142. Aligned Inconvenience
Is your life littered with inconveniences?
Tasks you’d rather not complete.
Irritating steps you’d like to skip.
Chores you’d prefer to outsource.
Whether it’s commuting two hours a day or ferrying your kiddos all over town or painstakingly monitoring and paying your credit card bill.
If so, it might be time to grab some scissors and find a way to snip some of these inconveniences out of your life.
What could you do with ten hours a week returned to your schedule?
What could you do with the brain space you’d get back if you weren’t always planning and prepping and navigating the various inconveniences that are currently eating up your attention?
Marvelous things, that’s what.
You could learn Python or gather clients for the soft launch of your new business or simply sit quietly and enjoy a cup of hot tea by yourself.
It’s not that all inconveniences are bad - they aren’t.
Because not all inconveniences are created equal.
Some of them help you become who you want to be.
Some of them help you build the life you want to build.
And some of them don’t.
In fact, some of them will take you one hundred percent in the opposite direction.
This is why it’s essential to weigh your life’s inconveniences against your values, your desires, your intentions for yourself and your life.
Are the inconveniences aligned?
If they are, that’s amazing. And you can still ask yourself if there are easier, faster, more pleasurable ways to do them.
BUT
If the inconveniences aren’t aligned, why are you doing them?
And more importantly, what needs to happen to eliminate them from your to do list?
Obviously you may not be able to eliminate all the inconveniences (and you likely wouldn’t want to), but finding ways to ditch a few and bring the ones you keep into deeper alignment will give you time and energy back and make your life feel a lot more delicious.
Tune in to this week’s episode to learn all about it.
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
What aligned inconvenience means.
Why choosing an inconvenience on purpose can be magical.
What I had to learn to tolerate as I started incorporating aligned inconvenience.
How I choose whether or not to add inconveniences into my life.
Easy changes to start with.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about aligned inconvenience.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. I hope you’re having a lovely day, I am. Here in Sacramento, California it’s been a really mild summer so far and that’s just been so delicious for me. I’ve been really enjoying it. I’ve also been traveling a ton, sort of by design, and then some of it is just because Alex Luchini is traveling for work and so sometimes I just go with her because my job allows me to work from anywhere.
By my job, I mean my business. So like one time she was like, “What’s the point of having this business where you can work from anywhere if you just always work from house?” Because as much as I do like travel, I’m also kind of a homebody. I like to be at home. I like to be in my own space. I like to have all my little things, like my desk setup, but also like my very specific olive oil that I really like, my pans, stuff like that. I’m a Taurus, right? We like to be at home, we like to have our creature comforts.
Anyways, but Alex does travel for work sometimes. So, so far this summer, or I guess if we include this spring, I’ve been to Seattle twice, I’ve been to Southern California once. We were just in San Francisco for pride. And we’re going back to San Francisco tomorrow for a trip that Alex has for work. And we were in Ohio recently to see some of my family and so I could show Alex my hometown.
And then in July, it’s July for you, but right now as I record this it’s still June for me. In July I’m going to Sonoma County, which I love, which has beautiful forests and trees that I really adore, big redwoods. I’m also going to Savannah, which I’ve always wanted to go to, but I’ve never been to. So that’s pretty exciting.
And then in August, we’re going to go back to Seattle to enjoy some of that gorgeous Seattle summer. It’s such a lovely season in Seattle. The mountains off and out, like it’s really beautiful usually in Seattle in the summer. Although sometimes it’s smoky, so fingers crossed that it’s not smoky when we’re there.
Anyways, so much travel and it actually is kind of irrelevant to what we’re talking about today. The concept I want to talk about, I’m calling it aligned inconvenience. And basically, it’s the idea of choosing inconvenience on purpose when it goes with your goals, when it goes with who you want to become, when it goes with what you want to create in your life.
So I think a lot of us probably have a lot of inconvenience in our lives. I, for one, I’m a person who does not like inconveniences. So I like to cut inconvenience out of my life. So there’s going to kind of be two different ways to think about this.
You might be a person who has a fuckload of inconvenience in your life. So you may be thinking, where can I cut this out? Like where can I eliminate inconvenience that’s not aligned with who I want to be and what kind of life I want to lead? Or you may be like me where you’re like, okay, I cut out a lot of inconvenience, now where do I need to add inconvenience back in when it’s aligned with who I want to be and what kind of life I want to lead?
So if we go back in time, if we rewind to several years in my life there used to be a lot more inconvenience. Back when I had my corporate tech job, I commuted to a different city where the office was. And in the beginning, I did that four days a week. Right before I quit that job I was only doing it three days a week, which was great. But still that was like, I don’t know, probably 45 minutes to an hour each way.
So even if it was a shorter commute, I think it was probably still at least several hours, right? I’m not going to do the math very well, y’all. Probably let’s just say four to six hours, right, a week. And that’s when I was only working three days a week. So if I’m working four days in the office, it’s even more and some people are working five days.
And I realize this was before the pandemic, so it’s possible a lot of y’all have gotten to work remotely or are maybe still working remotely, so it might not be that. But there could be other kinds of inconvenience, right? Like I, for one, still like to go grocery shopping in the grocery store. I like to pick out my fruits and vegetables and read labels and stuff like that.
But I know a lot of other people, they don’t like the inconvenience of shopping in the grocery store. It’s not aligned for them with who they want to be in the world and how they want their life to go. So they eliminate that by doing something like having their groceries delivered to their house. So that’s an example of selecting out of inconvenience for other people, that’s where I select into inconvenience it’s because I prefer that experience for myself.
So something I had noticed as I’d gone through and eliminated so much inconvenience for my life is that I was a little bit bored. I was like, okay, I’ve eliminated so much inconvenience, I work from home. I have this job I really love. I moved to this city where it’s very walkable and I can take these walks in the morning without even having to like, I don’t get in the car and drive somewhere else to walk, I walk in the neighborhood I live in.
I feel like I have eliminated so much inconvenience, right? And also Alex and I made the decision not to have children and so that makes for a much more convenient lifestyle. And I’m not saying that kids are inconvenient. I love children and respect them so deeply and I have the utmost respect for the work that parents are doing in the world. But raising children does come with a lot of tasks that could be labeled as inconvenient.
And they’re definitely very time consuming. They’re resource consuming, right? It takes time, it takes money, it takes energy. Like you’re raising human beings, right? We could go into a whole side rant about how I don’t think it makes sense to be raising human beings in small nuclear families, but that’s sort of a topic for a different podcast.
But again, I’m not actually advocating here for you to eliminate inconvenience across the board. What I’m actually advocating for here is for you to decide which inconvenience is aligned to who you want to be in the world and what kind of life you want to lead.
So if I were a person who decided that what I really wanted to do was ride horses all the time, then I would probably make choices about adding that activity in and that might involve inconvenience, like driving to a different area. It might involve paying fees. It might involve having to go through a period of time where I’m not very good at it.
This is actually a funny example because I sort of have decided I want to try riding horses. I’m not trying to ride horses all the time because I haven’t ridden a horse since I was a child. So I don’t even know if I’ll like it, but that’s something my brain is interested in. That’s a place where I’m like, oh, I think I’m going to select into a small amount of inconvenience to test that out.
I also realize that the word inconvenience may not resonate for all of you. For me, I chose this word for this concept because that’s been a blocker for me, right? It was easier for me to eliminate the inconveniences and to be like, oh, I just don’t want to do those and I’m going to be smart and figure out how to not have to.
But then there would be things I want to do, and this is why travel is relevant. I really like some of the experiences of travel. I really like seeing new places. I love to look at new trees and like flowers and plants. I love to eat at restaurants in places I haven’t been to or in places I’ve been to, but don’t live in anymore. I like to see people and go dancing and do all this stuff. But I don’t like the inconvenience of travel, right?
I do not like packing. I don’t like trying to remember all the little things I want to have. I’m also, like I said, I like being at home, I like having all my stuff. Like I like to sleep with a fan on and a very specific fan. So when I travel, usually there’s a fan available, but it’s not my very specific fan. Don’t worry, I have discovered that I can play noises on my phone and that is helpful.
But, to be able to travel, I have to be willing to embrace the inconvenience of it. And again, I chose that word because that’s what I resist. So if there’s something else that you resist, there may be another word that resonates more for you, right? It might be like aligned cost or aligned investment.
If maybe for you it’s less about convenience/inconvenience, but it’s more about this is going to cost my time, or this is going to cost my money, or this is going to cost my mental bandwidth. Really, what it’s about is choosing on purpose where you want to do things that are probably going to make your life maybe a little bit harder because the other part of it is the thing you want that you have chosen as who you want to be or what you want your life to be like.
So, on that note, where do you think you are? Do you think you have a lot of inconvenience in your life and career and relationships, and you would like to spend some time figuring out which of the inconvenience is not aligned and like snipping that out? Or are you more like where I am at this current time where actually your life feels very convenient, but it feels like you want to add some stuff back in? And so then it’s about selecting which inconveniences are aligned with who you want to be and who you want to become.
So I actually had a task that was given to be my coach Susan Hyatt, where she had me make a bingo board. It’s like inconvenient joys because they’re things that like will bring me joy, but that I won’t do because my brain is like, effort, inconvenience, I don’t want to. One thing in particular is I used to live in Seattle. Seattle has this really incredible LGBTQIA2S+ country dancing community that does line dancing and two step and I really, really adore it. You’ve probably heard me talk about it before.
And now that I live in Sacramento, there’s the inconvenience of either flying to Seattle to go there, or there’s the inconvenience of I could start something like that maybe in Sacramento, or the inconvenience of going to San Francisco because they also have that kind of thing. They have a dancing night like that, multiple nights, actually in San Francisco. And like kind of figuring out which of these inconveniences do I want to take on and how often, right?
So we were in Seattle a few weeks ago, and I did get to go dancing and it was spectacular. And then I was just in San Francisco, so I went to their event. And that was interesting, because even though going to Seattle involves flying on a plane, which is an inconvenience I don’t prefer, going to San Francisco involved going to a new venue with people I didn’t know.
And so actually, that one was more uncomfortable for me. It maybe wasn’t more inconvenient, like San Francisco I can drive there, right, in probably about the same amount of time it takes to get to Seattle. It depends on the traffic. We have some spectacular traffic down here in California. But the vulnerability or the bravery factor, I think, is a lot higher.
So that’s actually another thing you can think about. There’s the inconvenience factor and then you can balance that. And then there may also be like, what else is this going to require of me besides just a willingness to tolerate inconvenience?
So in addition to tolerating inconvenience, I had to tolerate the discomfort of going somewhere new and not knowing anybody. Whereas when I go through the inconvenience of going to Seattle, I get the delight of there being so many people I already know there. Of course, there are new people too. But I know a lot of people in that community. A lot of people, like I already have great people to dance with, I know how to get around the city, stuff like that.
And this applies for all kinds of stuff, right? It applies to inconvenient joys, which is what that bingo board was for me that Susan Hyatt had me make. But it can also be like other things like inconvenient things you want to do in your career because they’re aligned with who you want to be and what kind of career you want to build, right?
And so it might be the inconvenience of learning to code on the nights and weekends. Or it might be the inconvenience of having some very difficult conversations with a colleague or a supervisor so that you can create a more connected relationship with more understanding and have a better working relationship moving forward.
It might be the inconvenience of going back to school. You may be a person who really loves to go back to school and you’re super excited, but there probably would still be inconveniences, right? Or things to navigate.
So, basically, what I’m proposing here is that not all inconveniences are the same, it does not all count the same. And that choosing on purpose which inconvenience you want to select into your life is really magical. Kind of the way I think about it with myself is I only have so much capacity, just like there are 24 hours in a day and I like to sleep for eight to 10 of them.
It’s like I only have so many hours in which I can do things. And a lot of those hours are going to be taken up by, like I just said sleeping or feeding my body, taking long walks. I have this limited amount of time and I get to decide what I want to spend it on. I have this limited capacity to tolerate inconvenience and so I want to be really mindful about which inconveniences I’m choosing.
And, to me, the breakdown between whether I’m choosing an inconvenience or not, is it aligned to who I want to be? Is it aligned to the kind of life I want to live? Is it aligned to the kind of career I want to have? Is it aligned to the kind of relationships I want to have?
I’ve spoken before on the podcast about Alex, and I do so much together on creating connection and creating intimacy through and alongside conflict. And so that’s an inconvenience I choose because there are times when a conflict is brewing, when of course I’d rather not. It’s not what I necessarily would like to do with my next 20 minutes.
But because of my connection orientation and because of my commitment to the relationship and to who I want to be in the relationship, I choose to show up for that inconvenience. Even if I’m tired or even if it’s not what I would prefer to be doing in that moment, or I had other plants or something.
Now, I can already just hear the objections that you don’t get to choose which inconveniences you have. And I want to say sort of like a yes and a no to that, of course, there’s a both and kind of vibe around here. There are some things in life that are outside of our control, obviously, but there’s a lot that’s instead of our control.
And whenever we think about what we “have” to do, oftentimes, a lot of what we believe we have to do is informed by the socialization that we receive. And so there may be things in your life that you are like, oh, I have to do that because if I didn’t, what would people think? And if the thing is like, what would people think, that usually indicates to you that you do have choice there, and you have been choosing to do that inconvenience because if you don’t, other people may have thoughts.
And if you like that reason, that’s perfectly fine. But there are other things too, where we do live in an imperfect world. I’ve spoken on the podcast before about how I live in the United States where health insurance is tied to jobs for a lot of people and we live in a capitalist society and it does require money to get food and shelter and stuff like that, generally.
So it’s not about beating yourself up, if there are inconveniences that you don’t prefer, but you’re keeping for now. I think it’s more about stepping into a space of power in your own narrative and being honest with yourself about the choices you do have. And being willing to question why you do things and if you want to keep doing them. And being willing to make different choices than other people, even if they may have thoughts about it or talk shit about it.
I realize that making unconventional choices isn’t for everybody, but I just want it to be available as an option for you. If you want to make them, you are allowed, and you can do that. And yeah, other people may have thoughts, and you’re still allowed to do it. That being said, sometimes it is uncomfortable and sometimes it does involve a lot of internal and external work to navigate that.
And, as with all things, you don’t have to start with big sweeping changes to your life. And in fact, I don’t recommend that because that’s usually not very sustainable and it can feel kind of very alarming to your nervous system. So instead, I recommend little, tiny, tiny changes. We have that teaching, too small to fail, where you pick little tiny things that are easier to do, than they are to not do because they’re so tiny. And that’s the kind of changes I would suggest starting with.
If you have a lot of inconveniences in your life and you want to shrug some of those off, maybe you can start by making little, teeny changes about which inconveniences you’re no longer available for.
And if you’re in the other position where you’re more like where I am in my life, where you’re like, wow, I’ve eliminated so many inconveniences and that’s been really great and now I feel rested. And actually, I’m kind of bored, and I would like to do some shit. And the shit I would like to do is probably going to involve some inconvenience, then you can make little, teeny changes as well of dipping your toe into, like, oh.
It’s kind of like the thing with the horses. Part of me would like to ride horses. Okay, so like, what’s the tiniest step I can take towards that? What’s the tiniest amount of inconvenience I can add in so I can test and learn and see if I like that and see if that’s something where I want to invest more inconvenience?
And as with all things on the podcast, when we talk about it on the podcast, it might sound really easy and straightforward. And that doesn’t always mean it’s easy to apply. When we go to apply the teachings from the podcast, a lot of blockers can come up. A lot of obstacles can come up. A lot of internal objections can come up.
And that’s why in addition to the podcast I work with people one on one, I work with people in small groups, and I do my free group coaching calls so that I can help walk you through this because I know firsthand how easy it can be to talk about these things, and then how difficult it can be to apply them and to make the changes in your own life.
So, I do have a free group coaching call coming up on July 25 at 12pm Pacific and you can sign up for that. I have a link in the show notes, but there’s also going to be a link on my Instagram in that little link tree in the bio, so you can sign up there. I am currently accepting one on one clients. So if you want to come work with me in a private cozy container, we can do that.
And I’m also signing clients for the next round of Satisfied As Fuck small group. It starts in the fall, it’s going to be spectacular, and I would love to have you in any or all of these offerings.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all this week. Have a lovely Wednesday, and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. I hope you’re having a lovely day, I am. Here in Sacramento, California it’s been a really mild summer so far and that’s just been so delicious for me. I’ve been really enjoying it. I’ve also been traveling a ton, sort of by design, and then some of it is just because Alex Luchini is traveling for work and so sometimes I just go with her because my job allows me to work from anywhere.
By my job, I mean my business. So like one time she was like, “What’s the point of having this business where you can work from anywhere if you just always work from house?” Because as much as I do like travel, I’m also kind of a homebody. I like to be at home. I like to be in my own space. I like to have all my little things, like my desk setup, but also like my very specific olive oil that I really like, my pans, stuff like that. I’m a Taurus, right? We like to be at home, we like to have our creature comforts.
Anyways, but Alex does travel for work sometimes. So, so far this summer, or I guess if we include this spring, I’ve been to Seattle twice, I’ve been to Southern California once. We were just in San Francisco for pride. And we’re going back to San Francisco tomorrow for a trip that Alex has for work. And we were in Ohio recently to see some of my family and so I could show Alex my hometown.
And then in July, it’s July for you, but right now as I record this it’s still June for me. In July I’m going to Sonoma County, which I love, which has beautiful forests and trees that I really adore, big redwoods. I’m also going to Savannah, which I’ve always wanted to go to, but I’ve never been to. So that’s pretty exciting.
And then in August, we’re going to go back to Seattle to enjoy some of that gorgeous Seattle summer. It’s such a lovely season in Seattle. The mountains off and out, like it’s really beautiful usually in Seattle in the summer. Although sometimes it’s smoky, so fingers crossed that it’s not smoky when we’re there.
Anyways, so much travel and it actually is kind of irrelevant to what we’re talking about today. The concept I want to talk about, I’m calling it aligned inconvenience. And basically, it’s the idea of choosing inconvenience on purpose when it goes with your goals, when it goes with who you want to become, when it goes with what you want to create in your life.
So I think a lot of us probably have a lot of inconvenience in our lives. I, for one, I’m a person who does not like inconveniences. So I like to cut inconvenience out of my life. So there’s going to kind of be two different ways to think about this.
You might be a person who has a fuckload of inconvenience in your life. So you may be thinking, where can I cut this out? Like where can I eliminate inconvenience that’s not aligned with who I want to be and what kind of life I want to lead? Or you may be like me where you’re like, okay, I cut out a lot of inconvenience, now where do I need to add inconvenience back in when it’s aligned with who I want to be and what kind of life I want to lead?
So if we go back in time, if we rewind to several years in my life there used to be a lot more inconvenience. Back when I had my corporate tech job, I commuted to a different city where the office was. And in the beginning, I did that four days a week. Right before I quit that job I was only doing it three days a week, which was great. But still that was like, I don’t know, probably 45 minutes to an hour each way.
So even if it was a shorter commute, I think it was probably still at least several hours, right? I’m not going to do the math very well, y’all. Probably let’s just say four to six hours, right, a week. And that’s when I was only working three days a week. So if I’m working four days in the office, it’s even more and some people are working five days.
And I realize this was before the pandemic, so it’s possible a lot of y’all have gotten to work remotely or are maybe still working remotely, so it might not be that. But there could be other kinds of inconvenience, right? Like I, for one, still like to go grocery shopping in the grocery store. I like to pick out my fruits and vegetables and read labels and stuff like that.
But I know a lot of other people, they don’t like the inconvenience of shopping in the grocery store. It’s not aligned for them with who they want to be in the world and how they want their life to go. So they eliminate that by doing something like having their groceries delivered to their house. So that’s an example of selecting out of inconvenience for other people, that’s where I select into inconvenience it’s because I prefer that experience for myself.
So something I had noticed as I’d gone through and eliminated so much inconvenience for my life is that I was a little bit bored. I was like, okay, I’ve eliminated so much inconvenience, I work from home. I have this job I really love. I moved to this city where it’s very walkable and I can take these walks in the morning without even having to like, I don’t get in the car and drive somewhere else to walk, I walk in the neighborhood I live in.
I feel like I have eliminated so much inconvenience, right? And also Alex and I made the decision not to have children and so that makes for a much more convenient lifestyle. And I’m not saying that kids are inconvenient. I love children and respect them so deeply and I have the utmost respect for the work that parents are doing in the world. But raising children does come with a lot of tasks that could be labeled as inconvenient.
And they’re definitely very time consuming. They’re resource consuming, right? It takes time, it takes money, it takes energy. Like you’re raising human beings, right? We could go into a whole side rant about how I don’t think it makes sense to be raising human beings in small nuclear families, but that’s sort of a topic for a different podcast.
But again, I’m not actually advocating here for you to eliminate inconvenience across the board. What I’m actually advocating for here is for you to decide which inconvenience is aligned to who you want to be in the world and what kind of life you want to lead.
So if I were a person who decided that what I really wanted to do was ride horses all the time, then I would probably make choices about adding that activity in and that might involve inconvenience, like driving to a different area. It might involve paying fees. It might involve having to go through a period of time where I’m not very good at it.
This is actually a funny example because I sort of have decided I want to try riding horses. I’m not trying to ride horses all the time because I haven’t ridden a horse since I was a child. So I don’t even know if I’ll like it, but that’s something my brain is interested in. That’s a place where I’m like, oh, I think I’m going to select into a small amount of inconvenience to test that out.
I also realize that the word inconvenience may not resonate for all of you. For me, I chose this word for this concept because that’s been a blocker for me, right? It was easier for me to eliminate the inconveniences and to be like, oh, I just don’t want to do those and I’m going to be smart and figure out how to not have to.
But then there would be things I want to do, and this is why travel is relevant. I really like some of the experiences of travel. I really like seeing new places. I love to look at new trees and like flowers and plants. I love to eat at restaurants in places I haven’t been to or in places I’ve been to, but don’t live in anymore. I like to see people and go dancing and do all this stuff. But I don’t like the inconvenience of travel, right?
I do not like packing. I don’t like trying to remember all the little things I want to have. I’m also, like I said, I like being at home, I like having all my stuff. Like I like to sleep with a fan on and a very specific fan. So when I travel, usually there’s a fan available, but it’s not my very specific fan. Don’t worry, I have discovered that I can play noises on my phone and that is helpful.
But, to be able to travel, I have to be willing to embrace the inconvenience of it. And again, I chose that word because that’s what I resist. So if there’s something else that you resist, there may be another word that resonates more for you, right? It might be like aligned cost or aligned investment.
If maybe for you it’s less about convenience/inconvenience, but it’s more about this is going to cost my time, or this is going to cost my money, or this is going to cost my mental bandwidth. Really, what it’s about is choosing on purpose where you want to do things that are probably going to make your life maybe a little bit harder because the other part of it is the thing you want that you have chosen as who you want to be or what you want your life to be like.
So, on that note, where do you think you are? Do you think you have a lot of inconvenience in your life and career and relationships, and you would like to spend some time figuring out which of the inconvenience is not aligned and like snipping that out? Or are you more like where I am at this current time where actually your life feels very convenient, but it feels like you want to add some stuff back in? And so then it’s about selecting which inconveniences are aligned with who you want to be and who you want to become.
So I actually had a task that was given to be my coach Susan Hyatt, where she had me make a bingo board. It’s like inconvenient joys because they’re things that like will bring me joy, but that I won’t do because my brain is like, effort, inconvenience, I don’t want to. One thing in particular is I used to live in Seattle. Seattle has this really incredible LGBTQIA2S+ country dancing community that does line dancing and two step and I really, really adore it. You’ve probably heard me talk about it before.
And now that I live in Sacramento, there’s the inconvenience of either flying to Seattle to go there, or there’s the inconvenience of I could start something like that maybe in Sacramento, or the inconvenience of going to San Francisco because they also have that kind of thing. They have a dancing night like that, multiple nights, actually in San Francisco. And like kind of figuring out which of these inconveniences do I want to take on and how often, right?
So we were in Seattle a few weeks ago, and I did get to go dancing and it was spectacular. And then I was just in San Francisco, so I went to their event. And that was interesting, because even though going to Seattle involves flying on a plane, which is an inconvenience I don’t prefer, going to San Francisco involved going to a new venue with people I didn’t know.
And so actually, that one was more uncomfortable for me. It maybe wasn’t more inconvenient, like San Francisco I can drive there, right, in probably about the same amount of time it takes to get to Seattle. It depends on the traffic. We have some spectacular traffic down here in California. But the vulnerability or the bravery factor, I think, is a lot higher.
So that’s actually another thing you can think about. There’s the inconvenience factor and then you can balance that. And then there may also be like, what else is this going to require of me besides just a willingness to tolerate inconvenience?
So in addition to tolerating inconvenience, I had to tolerate the discomfort of going somewhere new and not knowing anybody. Whereas when I go through the inconvenience of going to Seattle, I get the delight of there being so many people I already know there. Of course, there are new people too. But I know a lot of people in that community. A lot of people, like I already have great people to dance with, I know how to get around the city, stuff like that.
And this applies for all kinds of stuff, right? It applies to inconvenient joys, which is what that bingo board was for me that Susan Hyatt had me make. But it can also be like other things like inconvenient things you want to do in your career because they’re aligned with who you want to be and what kind of career you want to build, right?
And so it might be the inconvenience of learning to code on the nights and weekends. Or it might be the inconvenience of having some very difficult conversations with a colleague or a supervisor so that you can create a more connected relationship with more understanding and have a better working relationship moving forward.
It might be the inconvenience of going back to school. You may be a person who really loves to go back to school and you’re super excited, but there probably would still be inconveniences, right? Or things to navigate.
So, basically, what I’m proposing here is that not all inconveniences are the same, it does not all count the same. And that choosing on purpose which inconvenience you want to select into your life is really magical. Kind of the way I think about it with myself is I only have so much capacity, just like there are 24 hours in a day and I like to sleep for eight to 10 of them.
It’s like I only have so many hours in which I can do things. And a lot of those hours are going to be taken up by, like I just said sleeping or feeding my body, taking long walks. I have this limited amount of time and I get to decide what I want to spend it on. I have this limited capacity to tolerate inconvenience and so I want to be really mindful about which inconveniences I’m choosing.
And, to me, the breakdown between whether I’m choosing an inconvenience or not, is it aligned to who I want to be? Is it aligned to the kind of life I want to live? Is it aligned to the kind of career I want to have? Is it aligned to the kind of relationships I want to have?
I’ve spoken before on the podcast about Alex, and I do so much together on creating connection and creating intimacy through and alongside conflict. And so that’s an inconvenience I choose because there are times when a conflict is brewing, when of course I’d rather not. It’s not what I necessarily would like to do with my next 20 minutes.
But because of my connection orientation and because of my commitment to the relationship and to who I want to be in the relationship, I choose to show up for that inconvenience. Even if I’m tired or even if it’s not what I would prefer to be doing in that moment, or I had other plants or something.
Now, I can already just hear the objections that you don’t get to choose which inconveniences you have. And I want to say sort of like a yes and a no to that, of course, there’s a both and kind of vibe around here. There are some things in life that are outside of our control, obviously, but there’s a lot that’s instead of our control.
And whenever we think about what we “have” to do, oftentimes, a lot of what we believe we have to do is informed by the socialization that we receive. And so there may be things in your life that you are like, oh, I have to do that because if I didn’t, what would people think? And if the thing is like, what would people think, that usually indicates to you that you do have choice there, and you have been choosing to do that inconvenience because if you don’t, other people may have thoughts.
And if you like that reason, that’s perfectly fine. But there are other things too, where we do live in an imperfect world. I’ve spoken on the podcast before about how I live in the United States where health insurance is tied to jobs for a lot of people and we live in a capitalist society and it does require money to get food and shelter and stuff like that, generally.
So it’s not about beating yourself up, if there are inconveniences that you don’t prefer, but you’re keeping for now. I think it’s more about stepping into a space of power in your own narrative and being honest with yourself about the choices you do have. And being willing to question why you do things and if you want to keep doing them. And being willing to make different choices than other people, even if they may have thoughts about it or talk shit about it.
I realize that making unconventional choices isn’t for everybody, but I just want it to be available as an option for you. If you want to make them, you are allowed, and you can do that. And yeah, other people may have thoughts, and you’re still allowed to do it. That being said, sometimes it is uncomfortable and sometimes it does involve a lot of internal and external work to navigate that.
And, as with all things, you don’t have to start with big sweeping changes to your life. And in fact, I don’t recommend that because that’s usually not very sustainable and it can feel kind of very alarming to your nervous system. So instead, I recommend little, tiny, tiny changes. We have that teaching, too small to fail, where you pick little tiny things that are easier to do, than they are to not do because they’re so tiny. And that’s the kind of changes I would suggest starting with.
If you have a lot of inconveniences in your life and you want to shrug some of those off, maybe you can start by making little, teeny changes about which inconveniences you’re no longer available for.
And if you’re in the other position where you’re more like where I am in my life, where you’re like, wow, I’ve eliminated so many inconveniences and that’s been really great and now I feel rested. And actually, I’m kind of bored, and I would like to do some shit. And the shit I would like to do is probably going to involve some inconvenience, then you can make little, teeny changes as well of dipping your toe into, like, oh.
It’s kind of like the thing with the horses. Part of me would like to ride horses. Okay, so like, what’s the tiniest step I can take towards that? What’s the tiniest amount of inconvenience I can add in so I can test and learn and see if I like that and see if that’s something where I want to invest more inconvenience?
And as with all things on the podcast, when we talk about it on the podcast, it might sound really easy and straightforward. And that doesn’t always mean it’s easy to apply. When we go to apply the teachings from the podcast, a lot of blockers can come up. A lot of obstacles can come up. A lot of internal objections can come up.
And that’s why in addition to the podcast I work with people one on one, I work with people in small groups, and I do my free group coaching calls so that I can help walk you through this because I know firsthand how easy it can be to talk about these things, and then how difficult it can be to apply them and to make the changes in your own life.
So, I do have a free group coaching call coming up on July 25 at 12pm Pacific and you can sign up for that. I have a link in the show notes, but there’s also going to be a link on my Instagram in that little link tree in the bio, so you can sign up there. I am currently accepting one on one clients. So if you want to come work with me in a private cozy container, we can do that.
And I’m also signing clients for the next round of Satisfied As Fuck small group. It starts in the fall, it’s going to be spectacular, and I would love to have you in any or all of these offerings.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all this week. Have a lovely Wednesday, and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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