What We're Reading Now

Gratitude for Room to Grow

1 January 2013

Allison read Rachel’s A Year in Review blog post about the stack of books in her ‘must review now’ pile and reflected on how helpful it is when important people in our lives give us a little space to work on a challenging goal (or maybe even a resolution).

Tags: allison read, change, gratitude, leadership, new year’s resolutions

I remember in 2010 when Rachel suggested our blog should be What We’re Reading Now. I thought, “That’s just right! We’re always reading about messy people stuff and we almost always have something to say about what we’re reading.”

If you look back to those early posts, you’ll notice my frequency of participation was lackluster at best. I’d write periodically and then go for months without saying a word. I was an English major before I got my MBA so writing shouldn’t have been that hard for me, and I knew blogging mattered, but I simply couldn’t find the willpower to contribute regularly. Last spring I realized that the only way I would really make blogging work was if I set some kind of regular goal. I’m proud to report that this is my 32nd Tuesday since 29 May 2012 and I dread the writing a little less every week. Sometimes I even enjoy it.

Now you may be troubled to learn that somebody in my field struggles with goal setting in this way. I love serving my clients and am pretty disciplined about more than a few things, but one of the many reasons I started my own business 13 years ago was to eliminate as many of the tasks I don’t like to do at work as possible. Generally, this concept is well supported by books like Now Discover Your Strengths and Do What You Are, but I should confess that sometimes it just comes down to laziness, stubbornness and utter rebellion. “You’re not the boss of me,” is a childhood mantra I’ve never really released. This is true of most entrepreneurs, but it’s also supremely frustrating when this entrepreneur wants to get better at something.

While I didn’t start out with the idea that my post would be about New Year’s resolutions, I find myself pausing to commiserate with all of you who are trying to get moving on a new goal today. Sometimes trying to change is downright yucky. Rachel wrote a great post about our favorite change book, Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard, and a lot of the Heath brothers’ tips have been helpful to me.

I did all the things I was supposed to do to build my new habit, but as I look back over the last seven months, I realize now how grateful I am for something else that helped me to change. Rachel stopped blogging for a while and didn’t talk to me much about my goal for blogging. As you’ll learn from her post, she’s been incredibly busy taking our business to amazing new places so she certainly had every reason to take a break. But I also think that she intentionally gave me a very generous gift. She let me work on my goal without having to worry about how my blogs compared to hers (I’m pretty envious of how well she writes them and how fast she can turn them out). She gave me some feedback from time to time, but mostly she quietly supported (as she so often does) my process for working through a daunting goal and finding my willpower.

Too often when people around us are working on something difficult, we ask them, “How’s it going? How can I help? What happened this week? Why didn’t you do this or that?” We’re trying to be supportive but sometimes the questions just get in the way. As you consider your resolutions for 2013, I encourage you to let people know if you need some quiet while you find your way. You might also think about whether you need to give that space to someone else. You could ask, “Would it be helpful if I asked you about your goal or would you prefer to just bring it up when and if you want to?”

Thanks for everything you do to help make my goals a reality, Rachel. Here’s to another fabulous year of helping our clients with the messy people stuff!

« Return to What We're Reading Now