First Post Continued – What Do You Mean by Pressure, Chris?

So Chris, you say there’s a lot of pressure in our lives…where’s it coming from?

It seems to me (again, I work with a lot of people week-to-week around results in their lives) that the way we deal with the pressures of our day is not always working as well as it could. We’re not enjoying it. I want this blog to address not just what does it take for us to be successful, but to give us a place to talk about being successful in the face of so much pressure.

I think we feel a lot of pressure out there. Do you? I believe that most of us are often over our stress threshold, and I think it’s just going to get worse—or more interesting, depending on how you feel about stress.

Seriously, though, we all like stress—to a certain degree. Life would be boring if it were so routine and so under our control that nothing ever happened to test us or grow us or surprise us or take us in new directions that ultimately ended up adding to our lives. Of course, once that “excitement” gets over a certain level, though, we experience it as dis-stress, with all of the stuff that to comes along with it: draining of our energy, loss of focus, bringing out our weaknesses instead of our strengths, etc..

Each year, especially as technology continues to innovate and change how we communicate and how we work, we will get a growing number of interruptions and distractions in our lives. I once heard that we have something like 1000 times more distractions in a day (buzzes, beeps, ads, etc.) than our grandparents did. I’m not sure I trust that number, but I think it’s definitely right in proving the point: the number of daily distractions we face are multiplying rapidly.

We have habits we’ve created around dealing with those distractions, and I find those habits are often unconscious and driving us toward results we’re not really enjoying. Case in point, notice all the different habits people have developed around using a cell phone, or a portable email device like a Blackberry. One of the most useful exercises you can engage in is to take some time to compare your daily habits around things like email with your goals for those habits. Ask yourself questions like:

• What do you want email to do for you, anyway?
• Where does it sit on your job description or support the responsibilities that do?
• Are your habits for email really getting you there?
• If not, what might you want to try to change it up, get some different results?
  

Constantly Growing Expectations – from Others and from Us

In addition to the interruptions, we’re facing constantly growing expectations. These are a big issue for most of us, and the expectations come from many places. In work, technology has allowed us to be more productive, and the down side of that is many of us feel the productivity expectation is now so high it’s hurting. We may feel like we’re letting people down everyday, and that gets in the way of enjoying our successes. We have the expectations, constantly growing, of customers, bosses, and colleagues. That’s a lot to deal with. Especially today, when they can reach us anywhere at anytime with the next expectation.

Perhaps the most difficult set of expectations to deal with is the growing set we have for ourselves. I find that most of us are pretty tough on ourselves. A big part of success is knowing what you want. It’s also knowing what’s possible, so that you set up a game to play that you can actually win. What are you expecting of yourself? Can you really deliver that, or have you set up an unfair set of rules?

I think we often ask things of ourselves that we have no real historical data to support. Not to say we shouldn’t try to stretch and grow, but often we stretch way too far, and then the system (our habits) rejects the stretch, and we’re worse off (feeling defeated) than we were before we tried.

Have you ever, say, around New Years, decided to start an exercise plan or a diet? You had tremendous expectations (“I’m going from size XXL to size L!”) and you pushed yourself so hard for about…two weeks, right? Then it all went away? The motivation, the results?

We’ve all been through this cycle. Going through it creates a lot of pressure in our lives, as we fail to meet those unfair expectations, and then our confidence in our ability to deliver slips. I will give you ideas in the future to help you set better goals and enjoy building up those systems in your life. I promise you that.

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve said a few times in this post “I believe” or “I think.” I believe a lot, but I don’t *I*know* much. I have some ideas. I’ve seen a lot of trends. I have my own intuition. I don’t always have the answers. Sometimes I find the most important thing I can do for a client is to help them get a new question in their head, to see the issues they face in a new way. Here’s to some hopefully useful questions that will get you powerful answers.

One thing I’m hoping to use this blog for is to test out what is important to you. I’d like to find out through the comments you attach to blog posts, how is it for you out there? What concerns you about success or the pressure you feel in your daily life? I’m hoping to learn from you as much as you learn from me, which will help me to grow and deliver more as a seminar leader and coach. Here’s to our learning together!