Here’s something to chew on if there’s a task you keep putting off at work:

At 3pm last Friday (a mere two hours before the deadline), I submitted the first batch of coursework for my 15 month Coaching Apprenticeship.

I'd known about that cheeky Friday deadline since January. 

What I didn’t know, however, was what I actually had to do. And that made me twitchy.

So did I take a gander at the apprenticeship portal to find out what my coursework involved?

Did I heck!

Instead, I ignored the coursework completely. We were still in January, after all. Bags of time to figure it out.

A couple of weeks later, the coursework popped into my weary brain once again. And once again, I had the uneasy feeling that I still didn’t really know what I needed to do.

So did I take five minutes to check? Did I speak to one of my course mates to find out? Did I do literally anything about it?

Of course not! 

I buried my hand in the sand and tried to forget about it. 

By the start of March, that uneasy feeling had become a kind of low level dread.

What if I’d already left it too late?

But yet again, I kicked the coursework can down the road.

It took me until Wednesday 18^th March (two days before the coursework was due!) to take a big sip of whisky water, log into the portal and finally face the music. By this time I was almost a trembling wreck.

So what did I discover?

Well, I had to submit six pages of reflections, a personal SWOT analysis and an exercise called the Johari Window.

As I read, I felt myself relax. My SWOT and Johari Window were already done. 

But I hadn’t started my reflections and I knew I couldn’t dust that off in 20 minutes. 

So on Thursday morning, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. It took a few hours’ hard graft, but by Friday afternoon, I was done.

The funny thing about all this? 

My coursework dread was causing much more havoc than the coursework itself ever could.

There’s a name for this phenomenon. It’s called the Ostrich Effect. It’s the idea that we often try to avoid information that will stress us out, but the very act of doing that stresses us out even more.

Perhaps the Ostrich Effect isn’t new to you.

But what might be new is this:

As my thoughts about my coursework changed, my experience changed - even though the coursework itself didn't. 

The conclusion?

My stress, worry and dread weren’t coming from the coursework. They had to be coming from my thinking about that coursework. 

That might sound like the tiniest, most trifling of differences.

But actually, it makes all the difference in the world.

When we believe the future is “out there” waiting to hurt us, it makes a tonne of sense to duck it. But when we realise that all we ever feel is our thinking, the urge to avoid those scary futures starts to fall away.

This is the exact same understanding I stumbled on when I went from being a frazzled banker drowning in 16-hour days to someone who actually looks forward to Monday mornings.

Not every Monday mind you. I still have my Corporate Ostrich moments too.

But certainly chalk and cheese compared to the bad old days. 

If you’re ready to stop being bossed around by your future, you might like this:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

To fulfilment,

Tom