Delightful Work

Have you ever screwed up and not followed through on a self-pledge? We all have, many times, and we are likely to continue, right? If that’s so, consider this. Wouldn’t it be a better strategy to give up on perfection and simply allow the screw-ups to occur? If we could do that without being so hard on ourselves, we’d be more fulfilled, waste less time and be far more productive.

Trust builds when agreements are honored. Thus it’s our self-trust that takes the biggest hit when we don’t follow-through as promised. So we need to trust ourselves once more to comeback from this temporary breach of reliability.

When we screw-up we can either change what occurred so that we don’t make the same mistake again or we can change how we feel about making mistakes. I find the latter to be just as effective and far easier to pull off.

Please get this. It’s not the mistake that derails you. It’s how you feel about letting yourself down. Since you admit that you are too hard on yourself, what might happen if you simply cut yourself some slack?

I’d like to introduce you to a couple of words and their definitions that you may have forgotten.

Forgive – to cease to feel resentment about.

Absolve – to free from guilt or blame or their consequences.

Have you forgotten that you have the power to self-forgive and to self-absolve? It’s often a necessary step before we can get ourselves back on track. I really want you to know a few things.

There is no limit to the number of fresh starts you can make. You can always begin again. As a coach, I often ask clients to give themselves permission to forget about past misses and begin anew. Absolve yourself. Let it go. Recognize the futility of holding onto the mistake and its accompanying guilt. Start over. Take a Mulligan.

If you take yourself too seriously, lighten up and praise your good. Most of us tend to overplay our misses and under-recognize our hits. You do a lot of things right, don’t you? Who sees those? Whose job is it to make sure they get duly noted and celebrated? Perhaps if you spent more time recognizing your progress and all the things you do well, you would no longer need to be so self-judgmental.

Know that making a mistake is not an indication that anything is wrong with you or fundamentally lacking in your makeup. As kids, many of us had adults place the “what’s wrong with you?” curse on us. Know and act on the basis that nothing is wrong with you. You are a child of God who occasionally misses the mark. So what, who doesn’t?

Sometimes when you disappoint and do not follow through, it means nothing. It could mean that you just screwed up. Perhaps in your enthusiasm you simply over-promised. Perhaps other priorities and/or opportunities entered the picture.

Mistakes are simply attempts that missed the mark. Lighten up. Start over. Forgive yourself. Let go of the misstep. Shrug it off. Release those guilty thoughts.

Mistakes are inevitable and without them we would have no feedback for course corrections and adjustments. If you’ve made a mistake, it’s already in your past. It’s behind you, so allow it to remain there.

You can come back from anything. Clear the air. Forgive yourself. Cut yourself some slack. Give yourself a break. Love yourself. Pick yourself up and dust yourself off. Begin anew. Life wants you to win.

Celebration may be the most underutilized tool in your box. Some view celebration as soft or slacking off - like we aren’t really doing anything. Nothing could be further from the truth. Celebration is a pivotal stage in the productivity process because it allows us to commemorate all the good that we do.

Unlike indigenous cultures, in the western world, we have forgotten many of our traditions, ceremonies and celebrations especially around the work that we do. In the name of progress, our culture has lessened rejoicing over everyday occurrences like sunrises and important seasonal events like harvest time. We need to remember that when the crops are safely in, it’s time to dance and make merry.

In an earlier post, Work Life Happiness - Stake Your Claim Now, I illustrated the Authentic Cycle of Probability.

Look where celebration falls - right after gratitude and just before completion. That’s an extremely powerful stage of the cycle that should not be overlooked.

Gratitude is the causative energy of appreciation that blesses us with ease and greater flow. Celebration is self-acknowledgment and recognition for successfully completing every small step. Completion is the triumphant achievement of our objective and our signal to proceed forward to the freshness of discovery. Here are five good reasons to celebrate more often.

Sometimes we lament our lack of progress and go on fruitless searches for the answer. But often what’s missing is as simple as a little jig of recognition or bursting out in spontaneous song.
Your very being is enough reason to celebrate. Select a project or any progress that makes you feel good and join Kool and the Gang in Celebration of your achievement![youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmOQyyezwCQ&hl=en]

What do you think? Are you celebrating enough? What have you accomplished recently that is reason to celebrate? What have you passed over without giving it its due recognition?

What’s so overwhelming about information overload? Why do we see it as overload at all? Why do we see too much information as overwhelming? Before the Internet we didn’t get upset because we couldn’t read every book in the library.

If anything, we ought to be overjoyed at all these opportunities to learn, grow and profit. So instead of overwhelm, how about trying on this vein of thought?

What’s really wonderful about having so much information right at our keyboards?

If overwhelmed with overload, you might be forgetting your unique mindset. You, I and everyone else can only see through our own perspective filters. What I find fascinating and inspiring may be boring as hell for you.

Perhaps we could all ask these questions instead of moaning about our inability to keep up.

What if what I’m considering is exactly the right thing for me to see right now? What do I need to see or learn in order to make the decisions that are right in front of me? If overwhelmed, what am I really afraid of?

Hint … perhaps I’m scared to death because with so much information readily available I no longer have the procrastinator’s ignorance excuse of not knowing what to do.

Once this excuse is removed, a feeling of holy cow I’ve got to do something comes up.

Let’s look at the sunny side of overload and overwhelm. Opportunities are endless and we can seize them with the proper focus.

No one can see the opportunity you’re seeing quite like you can. All you need is a feeling of go for it to seize what you see. What’s missing could be the support and encouragement to take action. I’m offering you a way to come together with real support and connection. That group is soon to start. Read about it here.

There is that brief point of inspiration where we need to seize our opportunities as they are illuminated by our own desires. Look out for your points of inspiration. Make note of them. Write them down so you give yourself permission to go back and add to the ideas. An opportunity journal relieves the pressure in a positive way.

What else allows this? Taking action, completing anything, positive encouragement and movement through a point of personal challenge - all will get you feeling light and easy instead of overwhelmed. Quit moaning and be the man or woman you know you can be.