once again, you may be your own biggest obstacle.
by bill reeb
in my opinion, most people are rarely driven by just their own desires. rather, they are influenced heavily by the desires and expectations of those around them as well as by the roles they fill.
more: are you paralyzed by fear? | are you right where you’re supposed to be? | letting go is not giving up | your obligation to yourself | work smarter, not harder | why we risk change
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.
duty is synonymous with words like responsibility and obligation – and the thesaurus offers the phrase “what you have to do.” duty has intellectual and emotional ties to your value systems, too. therefore, to defy one’s duty is to default on one’s values.
someone’s sense of duty can be so strong that he or she will not even consider changing a plan or embracing a different idea, regardless of how dire the consequences might be. just consider the secret service agents who guard the president – it is their duty to jump in front of a bullet to protect the president. when duty to your job trumps self-preservation, that makes it clear how strong this emotion can be.
who wrote your guide book that details what your duties are as a parent, spouse, teacher, child and so on? what is your duty to your country? what is your duty to your job or other owners in your company? you might have a sense of duty that you need to “pull your own weight” in whatever you do, or that you should provide a minimum specific level of care for your loved ones. the expectations go on and on.
the problem with duty is that we rarely challenge its origin or the validity of this ingrained mindset. when you have a sense of duty about something, it often converts to a response akin to “stubbornness on steroids.”
i remember the many discussions with michaelle about her quitting her job at ibm so that she could earn her doctorate. i told her on numerous occasions that she could quit any time she wanted and go back to school. being very pragmatic and practical, she would ask, “how are we going to make this work, especially financially?” being the more risk-inclined between the two of us, i would say, “we’ll make it work.” my wife would then, unbeknownst to me, start to think thoughts like:
- bill is self-employed and his income is erratic;
- it’s tough to make it in small business today and i don’t want to put extra pressure on him;
- i have a good income with a great company. i should just stop being selfish;
- i might not be accepted into a ph.d. program anyway;
- i am not comfortable introducing this kind of drama and change into our lives;
- what if we make this change and i am not happy as a professor … how could i live with that? and so much more.
no matter how many times i would say to michaelle, “do what you want to do and we’ll be fine,” she would get caught up in some kind of internal duty dialogue that would quickly kill the idea.
one day, she went to lunch with a good friend of hers, who was also a previous partner of mine as well as a previous colleague of ours at ibm. after lunch with trudy, michaelle walked in, looked at me, and said, “i’m going to start applying to schools this week, and if i am accepted into a ph.d. program i like, i am going to quit ibm!”
my reaction was one of complete surprise. i wasn’t against the idea, but what could have changed between that morning (when the subject hadn’t been mentioned in months, maybe even a year) and after lunch that motivated this dramatic shift in conviction? when i asked, “what happened at lunch?” michaelle replied, “trudy told me that i deserved the chance to get my ph.d.!” i responded, “i have been telling you that i would support that change for years.”
she responded, “yes, but i did not believe you. and i thought it was selfish of me to put that kind of pressure on you to provide for us. i felt it was my duty to pull an equal financial weight in our relationship. but trudy told me that your being self-employed was the best job in the world because you get to do exactly what you want to do every day. trudy told me it was my turn now!”
so, here was a case where my wife’s sense of duty was so overwhelming that it was stopping her from giving real consideration to her desire.
it wasn’t me, it was not about her ability, or even her comfort with risk, but rather that she didn’t feel she had permission. once michaelle processed her conversation with trudy, she gave a higher priority to her evaluation of “fair” (in other words, it was her turn to pursue her dream as i was already pursing mine) and lowered the priority of her definition of duty regarding the contribution she should make to our family.
once this reprioritization occurred, permission was instantly granted. she never looked back, not for a moment, and she earned her ph.d. about four years later.
what sense of duty is holding you back from pursuing what you desire?
where might you want to consider reprioritizing so that your sense of duty falls more in line with what you really want?