Before You Feel Ready: Following the Nudge Without Knowing Where It Leads

Emma Bryant: Have you ever found yourself waiting for life to calm down or for more certainty or perhaps for some kind of sign that it is okay to do the thing that you keep thinking about? This week, I am returning to the idea of the nudge with some thoughts inspired by the book by Oliver Berkman called 4000 Weeks and asking what we might be waiting for before we give ourselves permission to start. Hello and welcome back to the purposeful shift. This week, I finished rereading 4000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman, which is a book I know I've mentioned before because it was one of the books that really influenced some of the thinking behind starting this podcast in the first place. What's been interesting about reading it again is that different things have stood out to me this time. There are bits that I remember underlining before when I read it the first time that I've almost skimmed over this second time. And there are ideas that I'm not completely sure that I still agree with. And there are things that seem to have landed differently because I'm reading them from a different point of view in my life. Towards the end of the book, there were a couple of pages that really made me stop because they brought me back to this idea of the nudge, which I have talked about quite a lot on the podcast already. I describe it as that feeling that perhaps something isn't quite right or that you want something more from life or something less or just something that's different, even if you can't quite articulate what that different thing is just yet. And you might recognize that feeling yourself. Maybe there's something that you have been thinking about for months, maybe even for years, but you've been telling yourself that you'll come back to it when life is different, maybe when life is a bit calmer or when you've got a little bit more time or when you sorted everything else out first or when you actually know what it is that you're trying to change, in my case. One of the things that Berkman talks about towards the end of the book is the impossible standards that we set ourselves. And he draws on the philosopher Landau's observation that we can hold ourselves to standards that we probably never dream of demanding from somebody else. Berkman then writes, let your impossible standards crash to the ground. Then pick a few meaningful tasks from the rubble. and get started on them today. I love the idea of picking something meaningful from the rubble because you can visualize that situation. And I think I'm quite good at potentially imagining the version of my life where I've somehow managed to do everything and I keep trying for this state of completion, but it keeps eluding me. And in this imaginary version, I've worked out exactly what I want to do professionally. I'm earning the amount of money that I want to earn. I'm fully present with my family. I'm looking after myself properly. I'm exercising every day. The house is tidy. I've replied to everybody. No one's waiting on me for anything. I finished all of the projects that I start. I'm reading, I'm learning, I'm traveling. I'm being creative. I'm seeing friends. But of course, that version of my life, doesn't exist yet. And if I'm being brutally honest with myself, it probably never will because there just aren't enough hours in the day for all of those, that long list of things to kind of happen and to take place and for me to be totally in control of that. And you probably have your own version of this. Maybe it's not the same list as mine, but maybe it's that imaginary point where the things that are difficult at the moment, have somehow resolved themselves and you finally got on top of everything that you've been meaning to do. So that to do list is completed and you've created enough space to think about what it is that you actually want from your life. And I wonder how often we postpone things that matter to us, not because we have consciously decided that they're unimportant, but because we are waiting for that quieter or more organized version of life to arrive first before. we think we can do those things. And I know that I feel like I do that most days. I can still behave as though I just need to get a little bit more organized or I need to just work a little bit harder or faster or get through this one particularly busy week and then next week will be better or finish this particular list of things and then the next list of things will be smaller or somehow I'll arrive at this point where everything is fully under control and I can start spending my time in the way that I actually want to spend it. And that's one of the things that I think is quite uncomfortable and confronting when you read 4,000 Weeks, because the basic premise of the book is that our time is finite. If we're lucky enough to live to be around the age of 80, We get roughly 4,000 weeks, That sounds like an awfully long time, 4,000 weeks, but when you actually map it out, the book suggests we can't possibly use that time to do everything that we might want to do. So there has to be some choosing. And I do love to think, and I say this to myself quite often, that we always have a choice. But when it comes to all the things that I want to do, I don't particularly like choosing because choosing one thing means not choosing something else. And again, I know I've talked about this before about having lots of ideas and wanting to try lots of different things. And I think sometimes keeping all of those possibilities open in my mind feels so much safer than me actually deciding this is one of the things that I'm going to give some of my very limited time to. And that means that thing can't happen. And maybe you're somebody who finds choosing difficult too, or maybe you're not. Maybe you're somebody who can imagine lots of different versions of your life. And therefore choosing one path can feel like closing the door on all of the other potential versions. And sometimes I do wonder whether keeping our options open can become another way of not actually doing anything with them. Because for me, I've got this fear. What if I choose the wrong thing? What if I spend six months or a year doing something and then decide that I don't want to do that thing after all? What if I follow my nudge that's here at the moment and it goes absolutely nowhere? What if I ignore a different nudge? certainly starting to see that in myself, in my behaviors, in the way I structure my days, my weeks, my months. even my years, my business choices. And I'm wondering how much that has impacted my progress to date. And maybe your questions are similar to mine, or maybe they're different. Perhaps there's something like, what if I spend the money and I regret it? What if I change job and the new one isn't any better? What if I start the thing that I want to do and discover I'm not very good at it or I don't love it anymore? What if I tell people what it is that I want, but then I change my mind? And I think I'm realizing the hard and long way that maybe we don't get to know whether something is the right use of our time before we've used some of our time doing it. Now, I'll caveat that with obviously there's certain things that we know won't be a good use of our time and they might be easier choices for you to make. But if you are torn between multiple options, how do you really know unless you give yourself some time to experiment, to try it out and to see what comes of that and to own that for that period of time? And I think that's a really important point for me because I would love to be able to think my way to the answer first. And I'm sure we all would. right, in different situations in our life. I would love to know that something is going to work, that I'm going to enjoy it and that it's going to be worth the time or the money or the effort before I commit to doing that thing. But so much of what I've learned over the last couple of years has come from actually trying things and then noticing what happens, noticing how I feel when I reflect on the experience of doing them in the first place. But the irony there, of course, is that I'm also spreading myself. very thinly by having multiple things on the go and trying to do lots of things at once. And so then perhaps I'm not giving anything enough of a chance to succeed. And when you listen to people talk, they'll say focus on the one thing, niche down, be specific. Another section of the book, 4000 weeks took this whole thought process somewhere slightly different than for me, because Berkman is talking about our tendency to seek validation from somewhere outside of ourselves and about the idea that if we can become the person we're supposed to be to achieve enough or to prove ourselves in some way, we'll eventually reach this place where life feels more certain and more secure. And he references the psychotherapist Stephen Cope. who writes about reaching a point where we realize that other people probably don't care nearly as much about what we are doing with our lives as we imagine they do. And Burtman's point from there is that life is going to continue to contain uncertainty and things outside of our control anyway. So waiting for some external source of validation before we allow ourselves to live isn't ultimately going to give us the security that we're looking for because we can't control certain things and there will always be that uncertainty. And I realized whilst I was reading that, that that's something I do all the time. And actually I've even been doing it with this podcast. So I've been recording this podcast for nearly seven months now. This is episode number 32. I have been fortunate enough to speak to some incredible women all around the world. People listen to it. Thank you for listening. People have contacted me about things that they've heard and how they've reflected on the content and they've shared their thoughts with me. And I spend a considerable amount of my week researching, recording, editing, and producing these podcast episodes. So objectively, I am a podcaster. It is something that I do. And yet there's still this little part of me that thinks that I'll somehow become a proper podcaster when the podcast reaches a certain number of listeners or when it makes money or when it leads to a speaking opportunity or multiple speaking opportunities or a book deal or when somebody with more authority than me effectively says, yes. this thing that you're doing, it counts. And I have literally just written an article about this for an online magazine. So it's clearly something that's occupying some space in my head at the moment. But reading this section of the book, again, made me wonder what it is that I'm actually waiting for. And again, I wonder if there's something in your life where you have created a similar imaginary threshold, a point at which you will finally feel or be qualified enough. or successful enough or confident enough, or maybe you'll be financially secure enough, whatever your particular version of enough happens to be in relation to the situation that you're in, before you will actually allow yourself to claim something as yours or to enjoy something or to make a change. And I wonder what would happen if we stopped moving or adjusting those thresholds or if those thresholds just didn't exist. I think I move the thresholds that I set for myself all the time. I can reach one milestone and almost immediately create another one for myself. But if I keep moving the point at which I'm allowed to own something and enjoy something or value something, until after it's been externally validated, I could spend an awful lot of my 4,000 weeks waiting and feeling unsatisfied at the same time. And obviously this theory applies to so much more than just work. Maybe you are in a position where you are waiting until you've got more money before you allow yourself to fully enjoy your life or until your children are older or your work comes down or the house renovation is finished or somebody else agrees with you or until you feel more confident or certain about what it is that you want. And of course there are real limitations in life. There are things we can't just decide not to worry about or responsibilities that we can't walk away from, such as financial realities or caring responsibilities, maybe our own health or other people whose needs matter to us. And I'm certainly not suggesting that noticing you want something different means you should immediately blow up your existing life in pursuit of whatever that thing is. Even though I think that is what we revert to think about when someone says midlife change or midlife reinvention to us. And I'm actually becoming more and more interested in the opposite of that kind of big blow your life up, massive change kind of theory and movement. Because if we've got a feeling that we want something different, maybe the first question that we should ask ourselves is not how do I completely change my life to achieve that thing. Perhaps it's that you need to work out what the feeling underneath the thing that you want actually is. So if you're dreaming about quitting your job, is it really a different job that you want? Or is it more autonomy, creativity, recognition, flexibility? And if you're dreaming about traveling, is it the travel itself or is it adventure, freedom, novelty, getting away from the routine that you're in? So when I think about how I can redesign my life to be able to explore what's sitting underneath the thing that I think I want, I'm starting to consider what are the smallest and less terrifying versions of putting that into place. The question for me now is how could I experience a little bit more of the thing that I think I want? now without huge dramatic life reinvention. And I think that's where noticing the nudge becomes really useful because the nudge doesn't tell us what we should do with the rest of our lives it doesn't guarantee that the thing that we're drawn towards is going to work or make us happy or make us money or become some great new purpose or fulfillment that we've been looking for forever. Maybe it's simply some information about something that feels important enough to explore. And rather than needing to know where it leads before we begin, perhaps we can give a little bit of our time to finding out. Maybe we can set ourselves a week, two weeks, 30 days, three months, six months, whatever it might be. So if you think for a moment about the thing that you've been putting off until some future version of your life exists, what are the conditions that you have decided need to be in place before you can take the steps towards that thing? Do you need more time, more money, more confidence, somebody else's approval? Do you need a qualification or your children to be older or work to be less busy? And are all of those things genuinely necessary? or have some of them quietly become rules and boundaries that you've created, thresholds if you like, to allow yourself whether you can begin or not just yet. I think the biggest lesson that I'm taking from this reread of 4,000 weeks is that I'm probably never going to reach a point in my life where I feel like everything is done. I can't achieve it with my daily to-do list. I can't achieve it at the end of the week. I can't achieve it before I take a week off for holiday. And I'm sure you can relate to those feelings where you just feel like you just need to get that extra thing done because you can't possibly have a week off. I know I won't reach a point where everyone in my life is happy because life just doesn't work like that. There's always some challenges that we have to face. I know my life will never feel like it's completely under control. And if it does, I'll probably be bored stiff and still looking for a way out. I don't think I will ever know exactly what it is that I want. And nobody of course is going to hand me a certificate or reward or some list that confirms that I've made all of the correct choices or that I'm on the right path or that I've made the right decision this time for what's coming next, which is actually really annoying because I would quite like a certificate that says, well done Emma, you chose the right life. But if that's what I'm waiting for, if I'm waiting for these imaginary things, if I'm waiting till everything is done or everybody's happy or my life is under control, somebody gives me that certificate that says, well done Emma, you've ticked all the boxes in life, then I'm never gonna start. never going to start spending more of my life on the things that matter to me. I'm going to be waiting forever. And in six months time, a year's time, two years time, five years time, 10 years time, I'm still going to be feeling and thinking the same as I am right now. And that's scary. So there's two questions I want to leave you with this week. The first one is, what are you waiting to have sorted, achieved, or proven? before you give yourself permission to do something that you already know you want. And the second is, if you accepted that the perfect time, complete certainty, or somebody else's validation will never arrive, what is one small thing that you could choose to do now? I'll put those questions in the show notes because they're pretty deep and I want to give you space to reflect on them properly. Perhaps responding to the nudge that you're feeling isn't about knowing where that response and that action is going to lead. or that responding to that nudge will determine what you're going to do for the rest of your life. Maybe it's just a case of us deciding that what we're feeling when we recognize the nudge is something that matters enough to us. for us to dedicate some time and some energy to exploring it and seeing what happens. Thank you so much for choosing to spend some time with me today. I hope this episode has given you something to think about and perhaps encourage you to pay a little attention to whatever has been nudging at you recently. If you would like deeper reflections on the topics that we explore here in the podcast and you would like to be part of the Purposeful Shift community, I invite you to sign up for the Purposeful Shift newsletter. I will pop the link in the show notes. Until next week, I hope you enjoy exploring your nudge. Thank you again for listening and I'll see you soon.