I'm in a Hurry to Get Things Done....
I’ve never been a big country music fan but the 90’s jam “I'm in a Hurry” by Alabama was one of those ubiquitous songs that you couldn’t help but know the words to even if you were spending most of your 90’s time listening to early Boyz II Men (and why wouldn’t you be spending your time listening to Boyz II Men??). “I'm in a Hurry” had a resurgence in my life last year when I was bingening the Hulu series, “The Dropout”, and the song was featured. While I’m no Elizabeth Holmes (!) I could relate to both her anxiousness and ambition to get to somewhere else, and the fact that she was in a hurry to do so.
I’m not the only one. Most of us are in a hurry for something. We’re hurrying to get a raise, or we want our business to hurry up and make more money, or we’re in a hurry to get to the part where parenting is easier, or where the credit card balance is $0, or where we have lost the weight, or bought the house, or quit the sugar…We’re all in a hurry to get finish something or to get somewhere new, or to reach the place where we can finally check the box and breathe easier because it is done.
The problem, as anyone who has gotten across any kind of finish line in completion of a goal will tell you, is that you can hurry to get things done and rush and rush until life’s no fun (wink), and then cross the finish line and realize, pretty soon after, you’re still hurrying and life’s still not so fun…..
The reason is this: if you are in a hurry to get there, you will be in a hurry even after you’ve arrived there.
Stay with me.
“I’m in a hurry” has a real urgency to it, a “push” energy, a sense of importance if not a bit panicked. The reality is, sometimes something is urgent. Sometimes we do need to push. Most of the time, however, the sense of hurry, or urgency, is very overblown. I like to think that unless there’s blood or fire involved, there’s probably no reason to be in a hurry, or to feel that urgent, panicked, “must be done now!” feeling.
The reason we’re all in a hurry to get things done even when there’s no threat to life and limb is the same reason we want to do anything, at any speed, in life: whatever we want, we want because of how we think we will feel once we have it. I coach clients (and myself) on this all the time, and it tends to look something like this example:
Client: I want to pay off my debt
Coach: Why do you want to do that?
Client: Because I hate having debt
Coach: Why?
Client: Because I don’t like owing someone money every month
Coach: Why is it a problem to owe someone money?
Client (super annoyed by now): Because I feel like they have power over me…or like they’re better than me…..or like I shouldn’t have gotten myself into a position to owe someone else….
Coach: So if we turn those thoughts into emotions….
Client (with Coach’s help):
“I feel like they have power over me” aka I feel powerless
“I feel like they’re better than me” aka I feel insecure
“I feel like I shouldn’t have gotten myself into a position to owe someone else” aka I feel ashamed
Coach: OK, so knowing this, why do you want to pay off the debt?
Client: Well, I want to pay it off so that I don't feel powerless, or insecure, or ashamed. I want to feel in control, confident, and proud of how I’m handling my money.
See how it works? Boil down any want and what it comes down to is we are either looking to achieve - or looking to avoid - a feeling.
So what does that have to do with being in a hurry? Most people want to get the thing they want fast. If we can lose 30 lbs in 30 days or pay off our debt in a month or communicate better with our partner in a day or write that book in a week we would do it, right? We want to get there faster so that we can go from how we feel now to feeling better ASAP. If we have something we don’t want (like an extra 30 lbs, or a mountain of debt, or constant fighting with our partner, or a passion project like a book that we just can't find the time to sit down and write) we usually feel uncomfortable, anxious, frustrated, or some other emotion that just feels like garbage. We don’t want to keep hanging out in the garbage feeling ...we want to feel better and we want it to happen right now, in 30 minutes or less with a side of ranch, thank you very much.
The problem is, when we are in a rushed/panicked/anxious/fearful emotional state a few things are occur:
It’s actually harder for us to make good, sound decisions or take good, sound action towards whatever it is we’re trying to accomplish, because our feelings associated with “hurry” (rushed/panicked/anxious/fearful and the like….) are pumping all kinds of crap (technical term) through our bodies, sending our nervous system into a state of high alert. And while you can take actions and accomplish things when your nervous system is in “fire drill” mode, those actions often aren’t high-quality, and it’s nearly impossible to do any of this sustainably.
Because it’s our feelings that drive our actions, and our actions that create our results, if you do reach your goal in a hurried emotional state, it will be because you have been taking action and creating results from that state…which means that you’ll cross the finish line with all of that “hurry” (rushed/panicked/anxious/fearful and the like….) energy crossing with you. The feelings associated with hurrying haven't been dealt with, so they’re still hanging around in your body, looking for something to do ... .And sure enough, sooner than later, those feelings will work their way back to the forefront of whatever you have going on next. So while you’re psyched that you paid off the debt or lost the weight or met that goal, the feeling of hurry is still there with you….and before you’ve even had time to celebrate one goal you’ll realize you’re in a hurry to get to the next.
Put another way, you’ll rush and rush until life’s no fun…..
The alternative here isn’t to slow down to a snail’s pace to accomplish your goals. But it is to figure out how to get out of hurry and into a better feeling emotional state, that will produce better actions and leave you feeling better when you get the results you’re after.
For example, I had a client who wanted to lose weight, and was in a hurry to get there. She hated her body as it was, and wanted to lose enough weight to enjoy a summer vacation without being anxious about how she’d look in photos in her summer clothes. There was a deadline and the bear that is social media to face down; for her, the hurry was very real. And yet, despite her desire to lose weight and her deadline, she couldn’t bring herself to take the actions she knew she’d need to take to lose the weight. Something was blocking her….
Enter coaching.
When we coached on this, what we realized was that she had a feeling of insecurity related to her body, specifically around the idea that people she hadn’t seen in a long time (and who followed her on social media) may see her summer photos and judge her. She was anxious and insecure about what she thought they might think of her. The anxiety and insecurity were actually leading her to eat more, and not work out or take care of herself the way she wanted to in order to reach her weight loss goal.
And as we coached through this further, she saw that even if she did lose the weight she wanted to lose, she would still feel insecure about what people may see and think of her on social media for other reasons - her hair, her single status, her career, her clothes….Even if she got her body as she wanted it to be, the feelings of insecurity and anxiety were still there. So we got to work cleaning those thoughts and feelings up first - not because it wasn’t possible for her to lose weight, nor was I coaching her not to - that was her call. But she could see that even if she went through the effort to lose the weight she wanted to lose, the same thoughts and feelings would be there. The weight wasn’t the problem, her thoughts about the weight were.
The process we went through of cleaning up and changing her thoughts is one that I do with all of my clients at some level. Generally, it looks like this:
STEP 1: Notice where you are right now (your current results) and identify the thoughts that created them. It’s a fundamental principle of coaching that thoughts create your results, so we spend a lot of time looking at what thoughts lead to the feelings, actions, and then results a client has. In this case, we needed to identify the thoughts that were creating the insecurity she was feeling when it came to this upcoming vacation being shared on social media.
STEP 2: Once you have the starting point (thoughts/results right now) you need to look at where you want to go (what are the results you want to have)? And then, determine the thoughts that will help create the feelings and actions that lead to those results. What you’re doing here is creating a road map of where you are, and where you want to be.
STEP 3: Next, we look at the “where you are” thoughts, and start to question them. Curiosity is your biggest tool to use when you’re self coaching, or being coached; always be curious about your thoughts, versus judgemental of them. In this case, we pulled out one thought my client was having, “They’re going to see I have let myself go '', and just got really curious about it. Some of the questions we coached through were:
Is this thought true?
What does it even mean to “let myself go”?
Why is it important to me that others don’t see me this way?
What if they do think this about me; what happens then?
What would happen if I let this thought go?
STEP 4: After working through these and other questions, and really being curious about the answers, then look for another thought to practice which could create a better feeling than “insecure”. It has to be a thought you believe - that’s key. For my client, we came up with a variation on her original thought, “They may see me and think I’ve let myself go, but they may not.” While not a huge leap, it was a thought that created a feeling of “neutral” for my client, which felt better to her than insecure, and it was one that she could believe. That was a perfect starting point for her to change her thinking…
STEP 5: Practice the new thought until it becomes automatic. Any time you want to try to think a new thought, you need to make the effort to think about it deliberately, and practice doing so. This will help create a new pathway in your brain which will allow you to grab for that thought more easily, until it becomes your new normal to think it without effort. Write it down in the morning, make it your screensaver, put a sticky note on the mirror - whatever you need to make sure you see and practice it!
For my client, she was able to go from feeling anxious and insecure to neutral, and over time her thoughts continued to improve to those which went from creating a “neutral” feeling to one of confidence. The hurry to lose the weight wasn’t leading to weight loss; when she was able to calm herself by changing her thinking, everything else began to shift for her as well. She did lose weight, but by then it was secondary to her improved thoughts and feelings about herself.
And she wasn’t even in a hurry to get it done :)