Something to ponder if you’re feeling hemmed in at work:

Baby Grundy picked up a new book on the weekend called A Squash and a Squeeze.

Short story shorter, the book is about an old lady who thinks her house is too cramped (i.e. a bit of a squash and a squeeze). A wise man who happens to be passing tells her to get some farmyard animals (as you do) and the old lady obliges. One by one, a goat takes over her kitchen, a cow settles into her conservatory and a pig plonks itself down in her lounge. 

A few days later, the lady wakes up one morning and thinks to herself “blimey, I’ve got NO space now”. So she opens her door and the animals trot off. 

Once they’ve gone, the old lady takes stock and realises…

She has so much more space than she thought she did.

A light-hearted tale for sure.

But there’s a lot of wisdom tucked between the lines here too. 

If the lady’s house doesn’t change but her experience of that house does, that hemmed in feeling can’t be coming from her house. It’s the same house after all (apart from the freshly laid cowpats). But she’s thinking about her house very differently now. 

It works the same way with our jobs.

When we feel crowded at work or like our job is about to suffocate us, that’s not information about our jobs. It's information about our thinking in the moment. Information which suggests we might have a few goats and pigs stomping around in our heads.

That's not to say there aren't things you want to change about your job.

There probably are!

But it does mean that before you start browsing job boards or drafting your resignation letter, you might want to shoo out a few of your own farmyard animals first.

If you’d like some help with that:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

To fulfilment,

Tom