Has anyone every responded to your question with:
It’s complicated…
It’s true that much of life is complicated.
Why do we seem to want it to be complicated?
I think most of us would agree that life is better when things are simple. We look back at the past and think about how simple life was “back then”.
The reality is that maybe it wasn’t as simple back then as it seems now. And maybe our lives can be simpler in the present.
Human Life
Much of human life is complicated. Think of how our anatomy works. The circulator system. The nervous system. It’s really quite complex and simple at the same time. How is it all possible?
Maybe we look for complexities in life to challenge ourselves. Maybe we look at situations as opportunities to make things more interesting.
A meeting with an old friend. We can simply just go. We have to think about it and wonder and complicate it. We can’t just go and be ourselves.
Speaking in public. We can’t see it for what it is and practice and go with the flow. We complicate it. We analyze every detail of it and build up all the negative outcomes that probably won’t occur.
In business, we look at a problem and assume the answer is a complicated one. Maybe we know that cold calling is the best way to increase sales. So we attend seminars. We listen to podcasts. We attend webinars. But we never actually do the most simple thing…make cold calls.
The Simple Life
What could you do right now to simplify your life?
What is driving your crazy and turning your head into knots?
That’s a key into what is too complicated in your life. Maybe it’s a relationship. Maybe it’s a project at work. Maybe it’s a hobby or a sport.
Take a step back and look at how you’ve been approach the situation. Then remove everything you have been doing and look for the simply answer.
Tiger Woods is one of the best golfers of all time. He’s probably the best.
Over the years he’s done many interviews and spoken many times about how he approaches the game. He more often than not talks about the simple things. He talks about how his dad taught him to see the shot or to see the result. He talks about putting to a picture, which is seeing the putt go in.
When Tiger talks about drills he talks about the basic fundamental drills he did as a kid. And he continued to do those drills throughout his prime. It was always the simple answer that helped Tiger achieve great things.
The Balance of Planning & Working
Planning and working are both needed. It’s good to make time to think about things. It’s good to make plans before you begin.
But ultimately if you want something to happen you have to act. You have to work. Not much comes in life without work and that’s true for our personal lives and for our work.
I don’t know what the exact percentages are for planning and working, but I think it has to skew toward working more than planning.
Some of the most successful people in life just started doing something and figured it out as they went along.
Even as I look back on the history of Ghost Blog Writers it all started with me writing a daily blog post. That was it. No plan. Just a commitment to write one post every evening.
Final Thought
Some of the people I admire the most in my life have kept it simple. They have simple outlooks on success and on life. They achieve great things by keeping it simple.
It can feel good to make something complicated in life. It makes us feel challenged. It makes us feeling important and busy and all those things.
But simple usually wins out in life. Answers are usually the most simple. Beautiful music is usually the most simple.
Step back from the things that are complicated in your life and look for the simple answer.
That’s usually the way to happiness and success.