Gloom and Doom or a Wake Up Opportunity to Assess What's Important

Have been watching the market bouncing around and the media's creation of an emotional frenzy over the past few weeks. There is definitely a lot that needs to be fixed over the next several years and people have made financial decisions that will need to be recovered from (both as businesses and individually), but since gloom and doom sells rather than leadership and 'here's what we can do about getting ourselves out of this', that's what the media focuses on. I read somewhere that we should be informed, but actually I don't want to be inundated with a constant minute by minute flow of how terrible it all is. I'll stay informed, but at this point I want to focus on the self-leadership (in the absence of any other) route and move forward.

For us, this is a wake-call, one which we've been hearing the gentle tones of for a couple of years. It's now a smack up side the head saying, 'Hey, pay attention!' If it is possible to step outside the frenzy, it is a clear time of reassessment - of what is important. It is an opportunity (all Pollyanna comments aside) to take a breath, step (or be pushed) off the produce / consume treadmill, turn off the autopilot for a while and think about what we want (as individuals) want rather than what businesses, government, advertisers want for us.

The treadmill and autopilot. I haven't been to a gym in a while, but did you ever notice that once you get on a treadmill it is almost impossible to get off? The only way to get off is to leap off (usually painful) or stop the machine. It's an interesting analogy for what's happening now. We get on the treadmill, start walking or running, turn on the autopilot (because being on a treadmill is really boring) and we can't get off - until the machine stops.

We've been making the 'planned leap' off the treadmill for the past two years knowing that it would create a significant change in our lives. Using the analogy above, what could be perceived as painful is the adjustment in income, radically different than before, but a planned leap is less painful than an unplanned one or being pushed. No matter which way one gets off the treadmill, once one does, you shut off the autopilot and begin to look around, to think, to become more creative.

Motivation for the leap. Every year since we've been married, Steve and I have an annual planning session where we sit down (often over a period of days) and identify the most important areas of our lives and what we want to accomplish in those areas in the coming year. There's usually about 8 consisting of our relationship, family, business, finance, etc. It is a focused and concerted effort both at the beginning and during the year to make sure that the things that are important to us make the agenda. If we didn't do it, then what others want for us (others who have no value or importance in our lives) get what they want and we don't. The key point here is that we've had to plan in our relationship, family and friends and fun things to do and actively project manage those activities to make sure they get done.

Stepping off the treadmill for a minute, do we want our relationships to be activities on a project plan? Do we want to have to fight and strive to make time (and energy) for an evening with friends? I can remember one year thinking that I had so much on workwise that I only had enough time to work on three of my 'important areas', relationship, family and work, and that friends wouldn't make the agenda. That was a wake-up call in itself, friends didn't make the agenda! Something needed to change.

If we only have a finite number of hours in this lifetime (just had a birthday and I'm counting!), do we want to spend them on a treadmill? Maybe this is a really good opportunity (setting the financial woes aside for just a few minutes) to assess, are we simply on the 'work till we're exhausted, collapse in front of the ads on TV, which send us to the mall to buy a 'treat', which we have to work until we're exhausted to pay for' treadmill? What portion of our lives are dedicated to that treadmill and is that what we really want?

For us the answers are no and we want a lot more than that! We've thought about this a lot and we want all those other areas of our life to have just as much (or more!) in them than the work area, we want family, friends and fun to be a core part of our lives, rather than activities on a plan or not even making that year's agenda. It's not often we get the opportunity to pause, step off the treadmill and think about what we really want.