Executive Inertia

Recently I met an amazing man who had studied at elite level and enjoyed an executive career with a global brand. He had lived and traveled all over the world in luxury.

After studying to enhance his qualifications, he returned to the UK and gradually lost his motivation and focus. For the next 10 years he took on short term consultancy roles or jobs which didn’t suit him. He spent a lot of time dwelling on what he had lost in terms of income and self-esteem. 

As his world shrunk he gained weight and his income disappeared. He worried constantly about his lack of money and trying to make ends meet.

By the time I met him at a networking event he had already made a decision to change his life. He had lost a significant amount of body weight and recognised he had to take responsibility for his situation before he could regain control.

He had been working on a project which really mattered to him for several years, but at the time of our first chat it was dead in the water. Money had reached crisis point and he had resorted to taking in a lodger to help with the mortgage.

Over a cup of tea we used some simple techniques to work on his limiting beliefs. He began to see just how much he had in his life – moving focus away from lack and into abundance. He realised he was procrastinating in many areas of his life and holding on to a lot of ‘stuff’ which wasn’t helping him. We spent a little time discussing this and what it revealed about him.

He said how much he wanted to be traveling again, living abroad and making an impact by living up to his enormous potential. He wanted to have pride in himself and his achievements.

I really admired this chap and could see how painful his situation was. I also knew I could help with his problem.  We started with his wardrobe which was crammed with frayed shirts, ripped shorts, holey socks and bobbly sweaters along with stacks of books, boxes and files.

He had retained all of the clothes from his ‘larger self’ even though they were now huge and unflattering. Ironically he also had shelves of expensive new shirts, socks and shorts he had been given but wasn’t using.

We discussed the Law of Attraction and the message he was sending out to the universe. The wardrobe was so full of clothes and clutter there was no space for anything new and wonderful to come into his life. He was hanging on to things ‘just in case’, he had kept ‘fat’ clothes as though he anticipated getting big again and wore shabby garments every day in preference to the beautiful new ones he could have chosen. 

No wonder his self esteem was shattered and everything was going wrong. He was living in ‘lack’ and the universe was just manifesting more lack for him.

Like many senior executives, this man did not appreciate being told what to do. At the same time, he wasn’t motivated to take action without having someone to encourage him. After a couple of hours of procrastination he had created a small pile of damaged clothes and thrown away the contents of two files…… it was obviously going to be a long job and I had another appointment to attend.

I reminded him to remove the clutter from his house as quickly as possible to unblock the stagnation he had been living with for 10 years and then left him to it.

A couple of weeks later we met again. He explained he now recognised 80% of the stuff crammed into cupboards around his home was of no use to him ….. although he hadn’t done anything about it.  In fact it had taken him over a week, until the previous Sunday afternoon, to get around to disposing of the small amount of clutter our meeting had generated.

However what really caught my attention was his excitement about the turn of events on the day after he removed the clutter. He had received spontaneous calls from two old contacts and then magnificent news that his treasured ‘dead in the water’ project might be back on track after 18 months of silence. 

To add to his delight, the scale of the project had increased, and now, by linking the contacts who had contacted him out of the blue, he could potentially make enough money to retire or do whatever he wanted for the rest of his life.

So, do you think he had connected the impact of clearing and removing the first pile of clutter with the flurry of opportunities and new activity on a long dead project? No!

And had he used some free time to clear more of his 80% of clutter? No, he hadn’t done that either!

So now I wait to see what happens. Is this talented young man transforming his life to feast by clearing the rest of his clutter, or succumbing to his executive inertia and sticking with famine?

What could you do and achieve if you had someone on your side with your success and welfare at heart?