Why You Should Celebrate When Something Actively Dreadful Becomes Only Annoying

First published on September 9, 2021

Everytime I reach the end of a coaching engagement I am reminded of one of the strange corrolaries of having a coach. In some ways, it is by definition the case, but in others it is not. Endings matter, you see. And one of the reasons they matter is that where we have an ending, and where that ending is curated, it allow us to notice the passing of time, to notice the difference between life today and life three, six, twelve months ago when we started a coaching engagement. That is one of the strange and beautiful corrolaries of having a coach.

Because if we don't create times to slow down, to stop and notice, if things don't start and end, then we there will be things that we miss, because time will just keep rolling by.

Sometimes an ending, a slowing down, enables us to notice big changes, fundamental shifts. Mostly, though, we notice those on our own. Mostly we remember them. They get shouted about from the rooftops: the weddings and graduations and first clients and awards.

With a client of mine recently, we celebrated something different. Something she had to do as part of her work had shifted from being something she actively dreaded to something that is just a bit annoying. In some ways, that's not as exciting as winning an award. In other ways, it is far more exciting.

That kind of shift? That kind of shift goes unnoticed. And yet it's just as important, more important, perhaps, to notice. More important because if we don't notice that change, we might give up and never get to the time when something we absolutely dreaded has finally become something we don't mind at all, or even enjoy. As I've written before, wonderful can sometimes be just a moment away, especially if we find ourselves on an exponential curve, just before it takes off to infinity.

I find Matt Ridley very persuasive; that really everything in our society has evolved. That there are perhaps no great people, there are simply good people, well prepared by their actions or circumstance, who were in the right place at the right time to do something that looks in retrospect (because of the way we like to tell stories) like they created ripples across civilisation. In some ways, that is romantic.

But I prefer the romance of the graft. I prefer the real, dirty, nitty gritty of changing a life or a business or a company or a country. The in the dirt, in the arena struggle of making something that used to be absolutely dreaded something that is now just a bit annoying. The in the dirt, in the arena struggle of helping the people in front of you, or your corner of the world, be just a little bit better because of you. Not good, maybe - maybe all you can do is make your corner of the world 'just annoying' instead of absolutely dreadful. But every transformation has to go through every stage on the transformational journey. And if the transformation is from dreadful to wonderful, it has to, at some point and for some moments, be in 'a bit annoying'. That's part of the trip.

The movement, each tiny step, is heroic, is how change happens.

And we forget that. We forget that almost everything we do comfortably now had to go through all those phases. So, let's not. Let's celebrate those tiny changes, the incremental ones, the things that used to be awful and are now just irritating. The things that have gone from fear to annoyance and might - just might, if we want them to - go further.

That celebration might just be what enables us to keep going.