Author: Mike Urgo
You’re welcome for the censored title. One day I am going to write about normalizing cussing that isn’t derogatory and almost everyone uses it in normal conversations.
But that’s not what I want to talk about today. Today I want to talk about living in the shit (I won’t censor it here).
What do I mean by living in the shit?
As a coach and leader in both the corporate world and athletics for over 15 years and a father of 11 and soon to be 13-year-old, I have been coaching and mentoring people of all ages and areas for years. In my opinion, in a very general sense, people who struggle to change fall into three different categories when it comes to change and improvement. And it doesn’t matter what they are trying to improve, whether it’s professionally or personally. It could be as simple as getting better at cleaning their room or as complicated as learning how to lead people in a corporate setting, I believe these buckets are applicable across the board.
The three buckets are as follows:
- The faker
- The try-hard
- The victim
The faker, while most annoying to deal with, is the easiest to suss out as a leader. Change, as most people understand, must be sustainable over time. Everyone knows the faker. Another way to say this is the liar. As a coach it was hard to hear about all the work someone was putting in over the summer only to show up to school the same or worse as they were the year before.
The try-hard can be very frustrating, because their initial enthusiasm is so attractive. As leaders, it’s what we want to see. We love to see when someone is bought in and invested in change, especially when it is something that we know will help them. But ultimately as change gets more difficult or just as time goes on, their enthusiasm waivers and they revert back to their old ways.
A good example (I am guilty of this) is the mass amount of people who make that new year’s resolution and start showing up at the gym at 5am as if that’s a long-term model they are going to commit to going forward. I have been there; it lasts for a quarter or two and then it stops. Because, let's be honest, if I was a 5am gym guy, I would have already been doing it.
The last bucket of those that struggle with change are the victims. These are the “I can’t” people or the people who have an excuse or outside reason as to why the change can’t happen. To me, these are the most frustrating people to work with and help. Nothing is their fault; there’s no ownership or accountability and they always “really want to change”.
What do all of these three types of people have in common?
They don’t live in the shit.
Living in the shit is accepting reality. It’s understanding the current situation and just how difficult or complicated the journey of change is going to be. It’s taking accountability and ownership of past mistakes, decisions or actions and consciously acknowledging them. The idea is that no one likes to live in shit, so in turn it makes it motivating to get out of the shit.
The problem we have as people is we are very good at rationalizing situations or explaining things away internally to avoid change, because change is hard.
Change is not easy.
But, if you start by accepting the situation and live in the shit, it can be easier. Once you accept it, the next step is to remember it. Don’t let your brain rationalize away the need to change, or worse yet, accept that that is as far as you need to go. Set attainable and measurable goals and then celebrate when you hit them. Finally, have a plan to sustain the change so you don’t revert to reality, or shit where you were previously.
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