I had a business coach at my last corporate job. I spoke to her every week for two hours. I was struggling in that job that I hated but was bound to because it was sponsoring me to stay in the UK.
We condensed all of my goals down to one word - Freedom. Every decision I made, every difficult conversation, every horrible commute to a place I didn’t want to be, had to be tempered by a bigger goal - freedom. It made the every day drudgery easier to swallow.
Now, I apply the same technique to my current job. When the drudgery of accounting, emails, personalities and people needing my attention becomes excruciating I remind myself that the completion of this task is not the end goal. This is not part of the dream, the admin is not a part of the freedom I had been seeking at all, it’s unnecessary and able to be cast aside.
I can use AI, hire help, template everything, and create an internal intranet to increase the ability of any ‘solved’ task to be done by someone else or a machine, and I am able to focus on the ultimate goal - which is still freedom, but what freedom looks like to me has changed.
I’ve moved up Maslov’s hierarchy from having my life controlled by my residency status and my employer to having freedom to work for myself and permanent residency. All my time is now my own. Now the goal is more about developing myself.
I can now go anywhere I want whenever I want. My problem is that I don’t have time to do everything, so I must focus intensely on one particular passion and enjoy it until I understand it enough for the fun to be drained out of it before moving on to the next big thing.
The universe will give you clues about which direction your life should take and I have felt a strong pull to the ex-USSR for a long time. I have wanted to learn Russian and have that part of the world open up to me. I’ve lived in Moscow, studying the language before but not for long enough to have it stick. I need to spend six months in a Russian speaking country but I keep signing up for rides and getting lost in the minute of the travel company.
Reminding myself that working on the business is not the goal, the business facilitates me exploring the world, and seeing in person the things others have spoken to me about, I’ve watched on youtube and read in books. Each destination reveals the next clue and the next point of focus.
Remembering this tends to give me the perspective I need to stop procrastinating submitting my tax return and listing rides.
If you feel stuck in the moment, try focusing on the big lofty goal. The tasks that seem huge right now will shrink, you’ll shrink them, to get them out of the way of your real life.
Photo by @linaimages