Making the Essential Enjoyable & Easy
Making Monday
I've heard it said that how we feel on Mondays is one of the clearest indicators of life satisfaction. Here is a quick thought on how to make Monday—and every day—work better...
3E Change: Joyful Perspective
This post is the second of three on the 3E Change Model at the core of the End the Fight process.
Let's start with a truism: we do things we like to do.
We don't need to infuse more energy or strategy or oversight to get them done.
Enjoyment is the motivation—if that “M” word is even relevant in this case.
These activities feel like play. We naturally gravitate toward them when we have free time or an open day.
The second step in the 3E Change Model is to look for ways to make essential actions more enjoyable.
We already know they are essential to our core values and identity, so we can remove friction to getting started and sticking with them in two ways.
First, we can change our perspective. We look at how we are thinking about these actions in ways that drain the joy from them, then revise those beliefs.
Let's use fitness as an example. If I think of exercise as a narrow, regimented set of activities I must force myself through to achieve some outcome in the future, it's just drudgery.
And who needs more of that?
If instead, I think of exercise as ANY movement that triggers physiological growth, then I have hundreds (maybe thousands) of creative ways to do it and can choose those I most enjoy.
Exercise becomes play and my inner child rushes to recess!
Second, we can tweak enjoyment of essential actions by layering on additional fun.
My enjoyment of using cardio machines is middling, but I LOVE listening to audio books, so I combine them.
Heck, I end up staying at the gym longer than I planned to get to the end of chapters. Zero willpower, self-discipline, or accountability required.
Here are a couple questions to consider when we have identified an action as Essential:
• How can I change my perspective about it to reduce drudgery and increase enjoyment?
• What activities might I layer on to make it more fun?
Together, let's end the fight to change—
Delmar
