Thanks for checking out this week’s Best Of Operation Melt blog. I am digging into my archives and sharing one of my favorite posts from the past (with a little sprucing up). My blog has a ton of spectacular content you might never have seen before, and it is just as relevant today.
Enjoy this Best Of Operation Melt blog, and stay tuned for a new post next week.
Are you ready for a dad joke?
I offer you this "dad joke" as a light "amuse-bouche" to entertain your mind before we get serious. My dad joke may be groan-worthy, but it's worth every penny you paid for it, right?
What do you call a camel with no humps? Humphrey.
Squeezing the Life Out of Your Goals
Here’s an experiment to try.
Turn your hand palm up, cup it and fill it with water. How much water can you hold in it? Is it hard to keep it from spilling out?
Now, close your hand and try to hold onto the water with all your might. It all comes spilling out, right?
The harder you try to hold onto the water, the less you can actually keep in your hand.
This experiment is an analogy for life. If you press too hard, try to hold on too hard, or focus too much on something, you might actually cause the opposite of your intended result. You can accidentally squeeze the life out of your goals.
Squeezing Away Your Job
Imagine being in a job you love and are good at, a job you certainly don’t want to lose. So, you focus every day on how not to lose the job.
- You hold back and don’t speak up because you don’t want to anger anybody.
- You don’t share your counter-culture ideas because you don’t want to rock the boat.
Suddenly, you have just become a “yes” person and are not contributing anything new to the environment. Do you think you are going to keep the job for long?
It will be like the water you tried to hold onto too hard?
Squeezing Away Your Health
Similarly, in your personal health and fitness, you set a goal to reduce your resting heart rate by getting healthier.
- You create a highly structured plan of daily activities designed to help your health. You track everything.
- You say “no” to consuming anything that is the slightest bit unhealthy.
- You continually monitor and watch your heart rate using your wearable fitness tracker.
Do you think the heart rate will go down?
Probably not.
You are putting so much extra stress on yourself that you might actually increase your resting heart rate.
People Pleasing and Goal Squeezing
Finally, you decide that you will be happier if everybody likes you. So, you spend every day trying to be a people-pleaser.
- You try to compliment everybody, whether it is genuine or not.
- You hesitate to share your thoughts, hobbies and interests with others.
- All conversations with people become one-sided: the other person sharing and you telling them how great they are.
Again, the results are the opposite of what you want. You aren’t really liked. People see through the shallow, non-genuine compliments and get bored with the one-sided relationship.
The people-pleasing tactic you adopted to make people like you because you thought you would be happy will fail.
You won’t be happy if you never get to be yourself.
Better To Play Relaxed
In sports, there is a saying that somebody is “playing relaxed.” This means they are approaching the game in a calm, laid-back manner but still performing well. They aren’t trying to force bad shots or dumb plays that end up harming, not helping, their team.
Playing relaxed is one of the keys to achieving your goals while still enjoying the journey.
This doesn’t mean you don’t work hard; that is still important. But maybe work hard at the things in your control while still doing the things that make you happy. Then, don’t fret over the results; if you adopt the right behaviors, the results will follow in time. But a maniacal focus on them may actually slow your progress.
When interacting with people, you can speak your mind and voice opposing opinions while still being respectful and appreciating the other person’s point of view. This leads to respectful, spirited debate, which is far more interesting to other people than when you are always playing Waylon Smithers to their Mr. Burns.
If you want to Project Manage Your Life and make your dreams come true, it is essential to enjoy the journey. There is already too much negativity and stress in our world, so why add to it?
If you play relaxed as you pursue your goals instead of trying to squeeze the life out of them, you will reach the finish line faster and with a big smile on your face.
Do you need help creating goals that excite you? Are you looking for a partner to help define those behaviors that ultimately lead to success? Do you want to loosen your grip on the water in your hand? It sounds like coaching may be beneficial for you. As a master life coach (who has loosened his own grip), I would be honored to help you find the right path for your success. Let’s chat!
I believe in you; let me help YOU believe in you!
Meet Coach Tony
My name is Coach Tony, and I am a coach, author and project manager on a mission. I am working to build a world where no goal ever dies of loneliness.
I almost allowed one of my biggest life goals to die without ever being attempted for forty years. My goal almost died, not of failure but of loneliness. But, I took a risk and leveraged a simple, logical process that helped me wildly exceed my goal.
I transformed my life, and you can do the same with the help of Operation Melt.
Operation Melt provides engaging, practical content and hands-on coaching to inspire, motivate and equip project managers and other left-brained high-achievers to pursue and accomplish their biggest goals.
Breathe new life into your goals
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