“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” – Albert Einstein
“Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.” – M. Scott Peck
“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffett
Just before the completion of the Coaching Leadership Mastermind I did with my coach, she invited the group to consider where, in which dimensions of our lives, we added value either to ourselves or to others in the past 24 hours. We worked through The Wheel of Life and considered which dimensions of our lives were enriched in the past 24 hours?
Then my coach invited us to reflect on the past week, and consider where in the past week we add value to either ourselves or others? Lastly, she invited us to review the whole month and consider in a deeper way where did we add value to ourselves or others over the past month?
This exercise was eye-opening for many reasons. Firstly, I recognised how much value I add in a single day that I take for granted. I don’t always acknowledge my contributions through small things like greeting someone and asking how they are, or cooking dinner for my family, or packing my kids’ lunches, or washing and folding the laundry, or listening to a friend who needs a compassionate shoulder to lean on, or responding to someone’s text message in a timely and loving way… I know I can easily overlook these small gestures of support, or even resent some of the things on my plate – cue laundry and cooking dinner. And yet, these things add value. They mean something, because if they are not done, something is lost, or someone’s day might be a little less bright.
The other lesson I realised from this exercise was how quickly these smaller things fade into the background and become insignificant as the time frame gets longer. When I think about the past 24 hours, I can still easily identity the things I did in the last day that was value adding. This becomes harder when I’m thinking back over the past week, and then even harder still when I review the past month. And now imagine how much we do in one year, that goes unnoticed, or unacknowledged, because we simply forgot that at some point it was important to us. There is some real value in considering whether something we are upset about in this moment, will still matter one year from now.
And a deeper consideration here, is how the small things add up over time. I recently connected with a colleague, who had just returned from a trip to Australia to spend time with her children and grandchildren. She was inspired by my commitment to creating time for my children to spend time with their grandparents, and wanted to do the same for her family. And she did.
When I asked her how the trip had gone, she reflected that things did not go exactly as she had imagined, and that she now understood that it’s not about everything being perfect, or going exactly as planned, but about the little moments that add up to the whole experience when you look back on it. And that resonated for me. That has been my experience too. With anything big like creating a trip or family vacation, building a business, giving birth, raising a family etc., it’s not about everything working out perfectly – because we don’t ultimately control the outcome – it’s more about noticing the small moments in-between – the often-mundane moments – that eventually become the foundation of our life experiences, and who we become.
This brings me to the third lesson I took from this exercise, and that was the importance of self-acknowledgement, and of letting go of beating up on ourselves. We tend to focus on the goals we want to accomplish, and even though there is nothing wrong with having a goal, we also ultimately do not control the final outcome of a goal. We do not really control how much weight we release, how much money we make, how many clients we create, whether we get that promotion, whether we find the one, whether we win the race.
What we do control, is how we show up to each challenge and/or goal in our lives, our level of commitment and persistence, our willingness to stretch outside of our comfort zones, receive feedback, and continue to grow and learn. Ultimately, what’s more important, is who we become as we strive towards the goal, rather than whether we reach the goal or not.
When I review my year in a mindful way, not only considering whether I reached my goal, but also considering how much I was willing to get messy, step out of my comfort zone, take risks; when I consider my level of commitment and persistence, my openness to feedback and support, then even if I did not reach the goal, I’m surprised at my own learning and at who I became in the process of moving towards the goal.
Last week, on Halloween, we took our kids trick-or-treating around our neighbourhood. Our friends suggested that we visit this one house in the neighbourhood that was so beautifully and thoughtfully decorated for Halloween. My friend shared with me that the owner of the house also does elaborate decorations for Christmas and that she does this every year. It has become an establishment in the neighbourhood.
I noticed just how many people flocked to her house to see the lights and decorations, and then it hit me. This was one of the ways that this woman adds value to herself, others, and her community. This woman volunteers to bring joy, cheer, light, and celebration to our neighbourhood. She does not get paid to decorate her house or to spread cheer and wonder, and yet, my sense is that if she stopped decorating her house, people would be upset. People would miss it and would perhaps even ask her why she is no longer doing it.
I don’t know if anyone actually acknowledges her for the joy she is spreading in our neighbourhood. I think perhaps most people simply take it for granted? And yet, my sense is that she doesn’t need the acknowledgement, because she is not doing it just for others, she is doing it for herself. Or at least, that’s my hope. That she herself, gets tremendous joy from decorating her house, and that she does it as an act of self-care – that this is not a should for her, but a true want. That is all that matters really – am I doing what brings me joy and feels like a value-add to me? If this is something that I want to be doing, because it’s meaningful to me? And, if something no longer fills my cup, am I brave enough to let it go, and create something different that would fill my cup?