My wife bought our kids these cool round alarm clock radios for Christmas. They light up and change colors. There’s a little port that you can plug your phone in to charge it. We’ve had them for 6 months and for 6 months the alarms have been going off twice a morning at some pre-determined factory set time. Obviously no one has learned to clear these times…until today, because I am sick and tired of turning them off twice a morning. In fact, I’m making a vow to address all my daily rubs daily.
A “rub” by my definition are two things that conflict thereby causing me unhealthy friction. When I have too many rubs my day gets heated, unproductive and wasteful, which I hate. In my story about the clocks, I went for 6 months, that’s approximately 180 days, turning off two alarm clocks twice a day. That’s (180 x 2) x 2 = 720 times I turned off the alarms. Now I’ll admit I wasn’t the only one who turned them off so in fairness it cost the family 720 unnecessary trips to the alarm clock.
As I analysed the rub, I asked myself – “Why haven’t I re-programmed those alarms?” My honest answer was – “Because I’m not good at reading instructions.” So, what I had been doing was avoiding the pain of reading those instructions – because deep down I felt like I would fail, so I’d rather avoid doing it. Every morning this would play out in my subconscious the same way, and every morning it would cost me time and energy.
The brain is a very efficient thing…it will avoid doing anything that wastes its energy, but it will only follow the directions I have given it. Now that I’m more aware of my limiting belief around reading instructions I can make a real change in my life by challenging it – not just with the alarm clocks but with many other rubs in my life.
What kinds of rubs would you like to remove from your day? Pick one thing and see how you do.
Clint Best is a business coach and the founder of Kaizen Business Coaching in Kelowna, BC. Clint has been guiding forward thinking business owners through change and growth since 2002.
