For many people who spend large amounts of time in crisis response, trauma based fields, or stressful high-pressure environments, humor…particularly off-color humor…becomes a coping mechanism. I am no different in this regard and used to love watching Fox Broadcasting Company’s animated sitcom, “Family Guy”. One of my favorite episodes was released in 2006 when the show’s lovable but foul-able father Peter lands a job as a newscaster.
His segment was called, “You know what really grinds my gears?” and Peter would rave and rant about things that disproportionately angered him. It was pretty ridiculous (yet hilarious) and the phrase came to be short form in my life for maddening or irritating nuances.
The past two years have been a whirlwind of change; some for the better and some not so much. As John Maxwell says, “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.” I’ve done lots of learning. What is undeniable is that my life has changed exponentially for the better. I touched on this a little bit in my last blog.
By accepting responsibility for my decision-making that led to my poor quality of life, I was able to fix it. I acknowledged that much of personal growth and development is mental, not physical. I also discovered that success is very much systemic. By finding a system that works for you, implementing it, then executing it over a sustained period of time, positive results are inevitable.
You know what really grinds my gears? That I allowed myself to get to that rock bottom point.
You know what else grinds my gears? Without the discipline to sustain your positive behaviors, habits, and systems the progress that took a long time to achieve will be erased in a fraction of the time that it took to do it. When people slip up…it can have devastating effects.
You know what grinds my gears more than anything? I mean…past the point of frustration and straight to breaking my heart? The “stuckers”. Stuckers come in all forms…and when you have a case of the stucks, the path to guilt and hopelessness is a slippery slope. My former profession is packed full of stuckers living sub-optimal lives hoping to grind it out to retirement. It’s just not right (this is a whole separate blog in the future…).
So where I am going with this? The stuckers grind my gears so much, that it led me to resign from my job, become self-employed, found “The American Excellence Initiative”, and devote 100% of my time and energy to its mission.
When I say it breaks my heart…it actually breaks my heart. The number of high-quality, amazing, talented, strong, gifted people in our society that are living sub-optimally for no other reason that they have resigned to the fact that they simply cannot change is astronomical. Don’t believe me? Think of the number of times you’ve been on either side of the conversations below.
In my last blog, I mentioned when the results of your efforts become tangible, people will take notice. Common examples of this might be the typical, “Hey man…you look like you’re losing weight. What are you doing?” Or, “Your last few trainings you just came across as super relaxed and confident…what gives?” As your results become more apparent, it influences the people around you to scale.
Stuckers have the attitude of, “that’s great for you but I could never do that because of…etc etc etc..” This attitude is at an epidemic level and manifests in so many areas…health, job satisfaction, relationships, finances, and self-image.
Disagree? Do some digging on Al Gore’s internet for some empirical data. Better yet, ask a friend or family member (or yourself) if they’re satisfied with where they’re at in life. I’d be willing to bet you know many people like this. In fact, you may be a stucker yourself.
It’s ok…take a breath..there’s hope. I was a stucker too. It took coaching, mentoring, and training to unstuck myself. You can unstuck yourself too.
Most times people actually KNOW what to do to fix a problem or overcome a challenge. They simply make an active decision not to and settle…why is that?
Over the years, I have been unafraid to change jobs or careers if I hit my growth ceiling someplace. Work never got stale…and every now and then I had a really cool adventure (ever see the sun break over the mountains that surround Kabul, Afghanistan backlighting our beautiful flag casually blowing in the breeze?) This approach is simply too much for most people.
Many of my friends, family members, and past co-workers have openly hated working where they were at. When this occurs, it begs the questions, “Why don’t you leave and find something else?” This thought is unfathomable for most.
You hear the normal litany of reasons not to chase any change at all; retirement, insurance, pay, stability, don’t know what else to do, etc… This is very prevalent in my former industry of policing.
Are those real challenges? Yes… Does it mean a person has to make a conscious decision to spend the majority of their life miserable in a job they can’t stomach anymore? No… There’s ALWAYS options…you just have to be willing to find a reason to win instead of accepting the less desirable outcome.
Another great example of this is people interested in losing weight. The vast majority of people who desire to lose weight have a basic understanding of what to do. This can be as simple as, “eat less, move more”, exercise, count calories, food prep, stop drinking pop/beer/etc…
So why don’t they just do it? The same reason I wasn’t doing it until I learned the secrets of a systemic approach to success. There’s a myriad of symptoms to the issue, but the root sickness is their mind has not accepted that change is possible. They are stuck in their own thought cycle. I would argue they are stuck in how they really view themselves. It is the mental aspect of the challenge, not the physical.
I truly feel heartbreak for these people…great people who have a desire to iteratively improve and continue to reinvent themselves into better and better versions of themselves, but have a “stucked up” approach. I feel their frustration, I feel their lack of confidence and self-worth, and I feel their misguided guilt as they wonder why they just can’t execute.
If you take one thing away from this little rant, let it be this. Regardless of the odds that are stacked against you, your schedule, your resources, your career, whatever it is that you are dealing with…there is a systemic approach to success. Anyone can achieve their aspiration of redefining their reality. You must commit to the notion that change is possible, but you have to stick to the plan. Time to unstuck yourself!
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