This is a question I asked my friend earlier this morning.
He shared with me over voice notes how he’s finding it overwhelming to look after all his priorities in life, namely his romantic relationship, his health, his career, and now his side hustle. A lot of people relate to the feeling that there are simply not enough hours in one day to do it all.
He said that he feels like he has to battle to get through the day. Constantly putting out fires, in reaction mode the entire time. The need to push through or rush to the next thing, otherwise you stop taking care of something important, whether your job or your health or your relationships.
I asked him:
“What is all the battling for exactly?”
This question was inspired from me asking this question to myself just a couple of days ago actually.
My coaching practice is doing better than I expected just 8 months in, and I started seeing the possibility that I could pursue it full-time if I got 2-3 more clients.
This aspiration turned into an unconscious expectation without me noticing it. What originally felt exciting started feeling stressful and eventually suffocating and demoralizing when I couldn’t fill up my client roster “fast enough.”
In other words, the progress of my coaching practice created a craving. I became attached to progressing much faster than I initially ever would’ve expected just because I saw that it was possible.
My progress started working against me. Instead of focusing on offering value and receiving clients as a byproduct like I was doing before, I was motivated to offer value as a means to an end to achieve my primary motivation of more monthly income.
My motivation became unpure, meaning my ego hijacked my motives. When we focus on our gain more than our giving, we lose 10/10 times. Paradoxically the more we focus on giving and adding value to others, the more we gain.
The irony here is that by chasing the freedom of getting to pursue my coaching practice fully, I created my own trap. The craving to quickly get there led to feeling suffocated.
I also asked my friend:
“What would it look like to give up the the battle? What would you have to give up or say not to so that it didn’t feel like you were battling anymore?”
Again, inspired from unravelling my own battle a couple of days ago.
I realized that this expectation I have for my coaching practice growth was synthetic, in that it was completely made up; it only existed in my head.
I was able to dismantle my expectation by seeing how “the battle” was working against me, of internalizing the negative consequences coming directly from craving more growth sooner. Deep understanding is the mechanism behind untangling mental knots.
There is no clear template or solution here. It’s possible that the battle is a fight a short-term play that is going to lead to long-term payoff and can possibly be worth it. It’s equally possible that battling, like in my case, is more costly than what it is offering in return.
The key is to get deeply in touch with the tradeoffs between battling or not, and determining which consequences you’re happy to absorb.
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