International travel has a lot to offer. Delicious foods, historic sites, new people and experiences. Jet lag aside, what’s not to love? I’ve been fortunate to travel pretty extensively in my day. Throughout my journeys in Europe and Asia, I’ve really only missed one thing: a decent shower.
I don’t know what it is. Every time I turn the faucet, press a button, or pull the handle (they all seem to operate differently) I’m rewarded with a slow trickle of lukewarm water. (Merde!) When you build a Great Wall, a complex Underground transit system, or a castle that inspired the great Walt Disney, you’d think you could install a decent shower.
So when I stepped into the shower at the Marriott Hotel in Munich, I was prepared for the worst. I stood well clear of the water as I lifted the lever. (Told you they were all different.) I was shocked to feel a blast of air as the water rushed past. (Wunderbar!) I was absolutely elated once I felt the wave of heat radiating from the steady stream. It was a great way to start the day.
I set the water temperature to “as hot as I can stand”. I stepped in and felt my skin tingling. It was invigorating. After a few minutes with my loofah and pomegranate body wash, I realized something. The piping hot water didn’t have the same “sting” as it did at first. My body had adjusted to the warmth. I decided that it was time to take it up a notch. I edged the temperature higher, and I felt the tinge of heat again. After a few minutes, my body had adjusted again and the heat now felt comfortable.
That’s when I realized that the connection between my morning shower and personal success. (Loofah optional.)
I didn’t keep ratcheting the heat upward, but I’m certain that I could have. With each increase, what was barely tolerable at first had quickly become comfortable. We humans are highly adaptive creatures, it turns out. This ability to adapt to our surroundings – physically and psychologically – is a fundamental survival mechanism. It is very effective.
In the case of stressors, irritations, and other barriers to success in life, this ability to adapt may be too effective.
Most of us have learned to live with quite a few irritations in our lives. There are a number of frustrations, fears, nuisances, and other negatives to which we’ve become desensitized. Like a pinky toe in a too-hot shower, we’ve adapted to these stressors. In many cases, we push the negatives so far from our minds that we hardly think about them. They’re still there, gnawing away at us, but we carry on as if they’re just a part of life.
There are two problems with this situation. The first is that left unaddressed, these negatives build up over time. A minor panic attack is common when a negative in some life area inevitably bubbles up to the surface. The second problem is that it can be incredibly frustrating to think about life’s challenges without uncovering a clear path to addressing them.
What we need is a way to increase our self- awareness in regards to life’s frustrations but to do so in a way that motivates us toward action and fulfillment. Sounds like a job for a simple but effective exercise. (Hooray!)
To start, we need a bit of structure for our exercise. Before you stop and think about “my life” you have to ask yourself what does that even mean? In my case, I’m a husband, a father, a worker, a student, and a policeman. (Wait a minute. That last one was a guy from the Village People – scratch that.) But even beyond these roles, I have other dimensions of my life including fitness, finances, spirituality, etc. What’s boy and his loofah to do?
I suggest we take a tip from the experts. In their book “Co-Active Coaching”, authors Laura Whitworth, Karen Kimsey-House, Henry Kimsey-House, and Phillip Sandahl present an exercise called the “Wheel of Life”. This exercise asks us to provide a rating of 1- 10 for several key life areas, including:
Don’t worry, there aren’t any wrong answers. Just make a quick note of how you feel about each of these life areas at this moment. Go ahead, I’ll wait here.
Now that we have an overall structure, we need to provide some specifics. Again, let’s turn to the experts for guidance. Coaching psychology superstar Tony Grant and co-author Jane Greene present a series of self-coaching exercises in their book “Coach Yourself”. One of these asks us to create an “Irritations Inventory” by listing out nuisances we currently feel in life such as “too stressed”, “fear of losing job”, or “lack of fun in your life”.
For each of the life areas you identified in the first part of the exercise, list 2-3 irritations you feel. What’s keeping that life area of your life from being a “10″?
At this point, you have a pretty comprehensive list of items that need some attention. That may not feel like much, but this type of self-awareness is the most important step on the path to personal success. Take a moment to congratulate yourself! Now, we just need to make the list actionable and motivating.
Final step: Pick two or three items on your list, and develop a goal to improve each of them. No need to tackle them all. Rome wasn’t built in a day. (Although their crappy showers may have been.) If you can make meaningful progress in one or two areas, you can begin to chip away at those nagging issues that you’ve come to accept over the years.
You are naturally adaptive, but please don’t let yourself become too comfortable with life’s frustrations. I know that the number and chronic nature of life’s stressors can seem insurmountable at times, but with an easy-but-structured approach like the one suggested here, you can take charge and make some really great improvements in your life. You deserve to succeed! All it takes is a bit of self- awareness and the determination to reach toward your full potential.
If you really want to go the extra mile, grab yourself a good loofah.
Related Links
A pretty decent wall
Totally tubular
Where sleeping beauties lie
A loofah to go
Quotes of the Week
"A mind troubled by doubt
cannot focus on the course to victory."
– Arthur Golden
"To make our way, we must have firm resolve, persistence, tenacity. We must gear ourselves to work hard all the way. We can never let up."
– Ralph Bunche