Anywhere!

I've been having a lot of conversations with people recently about feeling overwhelmed. I can relate! I actually think that feeling is a lot more common than we realize. We live under a constant barrage of information, our to-do lists never seem to go away, everything is getting more expensive, we just got that phone call, and we've got to finalize our plans for vacation so we can "relax!"

I also know that one of the side effects of feeling overwhelmed can be a sense of paralysis. Sometimes when things feel particularly daunting we may experience a sense of just being stuck, or frozen in place, and it almost feels impossible to even know where to begin.

I was chatting with a friend recently about this idea and they described it as the mountain. "I look at the mountain and it seems so big and overwhelming, I don't even know where to begin, so I just sit there and stare at it, and end up not doing anything!" Again, I can relate!

In those moments, one of the tools I use to help break me free from being frozen in place is to remind myself that Anywhere is a good place to begin! In other words, rather than trying to figure out what I should pull off the mountain first (and then getting more overwhelmed trying to figure out the best starting place, which leads to more paralysis!), if I just start Anywhere, I am actually making progress.  Then, once I am tackling something, that movement can help me make better decisions about what's next and what will be the most important thing to tackle next. It's like the movement of starting Anywhere on the mountain helps me figure out how to better prioritize the rest of the mountain, which begins to ease the feeling of being totally overwhelmed.

Do you ever have these feelings? What is your current mountain and is it causing you to be frozen in place? Would it help to just start Anywhere? Without really thinking about if it's the right thing, what could you pull off the mountain right now and get started on it? Would that help you figure out the rest? Could that be a small way to lessen the feeling of being totally overwhelmed?

Here's to starting Anywhere today!

Be Well,

Stephen

Center was created to support individuals and teams so they can live from their Purposeful Center.  We specialize in professional coaching and leadership development and we’d love to support you!  Click on our Services page to book a free consultation.

Healing

I am grateful to be back from some time away and sharing some thoughts with you again this week, but I must admit, I have had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to write, which is why this is just now coming to you on a Thursday!

Part of it is because I have been confronted with a lot of ups and downs of life that just seem to be connected to the complexity of our world.  Some of it is probably related to the fact that I tried to unplug from social media, news, etc. while I was gone, and now the firehose of non-stop information is flowing again (maybe we'll think about that in another message!). Regardless of the source, I have felt a bit overwhelmed to be honest. 

Then I stumbled across these words this morning, and I thought, "That is exactly what I want to share this week!"  I hope these words ring as true in your heart today as they have in mine!

This world will break your heart. There’s enough sorrow to go around and for everyone to have seconds. 

But this world has a thousand forms of medicine too. 

I’ve yet to find healing in: 

Self-pity, isolation, pretending I am not hurting, comparison, hardening myself, standing in judgment (although it sure feels good). 

But I have found it in: 

Eye contact with another person who is in a tender place, the rare moments I stop filling in the blank about another person, compassion toward myself and others, remaining open hearted in moments I want to shut down, … using my pain to see it in others rather than only in myself. *

Here's to being someone who is working to bring Healing into the world!

Be Well,

Stephen

* Nadia Bolz-Weber, “Humans Are Inconveniently Complex,” The Corners (blog), March 11, 2024.

Nadia is one of my favorite authors and I continue to be challenged by the beautiful way she sees the world in it's full complexity!

Center was created to support individuals and teams so they can live from their Purposeful Center.  We specialize in professional coaching and leadership development and we’d love to support you!  Click on our Services page to book a free consultation.

GETMO!

I have a client I work with who referenced an idea with me recently called GETMO or Good Enough To Move On.  They said they learned it from a leader named Craig Groeschel and some of their leadership material.  I don't know if Craig is the first person to think of this idea, but it certainly is a great idea to consider.

GETMO is the solution to a problem I sometimes talk about when I am working with leaders that I call "paralysis by analysis" or "the paralysis of perfection." Here's how I observe this functioning.  An individual or a team is working on a project or a problem and they have the solution or answer clearly in mind and are diligently working toward completion or implementation. But sometimes there can be a moment where, "It's close, but not quite there!" There is a perfect solution that we see, or are trying to find, and we just don't have it at 100% yet.  So we keep analyzing and working to get to that place of it being exactly right.

While trying to implement the best solutions to problems isn't bad, I've seen people get so stuck in the last 5-15% of trying to get to perfection that they actually don't end up doing anything. They spin out trying to find the place of perfection. And this is where GETMO can be really helpful because getting to the place of perfection may not actually be possible! Instead, if we make a decision that recognizes we've gotten far enough to move forward, that is way better than getting stuck in analysis!

Here's another way to think about this.  I am an iPhone user. I think we are currently on version 15 of the iPhone (or something like that). I am sure that when they came out with the very first one, they knew there were a whole lot more features they could include. And, as fast as technology moves, if they had kept developing and working to get to perfection, we still probably wouldn't have version #1.  But at some point the team at Apple decided, "It's GETMO!" It's good enough to put it out into the world while we still keep working on developing and making it better, which is why I am now using an iPhone 15!

There are certainly lots of places in our lives where we might apply this idea of GETMO, but where does it resonate the most with you? Is there an area in which you are caught in the loop of paralysis by analysis? Are you working to achieve some type of perfection that may not actually be possible, and what would it mean if you just decided to GETMO?

Whatever you may be working on this week, take some time to consider if GETMO would be a helpful approach!

Be Well,

Stephen

Center was created to support individuals and teams so they can live from their Purposeful Center.  We specialize in professional coaching and leadership development and we’d love to support you!  Click on our Services page to book a free consultation.