady, and TV.”  For some people, there is some truth in those two statements.  Translation: I had big dreams, but I settled.

Look at friends or family around you.  How many of them settled for a job they don’t really enjoy?  How many of them are with a spouse or partner they don’t love with all their heart?  How many of them went from young and fit and energetic to old and out of shape (round is not a shape) and tired, in only a few years?  One of my HR colleagues said it so perfectly, “They need to stop looking out the window and start looking in the mirror.”

Momentum is about movement and movement is about putting yourself in the place of the best possibilities.  The lobby to the Registrar’s Office at the school you plan to attend is where you need to be walking into.  The web portal at the online college program is where you want to be sitting, credit card in hand, to pay your tuition.  Driving by the gym won’t get it done.  You have to park, walk inside, and see a membership counselor. Then after you sign up for the gym, walk straight to the locker room, change into your workout togs, step on the treadmill, and press the buttons to make it move.

My old college English professor said it best.  “Thinking about writing is not writing.  Planning to write is not writing.  Talking on the phone about writing is not writing.  Watering your plants and feeding your dog is not writing.  Writing is writing.”  And so it goes here.

Take your usual list of New Year’s resolutions (the ones that may have never got off the runway at the airport we call Life) and pick one to tackle, today.  Choose the one that will feel the best when you accomplish it, today.  Make a list of the (many) action steps required to see it to its conclusion, today.  And here’s the hook: ask someone you care about to be your Accountability Partner and tell him or her to hound, nag, and cajole you without mercy, using all forms of social media and face-to-face contact with you, until you meet your one goal.

“There is not ‘try’,” said Master Yoda.  “There is only do or do not.”  Go forth and do.

Dr. Steve Albrecht

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-act-violence/201502/all-motivation-is-self-motivation