A quick nod to last week if you missed it.*
Sometimes it’s helpful to look at what’s at stake. This is what I’m going to call the cost of not experimenting.
Nothing changes.
Perhaps you stay sleep deprived… You continue to eat junk that doesn’t nourish you… and gain weight year after year. You stay time poor.
You show up grumpy or dysregulated or remain overwhelmed. And tired. And perhaps a little resentful of your job, your spouse and sometimes even your kid(s).
In the spirit of Super Bowl week, I’m going to roll with this analogy. If you’re not in the game, there’s no chance you can win it.
If you don’t try something new, your current momentum will propel you forward on your current trajectory. Sometimes that’s great news! Other times, it’s a harsh reality check.
The truth is, there’s change all around us. It doesn’t have to be hard; it can be intentional and purposeful. and move you towards a place you want to be.
So the next question: what’s an intentional change you’d like to see in your life?
And the bigger one: what would the win look like?
By defining the marker of success, you get a glimpse at your Super Bowl win.
When it comes to free time, my Super Bowl win for clients is 2 hours a day.
Where does that glorious magic number come from? Data. Brought to you by Cassie Holmes, PhD in Happier Hour, she looked at the relationship between discretionary time and happiness and found the sweet spot was between 2-5 hours a day!
Results showed that “people with too little time are significantly less happy and less satisfied in life.”
“Being time poor makes us more depressed, more stressed, and more emotionally exhausted.”
~ Cassie Holmes Happier Hour
What’s great about experiments is there is usually something you are testing… and usually a fairly clear success or fail, just like the Super Bowl.
So when something doesn’t work out, you’ve just collected more useful data for the next experiment. Like a football play that didn’t work; it’s part of the bigger game. Adjust and try again.
When we can get over ourselves enough to fail big and/or often, we can get to the big win. So if you are up for playing, it’s helpful to know what the big win looks like for you right now.
AND remember, small wins are still wins.
