The drive from London to the dreaming spires of Oxford is not remarkable; both cities are but the journey between is not. Here and there throughout the journey there will be things we each remark about, but on the whole it is a fairly mundane and bog standard trip. For many, it is quite boring.
The same can be said about building a house, growing a garden. There is excitement at the beginning when we dream and at the end when the house is complete or the garden is mature. In between these points, for many it is quite boring.
Dreams, ideas and plans can be exquisite, exciting, beautiful, and clear. Bringing them to life involves the mundane, mistakes, choices, and uncertainty. But it is in the reality of bringing ideas to life, through the struggle, we have the opportunity for greatness.
Sometimes what we create is actually the idea, other times it’s teams that go on to do great things, and still other times it’s stories we tell for years to come.
In many ways it is easy to dream, to plan, to have ideas. It’s hard, scary, and downright boring at times to bring ideas to life, but this is part of it and these moments of struggle, of fear, of anxiety, and yes, of boredom, should not be seen as unexpected and neither as indicators of failure or reasons to quit.
What if we expect them, look out for them, and weave them into our metrics of progress? When we expect the resistance to show up, it loses some of it power. When it comes we are able to greet it, “I was expecting you”, and even welcome it as an indicator of the journey we are on.
While it may not change the struggles we face or boredom we experience, it may help us attribute meaning to them. Change projects are rarely all unicorns and rainbows, but through the mundane, fear and boring bits, we create the dreams for a better future.
Photo by Jannik Selz
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