Perpetual Improvement or Continuous Responsiveness?

Intro Music:
Welcome to An Owner’s Guide for Your Life, the podcast that combines psychology, coaching, common sense and fun. I’m Tracey Browning, an entrepreneur, life coach and lover of people. Now let’s talk about how to live, love, make money, and change the world.

Tracey:
Hey, I’m glad you’re here. I apologize in advance for my sniffles and snorts because, ugh, sinuses and allergies. It’s what I’m dealing with, so I’ll try not to be too gross in your ears today.

I’ve said before that it’s not good to treat ourselves as endless self improvement projects. That’s kind of been on my mind here for the past few days. I think what really bothers me about that thought is really the thought and the energy that lies underneath it. That if we are endlessly working to improve, there’s dissatisfaction, that feeling of I’m never enough. That’s not really the most secure foundation to build a life on, isn’t it?

And it even can creep into the feeling that if you’re continuously working to improve yourself, that you feel like you need to be somebody different than who you are. And again, that’s just not a secure feeling and thought or energy to build your life on.

It’s not that I’m against improvement. Of course I’m not.
Obviously, I talk about it an awful lot improving.
But really, I think what it is is being aware and responsive, making adjustments.

My husband was in the quality field for years and years. He was a quality expert. And there’s a term in that field called continuous improvement. And that popped in my head, too. I think what I like better is the idea of continuous adjustments. Continuous responsiveness. So, I’m going to keep kind of toying with it because I think a lot of it really may come back to just being responsive.

Think about driving a car.
Not just hopping in and driving, but what do you have to do to a car so it can get you where you want to go?

Well, there’s periodic maintenance. You’ve got to have oil. You might need to have it worked on. If you’re in a state that requires it like North Carolina requires that we get it inspected periodically. But you’ve got to have somebody outside you checking and refilling and adjusting and being sure it’s fit to drive. So there’s that. You put gas in it. When your fuel tank’s getting low, you need gas. You need things like windshield wiper fluid, coolant for your air conditioning, and all the things that make it more pleasant to drive and safer to drive. If your windshield wipers don’t work and you’re driving in pouring down rain, OOH, that ain’t good. So there’s things like that to make it a safer, more pleasant driving experience.

But let’s say you’ve got all that done and you get the key, you hop in the car, you crank it up. Well, in my car, I have to back out of a driveway, so I’ve got to back out. I’ve got to see what’s around me. I want to make sure I don’t run into the neighbors or my own vehicles that are always filled up in the driveway and right out on the curb. So I back out and then I put it in drive.

Well, then I have to make some adjustments with my steering wheel because I don’t just go straight. I’ve got to slightly move to the left and then stop at the stop sign and then I have to decide do I turn left? Do I turn right? So there’s turns, there’s adjustments. Even when you’re out driving in the road, your speed adjusts. You have to respond to stop signs and traffic lights and the traffic around you and the slight bends and twists in the road. So it’s not a straight shot where you just whip out and go 60 miles an hour.

It’s continuously being responsive to what’s happening around you, to what you and your vehicle are capable of and I think that’s really more the feel that I’m going for rather than perpetual, never-ending self improvement.

It’s continuously being responsive to life, to what I want in my life.

Now, in the spirit of continuous responsiveness, I’ll share with you that I’ve decided I’m going to take a few weeks off from my podcast and that few weeks may stretch the entire month of March. I haven’t quite decided that yet. I don’t have to decide it right now, right? Exactly. I don’t I’ve got my other business that I am working on launching that I cannot share publicly just yet, but that is coming so I’ve got a lot to do with that and this is just a good time to do what I tell my clients to do and I tell myself to do. Stop, evaluate, assess what’s going on in your life and your business and decide- what do you need? Where do I want to go with this? So that’s what I’m going to be doing.

Miss me while I’m gone!

Go back and listen to other episodes if you like.

And know that I do plan to come back. I’m just taking a little bit of a break so while I’m gone, let’s all go live, love, make some money and change the world.

For a transcript of this episode or for more information about life and mindset coaching, visit my website https://www.tbrowning.com/.