Are You Using Generalized Language to Keep Yourself Stuck?

Last year, a client, I’ll call her May, told me about someone who’d seen all the work she’d put into the report she was sending to her boss. At the time, her colleague had told her, “This is supposed to be a 1 page summary! You don’t need to do all this work every time you do one of these.”

I asked May if this was true. Was she doing unnecessary work?

Her response, “Well, you have to…”

She went on to explain why she had to do the report the way she did it, but to me, the important part of the statement was: “You have to,..”

Whenever we start talking in a generalized way, by saying things like:

• “Everyone knows..”
• “One must always…”
• You can’t just…”
• “No one wants…”

That’s a sign you are talking about an old belief, usually one given to you by someone else, a long time ago. The problem with old beliefs is that they are unquestioned.

It’s just the way it is.

It’s “the Truth.”

If it’s just the way it is, then you don’t have to think about whether or not this is the best way to do something.

The brain loves this kind of belief because it is efficient. It doesn’t have to waste time or energy thinking about how to do something.

But if you spend hours doing a multi-page report, when a 1-page report that you can generate in 1 hour is all that’s needed, you are being incredibly inefficient.

Because now you have to do that other 7 hours worth of work that you weren’t doing while you worked on this report.

And getting home on time to cook with your family? Forget about it. You need to get this backlog done.

Because there’s another report due shortly.

I have a friend who hates making mashed potatoes. (Stay with me, I’ll get back to my point!) I know this because every time her son had mashed potatoes at my house, he mentioned how much he loved them and how his mom rarely made them. One day I happened to be at her house when she started making dinner, including mashed potatoes.

She proceeded to peel the potatoes under ice-cold running water. Her hands were red and angry-looking by the time she finished.

While she was doing it, I asked her why she was peeling the potatoes under cold running water.

“Because that’s the way my mother always did it.”

Even after I explained that I (and my mother) peeled the potatoes and then rinsed them, she continued doing it.

It’s just the way it is.

Just for fun, I asked if she could at least peel the potatoes under warm water.

Nope. Had to be cold water.

Why?

“That’s the way you make mashed potatoes.”

There’s that generalized language again. A sure sign you’re doing something because someone else thought that way and gave you that thought, which quickly became a belief.

And some of these beliefs are useful, helpful, and good. You want to keep believing them.

The problem comes when we don’t question these beliefs.

Back to May and her report. Despite her conversation with her colleague, and multiple conversations with me about how overwhelming her work was, she had a really hard time believing she could change anything about how she did her work.

With some time and coaching, though, as well as the pain of continuing the way she had been, she made a change: She wrote a 1-page report that took her 1.5 hours to complete, and nervously sent it to her boss. She expected anger, recriminations-a demotion, even! That’s how scary this was to her.

What did she get? Crickets.

Her boss accepted the report and moved on. It contained all the information she needed.

As we processed this non-event, I asked May to calculate how many hours she could have saved if she’d done a 1-page report for the last year. (Though she’d been doing it much longer than a year.)

Instead of spending 1.5 hours per month for a total of 30 hours this year, she spent at least 96 hours on this report. That’s over two full weeks of her work life.

This was an epiphany for May and she started questioning other practices in her work and home life. Some she kept, many she didn’t.

Gradually, she made room in her life for an actual life. She got more sleep, spent more time with her family and, despite this, her performance review at her job was stellar!

What’s one thing you do because “you have to…” or “everyone…” you can’t just…?”

Maybe you don’t have to-maybe not everyone does-or maybe you can just…do it differently.

Originally published at http://dianemackinnon.com.