This week, as the kids were getting ready for school, I turned around to find my youngest son jumping up and walking across the kitchen island in pursuit of a bottle for water in the cabinet on the other side. He stopped as he was on top of the counter, looked at me with a straight face, and said “that moment when you realize that life is not linear”. Then, jumps off the island and goes on with his day like it was nothing… and yet I stood there in shock at how profound the statement was.
We have built up so many linear constructs in our mind and convinced ourselves unconsciously that things “should” happen in a straight line:
- Weight loss
- Wealth creation
- Career progression
- Healing
- Relationships
- Business growth
- Skill growth
- etc…
I could go on and on with the list, the point being, none of these activities happens in a straight line. There are twists and turns, obstacles and barriers. Sometimes we go backwards to go forward or forward only to find out it’s sideways. Instead of a dead end, we might later realize we are simply stuck in a roundabout. And yet, our human brain constantly compares our journey to that straight line and uses it as an indicator of whether we are succeeding or failing.
Recently, I was talking with a client who is in the midst of her job search. In the discussion about minimum salary requirements, she started justifying how much she wanted to make with self-critical thoughts about how poorly she had spent wealth created from a previous role. As we started to unpack what was going on, she realized that she held an underlying belief that her base salary must grow in a linear fashion and in addition to that, she was punishing herself because her personal wealth was not growing in accordance with that. Isn’t it fascinating that unconscious biases have caused us to believe that all of this linear growth is “the way it’s supposed to be”? Ask any entrepreneur and I bet they will give you a picture of their business growth and income that looks more like a heart rate monitor than a straight line.
We do this all the time in various aspects of our life. I’m sure most of us can relate to trying to lose weight, only to gain a few pounds. Too many of us decide that because we aren’t experiencing linear growth, that must mean something about us. Not only have we failed, but we are now someone who isn’t worthy of succeeding and then we sabotage our own journey.
But what if instead, we choose to drop the expectation and simply accept that sometimes progress goes up and sometimes it goes down. My guess is many of you instantly translated that to complacency. If you allow it to just “be”, then won’t you get lazy? In the past, I would have too. Instead, I want you to consider that the setbacks and sidesteps are simply part of the process. Moments to ask yourself:
Do I still believe in where I am going?
Is this something that requires me to modify my approach?
If so, what am I solving for?
How or what will I change in response?
Then, move forward without self-criticism and embrace all the zigzags as you continue on your journey.