I just need to sort my life out…
If sorting your life out was that easy,
you’d have done it by now
‘I just need to…’ is a funny phrase. It’s casual and sneaky. It drops into a sentence with the singular purpose of reducing the scale of what follows. From ‘I just need to find my phone’ to ‘I just need to sort my life out’. If either of these things was ‘just’ a matter of doing it, we would have done it by now. Nothing that follows ‘I just need to…’ is ‘just’-sized’.
I just need to get over myself. Really? And how are you going to do that? By saying ‘Come on, Me, just get over yourself’? By waving the magic ‘get over yourself’ wand?
If you hear yourself uttering this reductive phrase (and I bet you will, before the week is out), then take it as an opportunity to pause and consider - is ‘sorting my life out’ really just a matter of nailing this week’s to-do list and taking myself out for coffee with a nice new notebook?
Or is it something a little bigger. Does it actually involve looking at all the different parts of your life and identifying which bits need a bit of work? Could it mean getting honest about things that aren’t brilliant right now? Perhaps there’s a bit of challenge needed around what might be holding you back? Or a bit of bravery needed around truths that need to be told - to yourself, or to someone else?
Perhaps you ‘just need to sort out your next career move’. Does that just look like registering on Indeed.com? Or does that actually require some consideration about what has and hasn’t worked for you in the past? Finding the time to identify your values and motivations? Some acknowledgement that you could have been following someone else’s career expectation, rather than your own? Some discomfort around having to ask for feedback, and face the possibility of criticism? None of these are ‘just’ pieces of work - they are major self-developmental milestones and require an investment of time, headspace and commitment.
So do yourself a favour. Next time you brush away some major issue with ‘I just need to…’ take a moment to reflect on what you’re asking yourself to do, and how likely it is that you will be able to do it. It may be that you’re reducing this to a ‘just’ task, simply because you know the real task seems too big, overwhelming, complex to get your head round. So you have a few options:
Find one ‘just’ task in the overwhelm. I just need to ask my boss for feedback on that disastrous meeting to find out whether it was as bad as I thought. I just need to sign up for the webinar and see where it takes me. These really are ‘just-sized’. So crack on.
Sit with the real issue and acknowledge it. When we look honestly at things we’ve been avoiding, it can be a bit of a relief. And it may not be quite as enormous as you think
Find someone to help you work through it. An objective friend or coach are likely to be your best bets here. Someone who can help you identify what really needs to be done, and helps bring awareness to what it is that makes it so important or difficult that you haven’t done it yet.
‘I just need to acknowledge that I’ve been holding my team back by retaining control of the project because my status is attached to being the decision-maker, and I’m not sure what it would mean for me if I wasn’t in charge’ isn’t quite so snappy as ‘I need to sort my team out’, but it’s probably a lot more true and, with the support of a skilled coach, a lot more resolvable.
Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash