All or Nothing - A Cautionary Tale

Sprout Sweater Episode 22 : Confronting your unsettling feelings with sprout sized attention

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

In this episode, Dave explores the importance of considering the consequences of not taking action towards a goal or vision.

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 22 Show Notes

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

All or nothing a cautionary tale

Welcome aboard sprout1 I’m your host Dave Algeo chief sprout sweater. Buckle up and settle in your inflight show is a cautionary tale, the risks and all or nothing.

It’s episode 22.

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

In last weeks episode, I encouraged you to explore the positives of negative thinking. In other words the motivational power of identifying what could happen if you took no action towards your goals and dreams. Now I think there’s a bit of a strange dichotomy in the world today. We have a world where on the one hand we have nothing but negative news on the telly and then on the other, we have this pseudo-scientific pull to think only positive thoughts. It can feel wrong to actually with and to consider the negative side of our actions or inactions. But the reality is we do this anyway if not consciously and constructively we do it unconsciously. If you have a worry or something that you were denying in yourself or pushing down it’s still on your mind perhaps not at the forefront of your mind or on your conscious mind but it’s never the less there. It may well be adding phycological strain on top of everything else that you have to cope with. This is the focus of this weeks podcast episode, a cautionary tale if you like from yours truly and one that will provide a bit more of my back story I guess. One that hopefully helps you understand why I am such a strong advocate for the small but consistent routines, rituals and actions and the approach to improving yourself and achieving new goals through that regular routine sprout sweating.

Prior to setting up my business and what have you I’ve spent the majority of my time in denial. Working hard and on the face of it, I was successful as a police officer I was on a promotion path and I was a family man and an all-around nice bloke I guess. But I was living a lie. One which it became increasingly difficult to ignore or silence with alcohol which was my preferred, I’m not saying it was a good thing and certainly not consciously at the time my preferred numbing agent. I felt like life was just passing me by and there were elements of my life I did know were good. My family for example the fact that I had an income but I felt that there was more there had to be more. I know I’ve spoken about this in previous episodes so I will try not to repeat myself too much here but I felt unhappy. Anxious feeling like at any minute someone would discover I was a fraud or that I would make some monumental mistake. I was faking it. Not in the sense of being able to do my job, I could do it and although I knew the risks I could look around and see I was at least as competent as the decent police officers there. But I was faking being happy. Being happy in my work and family life and I wasn’t. Not that I didn’t love being a father for example I was just preoccupied with the anxiety and the misery I was wrapped up in. That’s the irony of being in those states, you so don’t want to feel like that but you become ever more present at just how bad you feel and then add in some self-hatred for good measure. I contained it, I held it in and I put a front on because that’s what you do isn’t it. It wasn’t until I was actually on my police trainers course; I’d applied for the training department and got a post and was sent on a six-week training course. It was a bit of a life-changer. I remember one particular moment sitting in the classroom and we were learning adult learning theories and all sorts of things. How to design training and that kind of thing but there was one particular section we were looking at reflective practice and they, if memory serves me, they drew up on the board the reflective cycle, the negative reflective cycle. And what that meant was that how we can have a thought that is negative and then we can add in some negative feelings around it and add to other evidence from past experience you know, other supporting evidence that confirms why that negative thought is true and we end up going down in a negative spiral. I remember sitting there thinking that’s me. I do that. Why am I 30 odd and just seeing this for the first time? I‘m a bloke in my thirties and I’ve never seen that before. Now I probably have in some respect or had but I just wasn’t receptive to it. But I remember thinking I’m doing that to myself. I’m tormenting and torturing myself with the self-talk. The negative stuff and it’s doing nothing but making me miserable. It wasn’t some magical change but it was a point where I couldn’t unsee it. I couldn’t unlearn it and there was a turning point and there was no stopping it. I think from that point I realised that I had to start working on myself and making some changes. I think this is where we can often be put off going there because I started to realise that I was in that negative reflective cycle I had to get on it with a lot of other things because I was lying to myself and putting a front up. Pretending I was alright when I wasn’t but I was also lying about areas of my life that I wasn’t happy with and I think that’s where it starts to get scary. I think that’s where many of us don’t even go there. We don’t even want to confront those feelings of is this it, is there more. We would rather silence, as I did for so many years, those feelings of despair, of feeling trapped, crushed, lost, feeling like god there’s gotta be more to life but feeling like it’s not for you. I think that often many of us will choose not to go. Will choose not to step into that and see what’s there and see that there is perhaps more to life and even embrace something called hope. Because hope is a scary thing isn’t it. But not only is it about hope because hope can be dashed, you can be let down, you can have hope and it doesn’t live up to expectations and how many times have you experienced that our in life, just to reinforce that reason why we don’t go there. Hope is one thing but so is having to confront things truth perhaps we’ve pushed down because therein lies pain. There’ll be pain for me, you and other people. For loved ones, family members potentially because change might mean pain, discomfort. I think once we start to be truthful with ourselves there is no stopping and it’s a case of what else do I have to admit to.  That is scary and I do get it. But I now look back and I realise that that wasn’t the biggest issue in fact stepping through into being honest with myself was painful. It was a painful first step but it was a painful first step to a wild ride. Yes emotionally taxing and unsettling and disturbing for lots of us, me, my family members, friends but it was one thing above all – it was living. It was actually starting to reconnect with life on an honest level. As I said that wasn’t the biggest issue. The biggest issue was in fact the beliefs I had around how I had to make the changes. Good old all or nothing. Good old all or nothing that I’ve been talking about in the last few episodes is where it is.

It was after all all I had. If I was going to get fit well let’s get out there run 5 miles a day until you’re fit. Lose weight, eat dust for weeks and so on, obviously a bit extreme but yeah. But that all or nothing was how I approached whatever changes I saw fit to engage in my life. So it was naturally the thing that I went to when I started to embrace the fake life that I was living and to challenge it, change and confront the truth. But what did I do? I embraced that, approached it just like I had all my other decisions by making all of those bigger decisions in my life all at once. Why not get it done. Burn your boats. Get it over with and then get on with it. The problem was I really, I often imagine it as lego building you can tell I’ve got kids. Lego building which is lovely but then I just smashed it. I just knocked it down. Put a grenade in there and just blasted it. I left my family, one of the most painful things I’ve ever done. I decided to leave my job, jump ship and set up a business. I had no idea what I was doing in a business. Loads of financial responsibilities behind that but I just went for it and tried to rebuild my life after just burning the old one down.

This is where I guess that burn your boats and what have you brings me to remind me of a phrase I have become to abore. I hate it and it’s this phrase ‘if you want something then just jump, leap off, just jump and build your wing on the way down’ oh I hate that phrase because at the time I was probably in that mindset. Don’t get me wrong for a lucky few that might work but for me and I suspect so many others who we never hear about because we only ever hear the breathtaking success stories don’t we. We never hear about the ones that crash and burn. For me that I did jump, I left my relationship decided to set up a business and jumped. Safe career gone into self-employment and tried to build my wings on the way down too. Trouble was I had no blueprint for the wing building process. I hadn’t nipped to B&Q any materials and I hadn’t even, I didn’t know even where to start if I had to be fair. So in short I did crash. I crashed at the bottom. I ended up being two-pound, two pounds from literally having our house repossessed. The marital home that we were trying to sell. I had no income coming in. I had no business to speak of and no options or so I thought. But at that point, I had to get real and identify what I needed to do to get things back to some sort of sanity and I returned to police work. I didn’t want to I really so didn’t want to. I initially returned part-time. Part-time to just cover the basic bills but I eventually had to admit defeat and return full time because I’d got myself into such a financial hole and I had to deal with the financial catastrophe and rebuild my life. I found a place to rent thanks to a good friend and rather than living and running my business from bedrooms of equally good friends I started to rebuild. I’ve got a lot to be thankful for despite the mistakes that I made. 

I started to rethink my life what did I want. Everything I’ve shared so far in the podcast episodes I did in a rough and ready sort of way which is why I’m so passionate about sharing it because I think anybody can accelerate the 12-year journey of bimbling about that I had and they can accelerate that with some wise action and some guidance. 

My question was did I want to continue with my business, absolutely. I did not want to be in the police but for now, it was necessary so how would I rebuild. And this is where I had to finally admit all or nothing was not going cut it and I had to do it bit by bit. Paying off the mountain of debt that I had bit by bit. Reshaping my business bit by bit, blog by blog, client by client, video by video, idea by idea, sprout by sprout. And I came to realise that not only was all or nothing thinking so risky and destructive it actually had no answers. Nothing for me. Over the following years, I still fell into the traps last weeks episode I talked about realising when I was 66 Rosie would be 21 and I needed to get something done so I talked about that last week. But nevertheless, if all or nothing was not there for me what was there for me, was the sprout sized changes. Embedding sprout sized habits. Not making huge leaps but carefully building my business on my days off from the police whilst still taking care not to burn myself out I did it. I guess this is where I want to get on to the takeaways from this. Other than it being a cautionary tale and one with some darker times in it and I want you to see it as - this despite my best efforts I’m still here. I’m still in business, I’m still sweating the sprouts and I’ve grown to love my life. Love myself well maybe that’s still a bit of a work in progress but I’ve shaped a life that is still more me. And for you well if any of this resonates with you take heart. Feelings relating to the direction of your life can be unsettling or scary. You may have spent time trying to silence them for a fair bit o time, that’s fine. Just know that if and when you choose to listen to them it could be the start of an amazing adventure. Not one without pain or hurt or uncomfort and change and upheaval but never the less one which can return you to the land of the living rather than the land of the existing. 

So as our craft the Sprout1 begins the landing process allowing you to return to your fellow humans consider this if you do decide to listen to that inner voice and want to change your life take a lesson from me do it sprout by sprout and not all at once. Either way, it can work in a fashion but the format is far more conducive to a peaceful fulfilled and meaningful and unfolding of your life and the adventure is richer for it, take care.

I hope you’ve enjoyed your flight aboard sprout1. 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 touchdown!

Episode 23 Teaser:

In episode 23 Dave answers some listener questions - everything from explaining why he is not anti massive action, to getting started on losing weight.