The Success Lie. Janelle Bruland

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      Chapter 3

      Living on Automatic

       “Automatic living may take us to a place we never would have chosen to go.”

      My husband Graham and I enjoy kayaking together on the ocean near our home in Birch Bay. There is nothing more beautiful than being out on the water on a warm summer evening as the sunlight shimmers on the ocean while making its descent. On most days you can watch the sun go down all the way until it appears to hit the water and disappear under the waves, sending colorful pink and purple tones across the sky. I have to admit my typical preference is to spend a lot more time gazing then paddling so it becomes more of a sunset experience than exercise, but that is just fine with me. It is easy to get mesmerized by the beauty of the ocean and forget to watch the tides. On more than one occasion when I stopped paying attention to where I was going, the pulling tides have grabbed the kayak and started carrying me out to sea. I would end up being much further off shore than I ever planned to be.

      Our lives can be compared to this kayak experience. It is so common to get caught up in the busyness of life – running a company, raising a family, making time for friends, being involved in your community, and all of the demands this puts on us, that we stop really paying attention to where we’re going. Sometimes it happens quickly, but more often gradually, and we wake up one day in a place we never intended to be. We didn’t mean to gain the 30 pounds; it came through habits that formed automatically over many years. We never intended to end up in an estranged relationship or divorce. It happened through small decisions, where the most important person in our lives was put in the back seat and other things moved to the forefront. We wanted to be there for all of the growing up moments of our kids, but work got in the way and now they are graduating.

      In many areas of our lives, we were just cruising along automatically, and 20 – 30 years later found ourselves in completely different places than where we ever wanted to be.

      To illustrate how much even the smallest misstep can have a large effect over time, let’s look at flying an airplane, where precision is an absolute must. Here are some interesting stats about flying just one degree off course:

      1 For every degree you fly off course, you will miss your target by 92 feet for every mile that you fly.

      2 For every 60 miles you fly, you will miss your target by one mile.

      3 When flying from JFK to LAX it will put you nearly 50 miles away from your destination.

      4 When flying around the equator you will land almost 500 miles off target.5

      A one-degree mistake may not seem like a big deal, but when you can see the potential of the enormous impact, it causes you to pay attention. Though you may have tolerated automatic living in the past, becoming aware of it and realizing how easy it is to get off course will make you more attentive to your actions going forward.

      Choose to be Intentional

      Instead of living on automatic, we can choose intentional living.

      In the services company I lead, one of our core values is continuous improvement in everything we do. In order to improve, there must be growth. At times throughout our 23 years of business, growing our people and our company seemed easy, almost automatic. However, looking back it wasn’t automatic, but a result of intentional effort.

      John Maxwell, in his book The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, reminds us of the need for intentionality in order to improve. “When we are children, our bodies grow automatically. A year goes by, and we become taller, stronger, and more capable of doing new things and facing new challenges. I think many people carry into adulthood a subconscious belief that mental, spiritual, and emotional growth follows a similar pattern. Time goes by, and we simply get better.” 6

       Individuals don’t improve automatically, and companies don’t improve automatically. They improve only as the result of intentional effort.

      This is not the case. Individuals don’t improve automatically, and companies don’t improve automatically. They improve only as the result of intentional effort. In my business, matching our core value of continuous improvement, we seek team members with a passion for learning and growth, and commit to providing training opportunities to ensure they are constantly growing. We are intentional about regularly evaluating our company performance. Through evaluation processes such as a company SWOT (a brainstorming session where your team lists strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), we identify areas for improvement, then develop a strategy and goals to keep moving the company forward.

      Without the same level of intentionality in our personal lives, we can drift backward rather than improve and grow.

      Much of our Behavior is Unconscious

      Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis in the early 1900s, thoroughly explored the human mind and was one of the first scholars to talk about the power of the conscious and unconscious.7 According to Freud’s model, the unconscious mind is the primary guiding influence over daily life and leads to the most common of our human behaviors. It is far more powerful than the conscious mind, which consists of all of the mental processes of which we are aware.

       Living on automatic is the result of this unconscious behavior, which will eventually lead to the habits or routines that control much of what we do.

      Living on automatic is the result of this unconscious СКАЧАТЬ