I recently heard a clergy member describing how we think about things that are 100 years old. In the context of people, he said, we think of someone who is 100 years old as frail and brittle and perhaps of little relevance. When we think of organizations and buildings that achieve 100 year status, we celebrate them as being strong and standing the test of time and valuable.
There is nothing that can be more unsettling in the workplace than looming changes. Especially if it is rumored to be big. It’s understandable. We have gotten to see this up close and personal in the Federal Government recently. Big changes can have big ramifications and in today’s world that could mean being laid off, forced to relocate, or ending up doing something that may not be as fulfilling as what you are doing now.
Nothing has taught me more about life than my time spent traveling and living in different places. By staying in our routines and continually seeing the same things over and over we become less open to the possibilities that are out there in the world.
If you remember back to high school economics, we learned about imports and exports. When a country was exporting more goods than they were importing, they were probably in pretty good shape. If they were importing more than they were exporting, things could be getting a bit dicier financially. The concept is quite simple and we can apply the same logic when we think about how to change your habits to increase fulfillment.
Letting go of expectations is something that has come up time and again in my career. Ironically, Kansas City has represented a crossroads multiple times in my life.
The first was in 2013. Having freshly finished my thesis, I was ready to enter the workforce. At the time, a federal hiring freeze was ongoing, stymying my job search. My goal, from early in my college education to that moment, was to work for the National Weather Service: an impossibility given the circumstances. Further complicating matters, I was still licking my wounds from a painful, disastrous breakup that shook me to the core a handful of months earlier. The tunnel seemed infinite; there was no light in sight.
Lately it seems that anxiety is on the rise for one reason or another. Or maybe it’s always just there. We are all dealing with something. Ever get “white coat syndrome” at the doctors when your blood pressure goes up because you don’t like being there? Maybe you didn’t get the job you wanted or you are burnt out at work. Or, if you are a federal employee like me, there is a real possibility of losing our jobs right now.
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We have all had the pleasure of scrolling through social media and running across the “I’m incredibly excited to announce…” or the “Major Life Update” post. What follows is usually someone shouting from the hilltops that they just landed their dream job, they are moving to a new city, got married, bought a house, or are having kids. The more you extend your network, the more frequently these posts come across your feed. And while you are always happy to see your friends succeed, sometimes it can just feel like “When am I going to get my piece of the pie?” Especially if it’s been a while since you had one of your own “Major Late Breaking Life Update!!!” proclamations.
Originally written May 16, 2022
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There never seems to ever be enough time to accomplish everything we need to get done. Yet there are activities we do every day that continually waste our most precious resource because we have built them into our routine and they have become habit.
In order to unlock more time in our day, we have to take a hard look at what we are doing and how it plays into our daily balance of activities. For me, time sinks usually fall into to a few major categories. Work inefficiencies, pleasure binging, and boredom.
Originally written January, 2021
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The concepts expressed in this article are derived from James Clear’s “Atomic Habits”. Check out his work here.
Welcome back for a new and exciting year, and for most people that simply means putting 2020 behind us and looking forward to what should be a brighter future in 2021. The problem is that although the calendar has turned, a lot of the issues we had still remain. Those difficulties are different for everyone but it’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t been affected in some ways by the pandemic.
Originally written December 23, 2020
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About this time a year ago, I sat on the cold hardwood floor of an empty townhouse in Raleigh, North Carolina crying my eyes out.