My story
Let's try a little thought experiment. Think of all the things on your ToDo list. Things you should get done, tasks you need to get done, and goals you want to achieve. If you really think hard about it, the list gets pretty long. Now, rewind a week. What would that list have looked like then? Now a month. How about a year? What you'll find is the top of that list changes a lot. What about the bottom half? For me, it hardly changed at all! Week after week, month after month. The bottom half of my ToDo list stayed frozen in time. Once something fell down there, it never ever got done... But it stayed on the list.
Let's examine the bottom half of the list. Mine included sorting a box full of junk that's been sitting in a corner for over a year. It also included "Learn to salsa dance." Hmmm... now that's messed up, my dream of learning the salsa is mentally filed right next to a messy box that makes me cringe every time I think about it. That doesn't seem right, at all!
The messy box is an example of deadweight. It needs to get done someday, just never today. I feel tense whenever I think about it, so I choose to ignore it. But, and this is key, some part of me is occupied remembering that I need to clean out that box someday.
- "Goals are dreams with deadlines." ~Diana Scharf Hunt
Now sitting right in the same category is my desire to learn salsa dancing. Guess what, the tension I feel about the box leaks right over into the dancing slot. In some sense, the whole things-to-do-someday pile gets sullied by my tension over that messy box. And so the whole thing gets pushed off again and again.
Since a piece of me is tied up thinking about that messy box, I'm unable to give my all to anything else in my life. It's not a big piece, but it takes a big toll. Think about moving a couch up some stairs. Like life, it presents some big challenges, but I know I can do it. Now think about what it would be like to try to move that couch while holding a penny. A little piece of you is distracted by that penny and makes the task of moving the couch *immensely* harder, if not impossible.
So, what did I used to do? I made a new-years resolution to clean up that messy box. And guess how that turned out. Not so well, it was still there the next year. There was no accountability, so there was no action. Only a tension, and a notion that I would do it sometime later. Well, that changed this year...
- "A goal without a plan is just a wish." ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
This year I made no resolutions. Instead, I gave my buddy $50, and asked him to hold onto it until I got my messy box cleaned up. I gave myself a deadline, my birthday six weeks away. If I didn't have my box cleaned up by then, I didn't get paid my $50. I gave myself an incentive and accountability for getting it done.
And guess what happened. All of a sudden, I was excited about that box. Yeah! Thinking about that box made me happy. I *knew* that box would be cleaned and out of my life in six weeks. I didn't know how or when I was going to do it, but I had a certainty that it would finally get done. That night I gleefully started rummaging through that box. Dumping stuff all over the floor, throwing stuff out, and reveling in the whole experience. Now that's powerful. The deadweight that had been holding me back, was finally getting done. And I was having *fun* doing it!
This is what I want to share with you. That transformational experience of converting deadweight in your life into fun accomplishments. Uncovering the dreams that lie right next to them. Giving you the space and intention to reach higher and dream bigger. Clear out the deadweight, and focus on the dreams that make life worth living.
Sounds great, how does it work?