Be Careful Forcing Experiences
One of the benefits of finding alignment among your spirit, mind, and body (money doesn’t really matter for this benefit) is you develop a greater sense of self-awareness. Particularly, your ability to notice and follow your intuition heightens, which allows you to avoid forcing things/people into your life.
Yesterday, a friend and I had planned on recording a short video while we both got our hair cut. The idea came from a chance scheduling of our haircuts at the same time a couple of months ago–well not so much chance for me since I’m in my barber’s chair every Friday at 11:00 AM, but I had no idea that my friend would be there too. We had an enlightening conversation and talked about life, parenting, and our profession (he is a very successful financial advisor as well).
At the end of that original conversation, the wheels started turning in my head and I suggested he schedule another haircut at the same time and I’d bring my camera and mics with me and we’d record our conversation and put it out on YouTube–maybe it could become a series. He agreed and we had our recording date set.
As it got closer to our recording date, I developed mixed feelings about recording our conversation:
I couldn’t identify WHY we should record and share our conversation–it didn’t really align with either of our goals. Now, I know some of the best content comes from a vague plan, but there was something about this plan that just didn’t feel right to me.
I couldn’t identify WHO the video was going to be for. Would it be for financial advisors or everyone else or both?
I didn’t know WHAT we would talk about. Without knowing our audience I wouldn’t know where to steer the conversation which would have led to a rambling 20-minute conversation between two friends catching without any purpose to the audience.
Finally, I felt like I just wanted to catch up with my friend and have no pressure centered around it. We don’t see or catch up with each other nearly enough and I just wanted to enjoy the conversation and be fully present with him, without the expectation of creating some great piece of content.
The Thursday before our haircut we texted to make sure we’d both be at the barber shop and I shared with him I didn’t think now was the time to make this video.
I told him it felt like the video idea was being forced and that we should hold off on doing it–I believe we will record one (or more) together when the time is right.
Not that long ago I would have brought my cameras, recorded that conversation, and posted the video to YouTube by the end of the day Friday. The video would have gotten less than 100 views and probably wouldn’t have made the impact that it will when the time is right. It would have been a good video and we would have had fun, but it would have been forced and not what it will be in the future.
We would have also robbed ourselves of the great conversation that did end up happening yesterday– not all of the conversation was meant for the world to hear, at least on my end. I shared with him some of the things I’m working on professionally that I’m not ready to share yet, and I really needed his feedback.
I’m glad we didn’t hit record.
I’m glad I had the awareness to listen to my intuition and postpone the recording. I have no doubt we will record at the barber shop in the future and when the time is right I’ll know because my intuition will let me know.
I have plenty of experience forcing myself into roles and executing ideas, which was an important part of my pursuit. Those forced experiences taught me a lot about myself, allowed me to learn new skills, and even led to an important burnout that helped me to align my spirit, mind, and body.
Those experiences also taught me how to identify when I am forcing something, which is most often easy to spot when I’m talking myself into all of the possibilities–trying to convince myself about what COULD be instead of just focusing on what IS.
I wouldn’t change any of my forced experiences but I’m not looking to force anything anymore.
There is a good chance you’ve forced an experience into your life and it didn’t play out the way you thought it would. Looking back, you know it was forced and you can probably admit in that moment you knew it as well but were too distracted by the possibilities of what might be. Reflect back on those experiences to see what you learned, in case you missed any lessons, and how you can better identify when you might be forcing an experience in the future.
I know I’ll end up forcing something again in the future but I hope with my heightened awareness, I’ll be aware that I’m forcing and consciously doing it rather than resorting back to old habits.
See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,
JC
