You have the car MOT booked, the dog’s next jab and maybe a holiday. But what about your day to day maintenance – how well is that planned?
This happened in Japan – a ceremony for 2 machines that had been in operation for 30+ years. This idea comes out of Shinto, where an object used over many years becomes more than an object.
By contrast, Japan scores 3.4/10 on the OECD work-life balance. Only 25% of employees would report good welling vs 57% average globally. And there were 3000 over-work related deaths in a recent year.
In the West, the idea of a ceremony for a long-serving machine is alien. But even in a country that honours machines for long service, people are way below average in terms of wellbeing and many are literally worked to death. Why?
Pattern vs Culture
If it were culture, then Japan would score higher than average on the OECD wellbeing index. So what is it?
It’s a pattern. Business efficiency and economics means; identify resources, extract value, discard and replace them. But – as happened in this Japanese factory – there is an alternative. A choice. These Japanese machines had a value beyond what they could produce. The factory owner valued them.
How much do you value yourself? Enough to make sure you are maintained properly?
Default vs Design
I see the extraction pattern as the default in Western business and society. My first career was in corporate IT and eventually I became a statistic myself. I had a breakdown. I didn’t value myself enough to look after myself because that was what the system taught me. I look back and see that I looked after my team better than I looked after myself.
Does that sound familiar?
Business is about growth and shareholder return and how that is achieved is well down the priority list. The default teaches us to not value things other than what the business wants. But the way we do one thing impacts how we do others. So – in not valuing a resource other than what it can produce, we treat ourselves the same.
Wendy said “I was a bit of a shadow of myself. I was existing every day. She couldn’t get help for a serious health situation. She didn’t value herself enough because that’s what she’d learnt from business.
It’s a Choice
She’d built a successful business but ignored her own health. And things only started to change for them when she realised that there was a different choice she could make – to design life from the inside. And the biggest problem is that we live inside a system where the default is the only choice.
It’s not really about systems, processes, information, tools or apps. It’s about deciding “I value myself – this thing feeds me, but this one doesn’t”. Once you make that inner shift, things change.
Wendy said “he gave me ownership of my business back”. Actually, I didn’t. I can’t. What I did was show her where she wasn’t valuing herself, what that cost her and help her make a different choice. And once she felt better, she took ownership of her business.
Making that Choice
The reason most people don’t do this for themselves is that they simply can’t see the alternative. You’ll have heard colleagues say “I hate this, but I don’t know what else to do”. You may have said that yourself.
Seeing an alternative from inside the default is like a fish trying to understand the concept of a tiger. There is simply no frame of reference. You need someone outside your situation to point out how things could be different. And you need someone to walk alongside you while you form a new habit of design, or the default just draws you back in.
How To Make The Change
If you are serious about no longer following the default and choosing design instead, here’s a good place to begin.
- Decide. The act of deciding is powerful and significant. I love the etymology of the word decide: it means to cut off all other options. So notice the moment when you choose design and hang onto it.
- Be aware that what you’ve done for many years – follow the default – has shaped the person that you are now. In choosing design, that will bump up against the edges of your current self in ways that will be uncomfortable. It might appear as ‘it’s just easier to do this … but design means I must do this instead’.
- Choose it again tomorrow. Be okay falling off the wagon. Repeatedly. Choose again. Keep choosing again.
And – if you’re thinking “ooo, that sounds tricky” you’d be right. Tricky to do alone anyway.
The only way I can support you now is to invite you to reach out to me and have a call. Most people who do say “I didn’t expect to go there, but it’s what I needed”. I’ll start you off on the road https://neillawsoncoaching.as.me/clarity-call