Six Ways I Got Out of My Own Way

(And Started Working on My Own Dream)

“When you were little, mummy, what did you dream about being?”

I was not prepared for that question.

I had a good job. A government salary. Nice shoes and good dinners and the comfortable language of someone who talked about change for a living.

And I had absolutely no idea what I was actually working at.

That question cracked something open. Because the honest answer was: I dreamed about being free. About being loved. And about making sure other kids didn’t grow up feeling the way I felt about myself - unwanted, unloved, and alone at 16 with no one to catch them.

But none of that was in my job description. My job description was policy and program development to serve the local population by making my hierarchical superiors happy.

Here’s what I’ve learned since then: most of us are working incredibly hard. We just rarely stop to ask what we’re working at - or whether it’s actually our dream we’re building, or someone else’s.

These are 6 ways I used to get in my own way, and how I stopped.

1. Fear of being laughed at

The thought of being laughed at immediately sent my shame meter to a three alarm alert. I would feel sick to my stomach and take zero risks.

Fix: When I did things alone that were dumb, like break a glass or trip going up the stairs, I would force myself to laugh at myself instead of be angry or ignore it.

A few weeks of this at home and one day I took a faceplant on a sidewalk at lunch. Sat up and laughed my arse off before wiping off my knees and continuing on. Realised later that not once did I wonder what other people thought of me

2. Thought it was either/or

I was either a failure, or a success, at what I was doing. It was a binary switch, no nuance and no room for error. This kept me from making decisions because what if I got it wrong?

Fix: decided it was either — or —? Making it a question, rather than a declarative statement allowed me to fill in the blanks differently. I started asking what I could do instead of what the outcomes were

3. Got up for other people

Mornings used to be horrible - I would hit snooze 4 times, I would barely eat but felt rushed anyway and always picked the most urgent task to get done. I got up for other people, worked for other people, almost lived for other people.

Fix: Making the first 10 minutes of my day all for me. It didn’t matter what I wanted to do, I got to do it for the first 10 minutes of my day. For a while it was doomscolling and a few wake and bakes; I was so angry at having to spend my day on things other people wanted.

Those 10 minutes eventually became walks, journaling, yoga, 30 minutes, then eventually my life.

4. Used shame as a motivator

Anyone remember Nate spitting at his image in the mirror in Ted Lasso? I think Dave Goggins talked about how he used to tell himself he was fat and ugly. That was me, for reasons of indoctrination. My mum saying “You really think you’re attractive, don’t you? Might want to fix your hair.”

I’d say things like “Smart, hey? You did it again and are late on the report. Idiot.” I’d wake up at night panicking that I’d said something stupid in a briefing.

Fix: Strangely, it started in the weirdest way. Agreeing I did the stupid thing. The voice would go off, and rather than arguing I wasn’t stupid or I was actually working hard, I would just agree with the criticism and keep going. Eventually, I started adding a reminder of a good thing I also did.

5. Chased someone else’s dream

I didn’t have a dream of my own. Sure I wanted to get promoted, or make a certain amount of money and have a certain kind of house and lifestyle. And I wanted a career I enjoyed that ‘made things better.’ None of those are dreams though. They are both normal part of life since forever - just now we get money for our ‘jobs’ - and material outcomes that can be quite comfortably accomplished by doing what other people tell you to do.

I didn’t understand the difference for a long time. The two paths Frost mentions, I understood we got to choose but I didn’t understand that one was about aspiration and one was about obedience. I spent so much of my life thinking that being obedient meant my dreams and their dreams could be the same.

Fix: I had the job and the house. But when I suddenly could only keep my job by sacrificing myself, I was angry and wanted revenge. I also felt empty. I realised I didn’t have a dream - I had a plan. I asked myself what kept me up late when I was a teenager, when I was in university. And then I set out to build that.

6. Believed in analysis-paralysis

I spent many hours writing and re-writing briefing notes to achieve the objectives of my minister or deputy minister’s chief of staff while also passing arbitrary grammar standards set by the policy coordination office. I was told this was very important work.

I would research different articles and studies to find evidence that was more aligned with the desired approach than I would on explaining how good research applied to each outcome. This made me believe that I was doing analysis when what I was actually doing was finding ways to justify undemocratic strategic policy changes. When I left I still believed in analysis paralysis and said it was procrastination.

Fix: Pretended I was my boss and asked myself “What do you need to feel safe?” every morning. Sometimes it was a cup of tea, sometimes it was music, but I still felt stuck. Over several weeks of asking myself that, creating safety within my own working relationship, one day I said “to be able to tell the truth” and so I did.

This taught me that analysis paralysis may actually be a lack of safety to say what you know to be true.

Maybe it's Time to Ask: What Are You Actually Working At?

I still work hard. Often harder than I did when I had a regular paycheque and a boss telling me what to do.

The difference is I’m working on my dream now, not someone else’s. I never have to question whether what I say will upset the person who puts money in my bank account.

And when my kids tell me they’re worried about the future and ask what I’m doing about it, I can answer with complete sincerity: “Everything I can.”

Final Observations

Getting out of your own way is not for productivity. Or performance. Not someone else’s vision of success.

It’s for your dream. The one you had before anyone told you to be practical, the one that when you were young you cried yourself to sleep over saying “I don’t want this to happen to anyone ever again.”

Rescue it, dust it off, and make it the first thing you see everyday.