Ever feel like you're living in a futile world, where your efforts are going nowhere? Let's unravel this uncomfortable feeling together; let's question if futility really is all bad. Drawn from my experiences as a performance coach and a combat veteran, I'll guide you through the profound impact of hopelessness and the sensation of being unable to effect change. You're not alone in this journey; many high performing executives have felt this crippling lack of drive and enthusiasm.
Have you ever considered how the concept of futility has evolved from frivolity to hopelessness? Join me as we delve deep into the origins of the word 'futile', shedding light on our assumptions about life. Are trifles and frivolous behavior as futile as they seem? Spoiler alert - they might not be. It's time to challenge your perspective on hopelessness and craft the life you truly desire. Tune in for a conversation that is anything but futile.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
Ever feel like you're living in a futile world, where your efforts are going nowhere? Let's unravel this uncomfortable feeling together; let's question if futility really is all bad. Drawn from my experiences as a performance coach and a combat veteran, I'll guide you through the profound impact of hopelessness and the sensation of being unable to effect change. You're not alone in this journey; many high performing executives have felt this crippling lack of drive and enthusiasm.
Have you ever considered how the concept of futility has evolved from frivolity to hopelessness? Join me as we delve deep into the origins of the word 'futile', shedding light on our assumptions about life. Are trifles and frivolous behavior as futile as they seem? Spoiler alert - they might not be. It's time to challenge your perspective on hopelessness and craft the life you truly desire. Tune in for a conversation that is anything but futile.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
Welcome to the reload where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran, I help high performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. We're going to chew over there, joining us for an exploration in futility. Hopefully, you won't think that this episode is futile. What got me thinking about this topic is all of the conversations that I've had over the years with clients and also prospective clients, where they have communicated their sense of futility. And why I think it's useful for us to talk about this is because that sense of futility often goes hand in hand with feeling hopeless, this notion that some outside factor will never change. Therefore, you feel hopeless. And with prospects, with prospective clients, often they have this sensation that they won't be able to make the changes that they seek in their life. It's too big, it's too daunting, it's too overpowering. And with clients, when they are connected to a sense of futility and therefore hopelessness, it often kills their drive to perform or to create change, or even to care about what's happening around them. And with that introduction, you might be thinking to yourself wow, uplifting topic you got here, sean. What is there really to discuss? Well, I think that there is something pretty powerful to discuss, and that is this notion that is futility really all bad? Could there be times when recognizing that something is futile can be quite positive?
Speaker 1:And before we move on to that particular discussion, I thought it would be oh so wonderful to jump into the dictionary. I'm laughing at my own joke here. Well, that's not really a joke, but this notion of the dictionary. For those who listen to the show on a regular basis, you already know that I love going to the dictionary, but for so many new listeners this might be a bit strange. So let me explain briefly Our language. Whether it's English, french, german, one of the many dialects spoken in Africa, arabic, mandarin, japanese, whatever, I mean, it doesn't matter. Whatever our language is, and it doesn't even have to be an oral language, sign language, for instance, something that is somatic. But whatever our language is is so intimately connected to what we are able to conceptualize. And if we are not able to conceptualize a thing, if we're not able to connect to it in some way, then all of a sudden it's very difficult for us to actually carry it out in the world, our world, whether that is externally or internally. So I find that looking at the dictionary helps us see how other human beings related to a certain concept, so that it can help inform how we move forward.
Speaker 1:And if we look up the word futile, what we see is serving no useful purpose, completely ineffective. And the second definition is occupied with trifles, as in frivolous. Ooh and damn. Do my clients hate being frivolous, even though I think that would actually be something that could serve them quite powerfully, because most of them are very dour and serious people trying to get very important things done. Now those things actually are important, but in the absence of any play, any frivolity, their world starts to feel very gray and it often feels like the weight of the world is on their shoulders. In fact that's what almost every single client of mine has said over the years. So maybe trifles or frivolous behavior is not quite as futile as they seem to believe.
Speaker 1:And if we go to the word history and for those of you who are curious about this you can look it up in the Miriam Webstercom dictionary we see that the etymology of the word, that futile is borrowed from Middle French and Latin. Middle French borrowed from Latin futilis, meaning brittle, fragile, as in containers fragile, containers, serving no point or serving no purpose. And there's some speculation in the word history that it may be connected to a sense of a leaky container. But what's interesting for me is how the word has gone from brittle, fragile, serving no purpose, to the way that most of the clients that I work with tend to relate to it, which is hopelessness. And where does that come forward?
Speaker 1:Well, often when I work with somebody, I'm working with somebody at a strategic level of leadership. Whether they're the CEO president, a board member, vice president, doesn't really matter. They are individuals who contribute to the strategic direction of their organization and, as such, they are often attempting to drive change. This is how we've been doing it. Now I am proposing that we do it this other way and, obviously, anytime that you're going to try to introduce that sort of change, especially if it is a significant change to the way things have been done and if it's going to change the culture and the way that the organization perceives itself, then you are facing an uphill battle, because most people don't like change and organizations are made up of those people and therefore you are very frequently dealing with a lot of resistance.
Speaker 1:So it's quite natural for somebody to come to me and say, oh God, I really need to get away from this sense of futility because it all just seems so damn hopeless. Ah, tata, tata, tata, tata. Can we slow this down a little bit? Do we need to jump to that conclusion that there is no positive benefit to futility? What if? What if Futility or I should say recognizing that something is futile sets us free to move on?
Speaker 1:I've had a couple episodes on the mourning or grieving process. If you have lost someone in your life because they have died, that is not coming back. I'm sorry. I speak as somebody who in my combat deployments and in my family history and in my friendship circles, has lost a lot of people. There was one person in particular and I've done numerous episodes involving this topic, this story but one of my teammates, where I felt a sense of guilt and culpability because I missed something, I missed a detail, and then I watched him get killed and I carried that with me.
Speaker 1:Despite the efforts of so many wonderful coaches and therapists, psychedelic ceremonies, I carried that for 16 years this inability to truly recognize that it was not coming back. I would always just drag it back forward. And there were a lot of reasons why I did that, a number of reasons why I was not able to really allow myself to recognize and accept the futility of the guilt to which I was connected. I wasn't allowing myself to really close that grieving process. Now, thankfully, because of the work that I continued to do and the help that I continued to receive from very wonderful practitioners, I did end up closing that, I did end up reaching that sense of acceptance, and I am very grateful to say that that weight has been lifted and that I actually am able to think about my teammate in a very warm and loving way, because, oddly enough, one of the things that kept that episode or that scenario connected to me, or kept me connected to it, was the fact that I actually believed deep down that if I did not punish myself with that memory, that I was being a disloyal friend in some way, that I wasn't honoring his memory.
Speaker 1:And here I am now, in this other state of being, I guess, where I've accepted that he's gone and that I don't have to punish myself every day in the form of insomnia and poor sleep and various other sort of very negative inner narrative about myself. And yet I am still. I still remember him. I don't think about him every single day, but I think about him multiple times per week and I remember the good times that we had together and I remember just all the things that I managed to learn from him. And it turns out that I actually am able to keep his memory, but in a way that doesn't have to feel painful.
Speaker 1:So recognizing futility in a situation can actually be quite freeing and it can prevent us from allocating or dedicating further resources to something. Now, typically I guess this would show up more sort of on a project when we begin to recognize okay, this is not happening, this initiative that we are trying to achieve is not happening, we can cut our losses. You know this whole notion of a sunk cost fallacy that we continue to throw good money after bad because oh, no, no, no, if we just keep going, we'll be able to pull this thing out of the fire. No, there are times when it's done and to continue to allocate resources is actually going to amount to waste. And, as an executive, one of your primary responsibilities is to ensure the appropriate allocation of resources.
Speaker 1:I know some of you may have just had your head totally like snap back because I was talking about something very personal and now I'm talking about something very professional, but this sense of futility can apply in so many different domains of our life and, ultimately, if we see the virtuous side of futility, as we see it as a wake-up call to let us know, hey, stop. You know what is that expression? The first thing to do when you are in a hole is to stop digging, and that is so appropriate and so frequently I see people connected to some inner narrative, some hope or some fear or all of the above, and they refuse to stop digging. They think that as long as they just keep digging, then somehow it's going to get better, and so this recognition of futility can be tremendously powerful in letting us see, hey, stop. Just put the shovel down and take a look around you and figure out that right now you are in a hole and the continued action is not the way, or at least not the continued action that you were doing. Now there's this element of futility that I think a lot of people miss, and I want to share this secret with you. I mean it's not really a secret, but I guess, de facto, it becomes a secret because so many people miss it, and that is the impermanence of futility.
Speaker 1:So many people that I work with and there have been times where I have also done this right, so I am no better than any of my clients. In fact, part of what makes me effective with people is that I have been in so many bad scenarios and in many ways reacted quite poorly. I've had to learn the hard way but this notion that, oh, it's futile and it will never get better. And so if we go back to that definition from Miriam Webster and we start to look at okay, how is this word actually defined? There is nothing about the permanence of the condition, remember, futile serving no useful purpose, completely ineffective or, alternatively, occupied with trifles, as in frivolous, but nothing in there talks about duration of time. And so the secret that so many people miss is that they view that futility as being permanent. And so this is the element where we can begin to start to look at hey, what if this futility is temporary? Yeah, in the moment this initiative might be futile, or this culture transformation might be futile in the present moment, but it is entirely possible that down the road it will be achievable. And if you take nothing else from this episode, I think learning to distinguish the difference between that which is futile in the moment and that which may become possible down the road is such a critical element of wisdom and, you know, if I had to say, probably a really great life skill to master.
Speaker 1:And as I so often try to make these episodes practical in their application, what can you do? What can you do with this discussion? One thing is to simply write out the various challenges that you are facing and you can circle or star or in some other way denote the ones that you think are intractable or entirely futile and then, next to that, you can either create a little symbol for yourself or you can write it out permanent question mark. And if you can begin to have a glimmer of understanding or insight that it is not a permanent condition, yes, something may be futile right now.
Speaker 1:You may be attempting some sort of culture change, you may be attempting some sort of initiative, you may be having some sort of relationship difficulty with a friend, coworker, subordinate, family member, partner, child, whatever right and then ask yourself is this permanent? Can this can I do? I really believe, and, with the person next to me, truly believe that this could never, ever, ever get better. And from there, if you can recognize, okay, there's a chance that down the road this could be improved. It might be futile right now to attempt to improve this relationship, but maybe, quote unquote tomorrow there could be some possibility and then to arm yourself or to that sounds awfully hostile to equip yourself for that tomorrow. What might you need to change inside yourself to make that relationship better or to get that initiative introduced in a more positive, effective way, such that people want to get on board, or whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish. But then, going back to the example that I gave earlier, if this truly is an instance of a permanent condition for instance, someone has died that is never coming back. Luckily, when you look at human experience, there are actually relatively few things that are so permanent, and that, to me at least, is a cause for hope.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I hope that this episode was useful for you. I hope that you're able to take it and actually apply it to make your life a little bit better, even if it's only 1%, and if you think it's a fair exchange. You've valued what you got today. I'd love it if you would like subscribe, share, follow, thumbs up, whatever and really try to talk about it with someone else. Chances are, if it resonated with you, it's going to resonate with the people in your life and I would love it if you would talk to those individuals and that you both, or, if it's a group, that you all try to make it your own and figure out how this can be useful for you or don't. It's totally up to you. Until next time, take care of each other.