Are you being complacent? Or do you just need to be patient? Run your overthinking through this filter…
Complacency is to people like you what cooties are to 7 year-olds.
“EWWWWWW! HE HAS COOTIES! RUN AWAY!!!! EEEEEEEE!!!”
It feels like the ultimate sin. The maximum ick. It feels like getting caught with your pants around your ankles. How embarrassing.
Depending on the season of business you’re in - complacency often get thrown out to label those who deviate from the status quo. You will need an easy way to filter the shadow of complacency in your life and business if you’re committed to creating something you’ve never experienced before OR something the world has never seen before. Most people’s status quo won’t be yours - so how can you stay aligned when your path hasn’t been paved before?
There’s a unifying expectation in the business coaching industry:
“We want to work with clients who are willing to do whatever it takes to get amazing results.”
But what most people mean when they say that is:
“I want to work with people who are committed to doing things my way so that they can get the same results that I did.”
And to that I say… Whaaaaaat?
You and I both know there are millions of ways to get to the same end result. Even if two people take the same meta-route to a particular result, their micro and macro strategies differed greatly. One of my favorite things in the world is leading clients into their version of ‘whatever it takes’.
The married lawyer with 2 kids and who coaches on the side is going to have a different expectation of “whatever it takes” than the single, free-spirited 22 year-old. Neither is right or wrong - but if you’re the married mama trying to compare yourself to the single 22 year-old, you’ll never stop feeling the ick. You’ll become messy, erratic, overwhelmed, and always behind. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s not useful to you.
Your fear of “not doing enough” is complacency in disguise
The root of complacency is lack, limitation and scarcity. Most people try to resolve their feelings of not doing enough with doing more. The boatloads of action they take from lack and scarcity make them messy, erratic, & overwhelmed. Always behind. Never satisfied. Always vulnerable to monsters hiding in open space…
They might not be complacent in taking action. But they certain are in taking the right action.
Complacency is a charged mindset gap - one that doesn’t tell the whole truth even if you feel like you’re being brutally honest. It’s the need for short-term relief over long-term results, it’s fight-or-flight to maintain ‘good enough’ instead of evolving into ‘great’. And lastly - in some convoluted scenarios - it’s the entitled expectation that you get to only do what feels good instead of doing what’s necessary for YOUR standard and vision. You might grow, but not honestly.
All that to be said, it’s a definition where two things can and will be true at the same time.
You can be doing too much and be complacent. You can be doing too little and also be complacent. You can do what someone else did to be successful and be complacent in your vision. You can do what only feels good in the moment and still - you guessed it - be complacent in your vision.
So how do you mend the gap, call it what it accurately is, & take the inspired action?
You have to have a language & a standard to measure the idea of complacency against
To really tackle complacency (or the illusion of it), you need a clear way to measure what complacency actually means for you, your goals, and your lifestyle. I always ask my new clients:
"What are five things you love about yourself, five things you love to do, and five ways you can express these?"
This helps uncover necessary elements of their deep purpose, which isn't a place but rather a feeling. I continue walking them through a signature process of mine called EPIC and we end the call with one more question:
What obvious thing are you doing right now that is not aligned with your deep purpose?
Their faces light up. By going through this unique coaching framework and having a newfound language to articulate their desires, they now have an accurate way to measure what complacency means against their own standards and experiences - instead of against someone else’s.
A filter for determining whether you need PATIENCE, or whether you’re being complacent…
Intrinsically, patience feels like a calm, settled energy. It’s the feeling you get when you pause mental pressure and allow time to compound the work that you have done and are doing because you are trusting the process, moving forward with intuition, and holding new standards.
What do you do when you need to figure out, “am I being complacent or do I just need to be patient?”. Ask yourself these 3 questions and move accordingly:
Am I in integrity and does this standard objectively add MORE time, energy, & joy to my life in the long-term than the short-term? If yes, you just need to be patient. Keep seeing the work through. If no, then you need to ask yourself the next 2 questions…
Where am I being complacent in honoring my standards, values, & vision? You may not be complacent in doing a bunch of work, but you might be in doing the wrong work for you.
Where am I trying to short-cut or avoid doing the hard work necessary to create my desired result? Entitlement is a reflection of avoiding & short-cutting your way to a particular result. It results in despair, anxiety, stress, depression, overthinking, melancholy, worrying, and desperation. This is where you need to pull the curtain back and have an honest conversation with yourself. What am I trying to ‘escape’ instead of ‘move towards?’
Ultimately, complacency demands growth. It will show you where you’re not honoring your standards or where you require patience. Being able to clock your own complacency & patience is how you’ll be able to move your business forward in the smoothest, most expansive ways.
Find a gap in your business today? I’d love to here what it was! Send me a DM and let me know how you’re shifting it & what it opened for you. And for those of you who are ready to do this work together, my private coaching application is below. Salute x
