The Discipline Trap
Earlier this week I found myself debating whether or not to take a couple of international trips this year. The timing felt a little off, I’ve been paying down a line of credit after doing some renovations to our house last summer, and I wasn’t sure what my revenue was going to look like in Q2.
I’d been waffling on taking these trips (both work related) for a few days and thought I’d finally made a decision but wanted to sleep on it one more night before committing.
The way I worked through this particular decision might be useful to others, so I’ll lay out a couple of things.
A couple of years ago I heard a coach make the comment that if you’re having a tough time making decision, that’s an indicator that there is fear in the system. And if that’s the case, address the fear first before making a decision. In this case, my fear was mostly financial in nature. My pipeline felt uncertain and cash flow felt too tight to take unnecessary international trips. Having identified the fear (financial insecurity) I woke up the following day with the decision to forgo the travel.
Then, as I was telling my wife about the mature decision I’d made, she casually said something along the lines of well, if you don’t go now, you might not get to. Our parents are getting to that age and we might be in full-time caretaker mode before long.
I instantly popped out my trance of safety. She was absolutely right. Not just about our aging parents, but about the whole premise of trying to achieve 100% security before allowing myself to enjoy life.
For the past few years, I’ve been guilty of putting off travel specifically because I feel like everything must be perfect before I can stop working. There must be X amount in my bank accounts, there needs to be X amount of upcoming work. It’s all about feeling like I need a strong sense of security before I let myself have a good time.
The irony here is that I’ve taken the professional discipline that has helped my career thrive over the years and over-applied it to my personal life. One of my stronger professional strengths becomes a weakness when applied to the personal context.
It’s a strange security-at-all-costs mindset that doesn’t serve me. It’s a scarcity framing that can be helpful when reviewing my P&L, but that mindset doesn’t leave much room for joy.
So, I decided to go. I booked trips to Spain and Australia even though everything isn’t as perfect as I think it should be.
Look, I’m not advocating spending money you don’t have or taking unnecessary financial risks. But I am advocating for having a different lens for how we make decisions in our personal lives versus our professional lives. Many of our strengths can apply to both worlds, but having a strong sense of self-awareness allows us to see when we’re turning those strengths against ourselves and our best interest.
100% security is a myth. It’s the entrepreneur’s mirage that you can’t ever seem to fully arrive at. So if we know that there is no such thing as perfect, and that we’re all gonna die someday, and that setting aside joy is a fool’s errand, then what are we waiting for? Then, the only question left worth answering is are you applying professional discipline somewhere it doesn’t belong?
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