Work On Not In Your Life

Sprout Sweater Episode 17 : Taking time away from doing and busyness

Join Dave Algeo aboard "Sprout 1" and take another journey into your inner world where mind, meaning and metaphor collide.

In this episode, Dave encourages you to value the importance of stepping away from the hustle and bustle and the constant 'doing' of life to consider the bigger picture. He shares some tips on how to work on your life and not just in your life.

Dave Algeo is a writer, coach, trainer and speaker empowering others to live big, by identifying the small but significant things that can transform the life we are living. Join Dave on the good ship 'Sprout1' as we explore the inner galaxy of the human mind, and find the sprouts that make the biggest difference. These are the sprouts you are looking for.

Search for 'Sprout Sweater' in your favourite podcast feed. To find out more about the podcast, and episode show notes at Podcast — Stress(ed) Guru and more about his in person and online events at www.stressedguru.com. Drop Dave a line at dave@sproutsweater.com to ask questions, offer feedback or suggestions for future podcast content.

Episode 17 Show Notes

The following is a rough draft of the content (not a full transcript - more notes forming the basis of the podcast recording

How about working on your life rather than in your life for a change.

Welcome aboard sprout 1, I’m your host Dave Algeo chief sprout sweater. Secure your seat tray and stow your bag in the anti-gravity overhead storage, as we embark on yet another foray into inner space where we seek to see your world from a different standpoint and return with a new insight to help you shift stubborn stories that hold you back. 

It’s episode 17 working on your life rather than in your life.

As we lift off the pad and before we get into the episode don’t forget if you find that the demands of life and the meaning of it all is leading you to sleepless nights tossing and turning, deep and not so deep questions rattling around your head then hop on over to sproutsweater.com and gain access to my free Operation Snooze Sleep Improvement audio program. Start getting your head back and your shit together so you can start getting life back on your terms, sproutsweater.com.

We all love a good tip, tactic or solution don’t we, I know I do. Whenever I’m faced with a setback or a problem or I need to change something in or about my life I often default to finding a tactic or a solution to get it sorted. Losing weight -  what foods do I ditch or add-in. Get fit – well what exercise is best for me and how do I get it done and so on. And what’s wrong with that? Well, nothing up to a point and I will get to that, the thing is I can quickly identify something and then implement it. Maybe I even develop a rough action plan and overall goal but I get to work. I get to work on it whilst I’m also getting on with life too. Honestly, that’s great too, isn’t it? If there’s a problem let’s search for a solution then fix it or resolve it and move on. Let’s face it life is full-on anyway, isn’t it? I don’t have time to faff about just get it sorted, implement the action and move on. Nothing to see here. Great. But as I’ve said several times on the podcast and many more times in conversations with others that is great as long as the life we are living is pretty much on track with where we want to go and how we want to live it and how we want to experience it. If you have even given that any thought in the first place let’s be truthful about that. The trouble is working at that tactical level i.e. the level of doing is great if one of two things are true. 

One, you don’t particularly care about the direction of your life or what you do as long as you’re ok and you enjoy it. I’m not knocking that and indeed many of us overthinkers like me could probably do with a little more hands-off and more go with the flow.  Or is it two, you have a reasonably clear idea of how you want to live your life. You’re already on track, you know what you want to achieve and how you intend to satisfy those deeper drives, you know that voice that prods you to say, ‘come on there’s more to this, there’s more to you step up’. Again, that’s great if you are already great at checking in on how you are living up to that. But I’m guessing that many of you are like me. You have perhaps spent more than enough of your life not really thinking about what you want from life, or you may have had some dreams and ambitions as a kid, but they seem to have kind of morphed into one track. Perhaps it’s a career track, a role like a parent or a partner or carer and you’ve stopped indulging those dreams or even thinking about them. Perhaps at some point, you’ve realised that that wasn’t enough and you’ve asked yourself that question ‘is this it?’.  You desperately want the answer to be ‘nope there’s more, there’s so much more’ but there’s so much to do in any given day isn’t there. So much is expected of you. So many day-to-day things to do that keep you afloat or move you slowly in a direction that to be fair you haven’t really thought out. You’re living your life day to day and moment by moment by doing. By fixing, solving, rolling up your sleeves, dropping into the couch with a bottle of beer or glass of wine and switching off to some trashy TV on a night. Life’s ok.  In fact, it can be great but there’s just something, something down there in the pit of your stomach or the back of your mind nagging. That still small voice insistently but quietly prodding at you telling you there’s more. And what do we do when we have that voice? Well chances are if you’re like me you pick up a self-help book or you listen to a podcast or you watch some moving and inspirational movie or TV program. For a moment you dream and you imagine ‘what if that could be me’ or ‘if only’. Then life calls again and we’re back to it. Don’t get me wrong it’s not as depressing as it sounds. We can live that way and it can be an enjoyable life but is it meeting that deeper need. 

For me after years of living this way that voice got louder and louder and more insistent. It took more alcohol, work, and denial to deny it really. So, here’s where the idea of working on your life rather than in it comes in. Now I don’t mean to stop working in your life, obviously, like me, you’ll have responsibilities and things that need to be done, but what I do mean is that you take some time out more regularly to work on your life, your vision, the direction of travel. Where you are now versus where you want to be. Then checking, checking what needs to change. Checking on what you are already doing to see if it’s actually moving you in that direction or whether it’s actively working against that. And then as part of that working on your life developing some sort of transitional plan. That vision, that plan that moves you in that direction. This is where many of us could do with a little bit more working on our life than in our life. For those of you who might kind of say that’s a familiar phrase or you’ve already spotted where it comes from if you’re in business. That’s quite a cliché or the phrase work on your business not just in your business. It’s a bit of a cliché in the business world, and like so many cliches there’s so much truth behind it. It’s in terms of business it’s about how much time your spending working and just running your business rather than deciding how you want it to be, where you want it to go. It’s a prompt really that phrase of working on your business not just in your business to remind you and any business owner that focusing on the day to day, getting sales, keeping up the bookkeeping, the networking, doing the marketing, dealing with customer issues etc., etc. is vital but it can be so consuming. It can consume you to the point that you forget to take time to step away from the business to decide what you actually want from the business. Both in the here and now i.e., what kind of clients do you want to work with, what kind of experiences do you want to have in your business and also what you want from the business in the longer term. Do you want to grow it big enough to sell? Do you want it to just to provide you with a nest egg for retirement? Or do you want it to be a lifestyle that you can enjoy long into your later years? What do you want from it? 

If we are not careful in business because it’s so consuming we can forget to do that. That’s why that cliché work on your business not just in your business is so important. But let’s go back to my original twist on that what about working on your life, not in your life. What do you want from your life? Life is so full-on, isn’t it? So full on demanding so much of you. That’s great because it means we can feel like we are part of something. We can feel like we are part of a community, a process, bringing people up, family nurturing relationships. But we can sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture and what’s in it for us. That’s not selfish, it’s not selfish.  

So, what do you want from your life, and I guess these are my questions that I want you to think of today and I’m going to build on this next week and I’ll come back to what I’m going to cover in next week’s podcast but my questions for you are:

When was the last time you stepped away from your life and just took some time out to simply reflect on it; consider how it meets your needs and desires? How does it reflect your values? Who you are, do you even know who you are? Have you discovered that, have you lost that? Does your life reflect your gifts the things that you’re really good at, your strengths? And above all how much are you actually enjoying and are you doing what you enjoy more often than not. For now, that’s not a judgement. It’s not to say, ‘ah well stuff it my life’s totally not what it is, throw it out let’s go off and do exactly what I want’. We all live in an environment with responsibilities, and we all have to take care of that and live up to our responsibilities. I’m not saying we chuck that out. I just want you to consider when was the last time you gave that some thought. 

Question 2, if it’s been a while what I’d like you to do, encourage you to do is make a commitment. Make a commitment now to find 20 minutes today or tomorrow and each week thereafter, get it in the diary and use this just as a starting point for now. Give yourself 20 minutes where you make space for yourself to step away and just reflect on where you are with your life. Perhaps jot down some thoughts or ideas in a journal or a notebook. Get it down and just think about where you are with your life in comparison to those previous questions. How is your life suiting you and serving you? Are you doing things you enjoy? Is it playing to your strengths and your gifts? Is it reflecting your values? Is it meet your bigger goals and desires perhaps even those childhood ambitions that you have for yourself? 

The third thing is to take a 10-minute break each day over the next week, 5 minutes if you are struggling for 10 minutes but 10 minutes if you can and just put away the to-do lists. Park them. Put away other people’s agendas and just let your mind wander. Go for a walk. Stare out the window, do nothing in particular. Now this might seem a waste of time but believe me what can often happen is ideas, thoughts, realizations can pop into your mind at times like that. How many times have you been working away so focused on something to only stop perhaps to go to the loo, go for a walk, go and get a drink from the drinks machine, take a shower for something to pop into your head when you’re not thinking about the problem or the issue. So, take time out to do nothing in particular. It is not dead time. It is not wasted time. What you are doing is allowing your subconscious brain, the part of your brain that is actually the vast majority of your brains activity to just reflect on perhaps what you’ve been consciously thinking about your life and surface a few thoughts or feelings or ideas or reflections or insights that might be useful you never know. They might be astounding or insightful or just silly, whatever. Just allow your subconscious the chance to surface anything that it feels you need to know in relation to your life. 

In next week’s episode, I provide you with a bit of a framework to help you craft a clearer vision for your life and to help you see how small but significant sprout sized tactics and changes can help you move that way, not by providing you with the specific tactics, I’ve talked about some of those tactics for example how to improve your sleep in previous episodes. I won’t be talking about specific tactics to the specific problems or solutions, problems, or challenges what I will be doing is providing you with a bit of a framework to help you identify the tactics yourself. Give you a means of identifying your own path and the steps to move you forward.

So as our craft the sprout 1 begins the landing process allowing you to return to your fellow humans take 20 minutes sooner rather than later and consider your life as it is now. Might feel a bit scary to do that but take heart this can be the first most exhilarating step to getting life back on your terms, take care.

I hope you’ve enjoyed your flight aboard Sprout 1 for show notes and information on how to get the podcast feed direct to your apple podcast, Spotify or other favourite podcast feed visit sproutsweater.com and touch down!

Episode 18 Teaser:

In episode 18 Dave provides an approach to structure how you can work on your life and develop your big picture plan with actual day to day action incorporated