Why it's important to appreciate what you have
As a lifeguard, a boring day is what you hope for. (Image credit)
In my coaching work, I help business owners who are making a pivot to something new.
Often, the person wants to burn down their existing business and start fresh.
They feel bored, disconnected, and maybe even resentful toward the work that has occupied them for a decade or more.
It’s my job to prevent them from destroying what they’ve worked so hard to build—the thing that is currently paying their bills.
Often, to make progress in our businesses, careers, or elsewhere in our lives, we have to consider our current situation thoughtfully, paying special attention to what’s working.
This isn’t just about the old gratitude journal, although practices like that can definitely provide a useful perspective. When we appreciate what’s working instead of dismissing it all, we can move past a binary way of thinking that can trap us in our old ways even though we are trying to build something better.
Decisions made based on emotion can guide our lives, but they aren’t always the best way to make decisions in our business or career. If we can get over the short-term pain of boredom or frustration, we can make choices that align with our long-term goals, not just our immediate desire for change. Recognizing what we have already allows us to not throw the ol’ baby out with the bathwater.
Nothing is all good or all bad. The situation we now find ourselves in is the result of decisions we made in the past to move toward what we now have. Even if that’s not exactly what we want now, there must have been something about it that we wanted. If we don’t acknowledge that, we are likely to end up repeating the same pattern and getting burned out or listless again.
I spent several years trying to get out of the day-to-day work in my business. I wanted to be able to work remotely and have more free time. Having accomplished this goal, guess what I want? A job where I can show up somewhere, interact with people, and have something to do all day. In other words, the exact opposite of what I’ve got.
I know that this impulse isn’t the whole story. I’m certainly taking note of my desire for something different, but I’m not going to start making wild changes to what I’m doing. Different isn’t better, necessarily. And if I’m not happy now, some new thing won’t fix that.
Like most adults, I’ve made big changes to my life over the years. The best ones were grounded in an appreciation of my existing circumstances, even if there were things that I wanted to improve. I didn’t have to hate what I had to justify wanting something more, and I wasn’t hoping that the pursuit of “something more” was going to send me on an epic hero’s journey. Even if a magical transformation was possible, I had to be okay with still being plain old me on the other side.
Someone close to me became a widow recently, and though this massive event changed her entire life, it also didn’t. She didn’t become bitter and set fire to everything, although I can imagine the impulse. On the other side of this loss, she still likes her job and her house. She did decide to get a dog, and that has been wonderful for her. But she would have been okay either way.
There are times when it might make perfect sense to let go of everything and see what we re-choose. In a way, that’s exactly what I’m suggesting: By being willing to find things to appreciate about even a situation we’re desperate to escape, we are letting go of our emotional attachment to a particular solution or outcome. In so doing, we might find a way forward that brings more peace and joy with it. Even if we choose to walk away from what we have, we can go not with bitterness and resentment, but with confidence and intention. That’s the best place to be when starting something new.
