The through line in all my work is living by design, not by default, the title of my book.
What is living by default? At its core, it is not questioning the assumptions that come with the decisions you make. It is following the herd. Listening to perceived wisdom. Accepting “that’s just how it is.”
What’s wrong with that? Nothing, so long as you are happy.
Most of the people I talk to aren’t happy though.
And I think I know why: they are living a default life.
The default is invisible until it isn’t
The sneaky thing about the default is that it’s like something caught at the corner of your eye. You don’t really see it until you see it. And once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.
The default is woven into society, business, culture and politics. Who gets celebrated in the media? Business leaders, top CEOs, film stars who have made multi-millions. We are told that these people “made it” – that they are successful and don’t we want to be like them?
When your start your own business, you inherit this programming and carry that into what you create. It shapes much of what you do, how you do it and how you view your results.
And you never consciously chose it for yourself. It’s just the way things are.
But it creates friction for business owners when they begin to realise that they don’t love what they have created – the life, the business, the health, the results. I’ve had first conversations with business owners who said things like:
“I’ve tried and tried and I just can’t make this work.”
“I need an exit strategy because I hate my business.”
“I’m on sick leave, I can’t go back, and I don’t know what else to do.”
They are no longer happy. But they can’t yet see the default they have been accepting. They are living inside an operating system they inherited without ever agreeing to it – and because it’s the only one they’ve ever known, it doesn’t register as a choice.
What the default actually sounds like
Here are a few examples I hear regularly:
“Business owners work 24/7/365.”
“Clients are hard to find these days so you have to work with whoever you get.”
“We need the money so I have to keep going.”
“I hate this, but my options are to sell up or just keep going.”
Notice what each of these has in common. There is an assumption inside every one of them – and the assumption is never questioned.
The default isn’t laziness. It isn’t a lack of ambition. It’s the belief that the way things are is the way things have to be. And it feels completely normal because the people around you are usually running the same operating system.
The Rob example
Consider that first conversation. Rob said “I’ve tried and tried and I just can’t make this work.”
Tried what? A strategy he’d seen a guru promoting. Tried how? The way several gurus said worked best.
The default here is to take “the thing” or “the way” and try to make it work for you. Not to question whether the thing itself is right for your business, your clients, your life. Not to ask whether the way was ever designed with someone like you in mind. Just to take what’s handed to you and apply more effort when it doesn’t work the way you thought it would.
And when it fails, the common conclusion is “I can’t make this work” – which easily translates into “there’s something wrong/lacking with me”. Neither of those are true. What is true is that “this was never meant for me to begin with.”
That distinction is everything. Because in the first, you failed and in the second, there was no way you could ever make it work.
Why the default is so hard to see
The default is particularly hard to question when it’s working – on the outside. When the revenue is there, the business is busy, and by every conventional measure things look fine, all is greater right?
But what if you aren’t actually happy? You feel ungrateful for questioning your luck, your results, your success.
And because then there’s no obvious moment of failure to trigger a rethink, you simply carry on. A slow, quiet friction that mars your life and a tiredness that sleep doesn’t fix.
And the higher you go, the less permission you feel to name it. You built something real. People depend on you. You made it. And so the default continues. Not because you chose it, but because stopping to question it feels wrong.
What changes when you finally see it
You realise that the definition of success you have been using – inherited actually – simply doesn’t work for you. You can look at your accounts and your cars and your homes and recognise the financial success, but when you ask yourself are you happy, you realise that “success” for you is really paying the bills and getting to the kids recitals.
You don’t need to burn everything down. That’s rarely what living by design requires.
It starts with a single question: did I choose this, or did I inherit it?
Not just the strategy. The model. The metrics. The version of success you’ve been running toward. The definition of a good week, a good client, a good life.
Most people have never been offered a genuine alternative – which is why the default doesn’t feel like a choice. It just feels like the way things are.
There is another way. And it doesn’t start with a grand plan or a dramatic pivot. It starts with the moment you catch something at the corner of your eye – and instead of looking away, you turn and look directly at it.
Most people spend their whole lives looking at it from the corner of their eye. You don’t have to.
If any of this has landed – as a genuine yes, that is me – a conversation costs nothing and changes more than most people expect. Book a 30-minute Virtual Coffee here: https://neillawsoncoaching.as.me/virtual-coffee