The other day I was on a coaching call with a client.
When she got on the call - she was in a frustrated place with many things at work. Her boss. Coworkers. The workload. Working nights and weekends. Exhaustion.
I invited her to slow down and to begin to look at things from 30,000 feet.
I asked her if she’d be willing to just look at things as they are and to “try on” seeing it from the perspective that she created things to be just as they are now. All the exhaustion and franticness.
She was more than willing to do that. She was so curious.
High performers often struggle with these types of things. They execute themselves into exhaustion. Note: She is by far the highest performer currently on her team.
As she was looking at how frantic she gets and the chaos she creates and how that creates unnecessary exhaustion - she noticed something.
She noticed that when she is making eggs and the yoke breaks - she doesn’t give a rip. But for her boyfriend - if he breaks the yoke he panics and gets super frustrated.
To which I said - “Sounds like you with your job.”
She paused. “God damnit!” she said as she began to laugh.
She continued “So often I get on our coaching calls and I don’t know where they are going to go but all that I know is you somehow ask the questions that help me get out of my own way and I usually end up laughing at and with myself and the day looks so much brighter. Thank you.”
We leaned in a bit more and discussed how exhausting it is to be constantly frustrated all day - and how that was contributing not only to her frustration at work during the day - but also how it contributed to her working on nights and weekends.
How about you? Where are you getting upset about the egg yoke breaking? What is it costing you?