The Illusion of Complacency 👀
Updated: Oct 23, 2021
I have found that life has an illusion. There is an illusion that we can be "still" in life and that nothing occurs. That we can sit at a job we don't "love" and it will not hurt our career.
I have found that life has a cost to everything. We are either changing or growing, or we are becoming weaker. There is no way for us to sit still in the place that we are at. With every choice we make we are casting a vote towards the future we want to have. 📫
We all know that our hard work and dedication to exercise and gym work can vanish in a few mere months. How much more could our compassion, or our career growth. Settling is dangerous. Seeking comfort is dangerous. âš
I have witnessed it many times when a successful person reaches their goal and they get "comfortable". They start to slip. It make take a year or so, but they start to become complacent. The reality is that the scale is always moving and it will change the direction it tips if you are not working hard.
I know that talking about all of this might seem like a downer in some ways. When I process through what I have failed it, or got complacent at it, there is discouragement there. Yet at the same time, just like going to the gym, the sooner we can get back on the horse and ride, the sooner we can get back to resolving some of the growth issues.
Growing up, I was known for my imagination, the flexibility of my mind to fabricate ideas. I was a story teller, creator, I used to send out weekly emails of fictional stories...just kind of who I was. Then I stopped. Fast forward 8 years and I had my first kid. I was trying to make up a story for my daughter and I could not. Not anything outside of a storybook. It was very sad for me. To see that such a talent of mine has gone. It hurt. Before that moment I would have told you I had a great imagination.
It was the reminder to me that skills and abilities that are shelved can grow old and stale. So it is so important that we know what matters in life. What are our goals and what will we do to keep ourselves pursuing these goals and dreams. Comfort is the silent killer of these things. Comfort as I have gained it, has made me more and more complacent.
I have been working hard and I have been slowly regaining some of the skills I have lost. But that is only a singular example.
Have you grown complacent in your career growth?
Have you grown complacent in your ideas and pursuit of them?
Have you grown complacent in your family or your marriage?
I would encourage you. If you are reading this article then you know something. You know that work is worth it. You are reading because you have hope. Hope that maybe this article will shed some light on something you need to hear. Maybe you are going to change after this article? Maybe you can do it?
Well I am here to encourage you. If you are reading this, then you have done something to break this cycle of complacency. It will be a lot of work, but life is exactly that. Anything that is truly worth something will require sacrifice and work. Put that forth and I am sure that your complacency will be quickly dissolved.
I would encourage you to start Beginning to Begin to remove the comfort from your life, so that you can start pursuing what matters to you. I am challenging myself with that same task daily. Don't just wake up and perform the same functions again and again. Find something to change, know that either today you can grow stronger or you can grow weaker. There is no "same".
Some easy ways to start:
Find a book on the subject and read it.
Ask a trusted friend or peer at work about this topic
Write down a list of goals you have for 1 year, 3 years and 5 years. Then write down what you are going to do about it. Post it on your fridge
Maybe remove the very thing that is causing your complacency.
So go forward today and tip the scales in your favor 😄