What's preventing you from doing your best work ever – right now?
Some people are predisposed to answer this and other key question by blaming external conditions: the economy, their current role or organization, their boss or company, obligations to others, things that happened in the past, and the list goes on.
If you tend to blame external conditions for whatever is getting in your way, it's important to note that, despite the way you're used to thinking about life, you’re not a victim … you’re a volunteer.
You suit up and show up to do your life every day. It doesn’t come and do you. In that way, you are "volunteering," and you can change your mind, and your life, whenever you’re ready to do that.
External conditions are tough to change, and in that, can prove to be a seductive scapegoat if you want to keep yourself stuck where you are. You may not THINK you prefer being stuck, but if you’re doing it, there’s something inside you that’s being satisfied by it, even if it’s simply a sense of familiarity.
So, when stuck and thinking as if you are at the mercy of external conditions, the leadership challenge is to:
1. Notice you tend to blame external conditions (people, places, and situations around you), which are tough if not impossible to change, and are therefore only the shadow of the problem;
2. Look for what YOU can change about YOURSELF to remove your self-created barriers; and,
3. Reflect, reframe your thinking, and take appropriate action.
For extra credit, start catching yourself and correcting your thinking when it comes to blaming the outside world for whatever is wrong in your life—understand that more is changeable than you tend to think, and that most of it is an inside job; reframing your own thinking, and taking new / different action.
Go for it!
David