A colleague forwarded me a video from Simon Sinek riffing on millennials in the workplace. (You can catch the full clip here.) It’s not what you think. Although, if you’re familiar with any of Sinek’s work, you likely know where he was headed. 

Part way through the conversation, he laid this one on us:

“Everything you want, you can have instantaneously. Everything you want, instant gratification. Except job satisfaction and strength of relationships. There ain’t no app for that. They are slow, meandering, uncomfortable, messy processes.” 

Truthfully, this speaks to much more than the generation of millennials. It speaks to our culture as it stands today, what it’s morphed into. 

We want everything NOW!
That success we dreamed up should have happened yesterday. 
We’ve become a culture of impatience, an abhorrence to putting in the effort and meandering in the time. Heck, we even loathe the mundane. And with a quick click or two on our phones, we can be back to fun and light and distracted in no time.
What used to take a week to arrive on our doorstep after an order was placed, now seems too long when it shows up 24 hours later.

What about your business? 
How has this culture shift permeated the results you see in your own business?

Because without you even realizing, you’re likely putting this level of need for instant gratification on your business. You want it all to feel good. Within seconds of putting the request out into the universe.

Not to get all word nerd on you but do you know what those words actually mean?

instant (adjective): happening immediately.
gratification (noun): a source of pleasure.

We want pleasure to happen immediately whenever we ask for it in our work. No line. No waiting. No reservations. 

Think about that for a moment. 

Is that what we really want? 

To not ever feel fear or pain or hurt. To not know the shadow side. 
To never have to strive for something that is currently out of reach. 
To not learn and grow into the people we want to become. 
To just exist in a state of endless false happiness taking us no place. 

I didn’t think so either. 

Then what do we do? How do we make a different choice?

Begin to notice where you are getting in your own way. 
Embrace alllll the steps, even those that feel less than pleasurable. 
Stop wishing that a particular outcome would just appear already. 

Because if you’re not able to stay present and surrender to the process that is unfolding before you and dance with that, then you will not be able to show up as the visionary your business needs, the leader your team is counting on, the expert your clients are paying for. 

The next time you’re moving away from the messiness and uncertainty that occurs in the space of any business in an effort to distract and feel better, just pause.

Whether you’re looking for that next hit of dopamine to come by quickly popping into Slack to see if your team has tagged you or checking Instagram to know if you’ve gotten a new comment or like, don’t scratch the itch. 

You’ll begin to retrain your brain to not expect that itch to get scratched each time. 

Dance with the tension of doing your work instead. 

Pause. Notice. Accept. Dance. 

 

 

Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash