These aren’t run of the mill crimes like pinching a few paperclips from the office or nicking a can of baked beans from Tesco.

Oh no.

These crimes against our minds are much more serious and consequential.

Here goes…

Crime #1: Forgery (aka treating thoughts as reality)

This is when we think “my boss hates my guts”, “I’m no good at presentations” or “how on earth did I get this job” and then treat it as a FACT. But thoughts are not facts. Thoughts are just stories we tell ourselves. Unless, of course, we latch onto that thought, find evidence to support it, start to build a business case for it and quite literally breathe life into that thought ourselves. At which point that thought might start to look real, just like a convincing forgery. So real, in fact, that we change the way we behave in accordance with that thought. 

But it’s still just a thought. 

It’s still a forgery.

Crime #2: Arson and Insurance Fraud (aka using thoughts to solve problems created by thoughts)

This follows directly from #1 above. 

Say we wonder if we’re in the right job. But rather than get on with our day, we then think about why we’re having that thought. So we ask ourselves if other people have this thought too. We worry the thought means we might be unhappy. But we don’t feel unhappy, so now we get confused and start to think about whether thinking about that thought is a mistake or not. And on it goes...

Only now we’re not dealing with “am I in the right job”.

We’re dealing with “what does it mean that I’m thinking about whether I’m in the right job?”

And before we know it we’re lying awake at 4am having updated our CV, completed our Enneagram, disappeared down a career change rabbit hole on Reddit and finished a marathon therapy session with ChatGPT.

But all we’ve done is set our mind on fire (perhaps without realising it) and then spent the weekend filing the insurance claim!

Well, guess what?

We don’t need to set fire to our minds in the first place. And we certainly don’t need to file the insurance claim after.

Crime #3: Resisting Arrest (aka arguing with reality)

Let’s say your boss told you they’d review your pay (*rubs hands in glee*) and then tells you that no, you're paid just fine thank you very much. And instead of just dealing with it or getting on with your day, you spend the next 6 hours thinking about how unfair it is you don't get paid more, how much you deserved a pay rise, why your boss doesn't like you, why this always happens to you and bemoaning the day you agreed to work for your boss in the first place.

But it’s a done deal now.

Hence the Byron Katie quote “when you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time”

Crime #4: Loitering With Intent (aka having imaginary conversations)

I must’ve wasted MONTHS of my life on this back in the less than golden olden days of my banking career. In fact, I spent so much time rehearsing what I was going to say, imagining what a colleague would say back, defending myself against things no-one had ever said or replaying conversations that took place last week or last year that I drained 10x more energy than a tricky meeting or conversation ever could.

Yes, no crime has been committed technically.

But imaginary conversations are completely unnecessary and totally pointless.

Crime #5: Handling Stolen Goods (aka believing your thoughts when you’re in a bad mood)

I’ve saved the best to last.

Partially because this crime has a special place in my heart too. It’s no exaggeration to say that I gave up the best part of a decade to this particular crime (on and off, but a lot more on than off). Which, thinking about it now, is a good story for a future email.

But I might also humbly suggest that if the world woke up to just how common this particular crime is, the world would change overnight.

And how this one works is that our mood drops (as everyone’s does sometimes – it’s par for the course) and suddenly everything looks bad. Our colleagues look like idiots. Our inbox looks like a dumpster fire. Our whole job looks soul-sapping and ridiculous.

And then we start making decisions from this place!

So we draft our resignation letter, stick it in an email and hit send. All because we’ve trusted our dodgy thoughts when we were in a low mood.

But stolen goods are best returned to where they came from. 

Low mood thoughts are best returned to where they came from too.

So there we have it.

I’ve long said that the key to an enjoyable, successful and stress-free working life has nothing to do with adding effort and everything to do with subtracting what gets in the way. And I’d wager a pint of Timothy Taylor’s that anyone reading this email who stops committing just ONE of these five crimes will struggle not to have their whole experience of working life change radically for the better. 

If you’d like support with that, I can help.

Here's where to turn yourself in:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

To fulfilment,

Tom