Living in a “Just” Society

Here is my latest conversational peeve:

      “I really hate my job.”

      “Yea, you seem kinda down.”

      “It just is to stressful, and I don’t like the vision of the company and it takes up my life.”

      “You just need to find a new job that you love. Then it’ll all be good.”

You just have find a new job.

   

Here’s another:

      “My son isn’t doing well in school.”

      “You just have to make him get his homework done”

      “He hates school”

      “You just have to tell him to suck it up and then find him the right college and he’ll be fine.”

You just have to make him, you just have to tell him.

Here’s another:

   “I feel fat. I just need to lose all this weight.”

      “You just need to exercise more.”

      “And it would help if I wasn’t eating everything in sight.”

      “You should just go to Weight Watchers. It works.”

Just exercise more, just come up with a plan. Just lose all the weight.

Here’s another:

      “I have nothing to wear.”

      “You just have to find a couple of pieces of clothing that fit you well and that’s all you need in your closet.”

      “Yes, but I hate shopping”

      “Oprah and Simple magazine both say you just have to have 5 good pieces of clothing that you can mix and match. You just have to find the store who have clothes that fit you right.“

 You just have to tell them to do it, you just have find clothing that fist you well, you just have to have 5 pieces of perfect clothing and you just have to find the right store.

*  *  *

There are so many ways to bring ideas to fruition, there are so many ways to parent, there are so many ways to simplify one’s life. If your goal setting starts with someone saying “you just” or you telling yourself “I just need to start a business/tell my kids to be better/find a better outfit, house, job, partner” TAKE CARE, proceed with caution.

We live in a time of quick fixes, quick solutions. But the steps and decisions it takes to make things, make change, make progress are huge.

Saying/hearing “you just need to” simplifies actions to their most basic core: “You just need to find a new/better/different job.” As we all know, this is a mountain of steps, a pile of actions and decisions.

“You just” comments are frequently accompanied by stories of people/friends/relatives “who just”… such as “my cousin Evan hated his job and he just went out and found the perfect job that pays so much more and now he’s so happy.”

After hearing a “you just need to” we can feel empowered, emboldened, ready to embrace to idea and indeed the world. “YES! I just need to find a different job. YES! I can do that! Yes, I will do that. Yes, sounds good.” “yea sure” and finally, “ugh.”

Yes, undoubtedly, cousin Evan is happier in his job and maybe you will be too. But undoubtedly, one of two things happened for cousin Evan getting that new job: One, he was lucky, in the right place at the right time with the right experience and getting the job easily which can and does happen but we all know is not the normal experience. Or, two, he put some serious time into figuring out what he wanted to do next, took steps to figure out how to get the job and who to talk to and probably got a fair amount of rejection before the dream job came to him. And then, weeks, months and perhaps years of work gets summed up as “Evan just went out and got his dream job.”

Of course, it’s a shorthand, to say “he just, you just, I just”. It makes for a better story because, really, no one wants to hear the saga of the months Evan put into finding a job. We like to look at the success and not the work. We like to look to the future and not the excruciating path. It serves us well to have such optimism, and I’m not advocating we all need to share the stories of pain and struggle all the time.

But it can also be a trap, a place where we can get stuck and can spiral into a sense of low self-esteem, of impossible expectations and freeze and ultimately end up standing still.  While you’re receiving advice that is sprinkled with “you just” you can feel energized, you can feel like you’re suiting up for battle of sorts, you can feel like you can take on the world… but after you hang up, leave the party, get in your car or however you exit the conversation, after you’ve had some time to mull over the initial enthusiasm, you can feel daunted by the work of “you just” - where is the start, what is the work, where is the support?

Hearing about Cousin Evan’s perfect job, you can feel like you need a change and that the need alone should make the work easy. When you start to face the work of change, it can be lonely, it can feel like you are having to work much harder than anyone else. It can cause you to feel incompetent in your own life. It can make you question whether will you ever get to say “I just decided I needed a new job and got one”. On the other side of change, it seems, is always a better story.

Doing the long-handed work of affecting change - regardless of what part of your life you are trying to change - can be humbling. It can be slow, it can be like trying to skip through molasses when a slow heave is the best you’ll be able to do. Life is, in fact, sometimes a lot of work. It is also can be breezy and easy and simple to navigate. But a reality check is needed when huge chunks of an action plan are easily bundled into a word - such as “you just need to market the idea” or “you just need to sell 20 of those” or “you just need to get 30 clients” or “you just need to get out more”. Actions probably need to be taken - but what is the hard part of the action? What is the shift that you need to make to get to the place where the action is working? What changes do you need to make? And how will you do it?

We will always want to make changes look easier than they really are - we are not a culture that easily shows our vulnerability or that quickly shares our struggle. And, we are also always in some level of change.  But letting yourself take the time, allowing yourself to feel the vulnerability of change, supporting yourself internally while you go through change, finding ways to actually do the work that is involved in any change - these are all the deeper waters of “you just”, these are the parts we don’t talk about….

Here’s where “you just” works for me… “you just add salt.” Yes!