Hey, so we have talked now on a number of subjects for this blog. This week, I want to talk about a subject called COMPLACENCY. This word is one that irks me a bit, and I seek to further understand what it means for others to be complacent.
Now, we can be complacent in many areas of our lives. This includes our careers, relationships, personal development, and more. But why? What gets people to this state of the dreaded “plateau”. Mindset Mondays are for setting the right frame of mind for the upcoming week, month and year. So lets do this.
CAREERS
Now, we can agree that this is the area of our lives that takes up the most of our time. The problem with this, is that SINCE we spend a lot of time at work, we often get complacent about building our legacies OUTSIDE of work.
Example, I was a bartender for a few years and worked really hard to get there. My shifts were normally very long, from 3pm to about 12am. By the time I finished and got home, I was EXHAUSTED and did not want to do anything else but sleep. The tricky thing here is that when I would get up, I wouldn’t get up at a good time to invest in myself, or read a book or otherwise. I was content with the money I was making as a bartender and just found that I only needed to work hard at work, not much outside.
This can be true for most of us. We might work a 9-5, for example, and we just think about resting or going out to a nice dinner after we get out of work at 5pm. We indulge, have a good time, and then repeat the next day. For some, this is a way of keeping sane. But is it really sane? Doing the same things over and over without growth can leave many (if not everybody) frustrated. That is why in the corporate world, we have pay raises and promotions, and extended vacation time. These are all ways for us to stay “motivated” for work, and feel like we are making PROGRESS.
RELATIONSHIPS
I remember I had a girlfriend that we really only did few things. None that were very productive and allowed us to grow professionally or mentally at all! This quickly became a sticky situation, because we just conformed and became complacent with each other. This of course let us drift apart more and more as the time went by, and we broke up. If the relationship is not growing, it is not healthy… in my opinion.
This holds true in any other relationship we might have. Lets take a close friend of ours that we grew up with. When the years go by, we focus on growing ourselves, and cultivating the right mindset… while our friend stays on the same level. This will inevitably create friction and a disparity of reliability. The things which one were characterized the friendship (i.e. drinking beer on a Friday afternoon), might not hold true to the person we have become, who has grown to acknowledge a better behavior than that. This is only a small example, but it will always work the same way.
A relationship is a two-way street. And if there is no growth in the relationship from both sides, then it will surely flatten out and become irrelevant and unfulfilling.
LEARNING
This one is critical for me, as I love to read. I have always strived to read more and more books. I remember my father told me to just “stop buying books!”
Its funny, however, that most people will not buy books.. but they will buy other things that could potentially WORSEN their lives as opposed to improving them. Now I am not opposed to indulging every now and then. Its just that it is so critical to understand the difference between INVESTING and SPENDING. What does that mean?
By definition, an investment can only be considered an investment if it improves your lifestyle/brings in a return.
Spending is just that, EXPENDING our money back out into the marketplace for circulation —- WITHOUT any return on it.
The learning curve for everyone is different. However, there is a time when people just don’t want to learn anymore. This comes into play much with the theme of humility, but people also think that they “know it all” too often. This is the poison for growth. We often think we know it all and do not need to learn any more. That is precisely when things start going WRONG for us.
Over all, complacency is a drug that many of us consume too much and too often. The cure for this is to constantly stretch ourselves and improve however we can.
In the end, as Tony Robbins says, “the secret to happiness, is PROGRESS”. Lets not allow complacency to hinder our progress.
Jonathan Echavarria 