A while back I began asking my clients if they enjoyed their job. The reason why I began asking this question is because there seem to be a pattern between job happiness and life happiness. What I mean is the depressed people rarely like their job. It makes sense as you can’t expect to spend forty hours of your awakened week doing something you dislike and still expect to be feeling good and those that were comfortable in their job but were miserable, were usually in a relationship that they didn’t like.
Recently I’ve noticed a new pattern I’ve called ‘lack of drama’. Lack of drama happens when people have essentially pretty comfortable lives. Work is okay, the relationships they are in are good, family is good. They are relatively financially comfortable. They might have got a little complacent about making new goals or doing exciting things in their lives but they really don’t have much to moan about.
The problem is there is no drama in their lives. Nothing juicy waking them up or worrying them. There is a lack of drama. For some of us with drama filled lives we think of the prospects and think oh how idyllic, but the truth is even if the comfortable life feels very appealing, it isn’t sustainable. We humans need a bit of drama a bit of shazam and a bit of ka-pow going on for us otherwise bad things can start to happen.
When you deliberately create a drama for yourself it doesn’t make the old possibly negative dramas disappear. What does happen though, is that the new drama either puts the negative drama into a smaller perspective, when a new fulfilling drama is big enough and you are totally passionate about it or the old drama may still be there but just appears less important.
Some people have a higher drama threshold than others. For me fifty plus e-mails in my inbox is a drama to deal with so my drama threshold is relatively low right now. For others though, drama needs are met by going to watch an action movie. Other people need to be the Action Man in the action movie. Some people only get their drama needs met when they jump out of an aeroplane or physically beat up others. It’s different for different people but is essentially it’s all about meeting the human need for uncertainty.
NLP training can help you to identify this tendency in yourself but also to identify it in the clients you may work with. Speak to People Building about NLP training to earn your NLP Practitioner or NLP Master practitioner certification on our accredited courses.
So, if right now having read this, you evaluate your life and notice that it’s riddled with problems, consider creating a new drama for yourself. For example, jumping out of an aeroplane. If you set it as a goal or a challenge for yourself and make it something you need to spend your time and energy working towards. For example, getting physically fit, collecting money for charity or doing some publicity about it, so that you have the opportunity to distract yourself from the negative drama.
Then take the time to notice how the percentage of your time spent on your negative drama is reducing and gradually disappearing. So, there we go. People think drama is bad and perhaps it is not. It’s meeting a need to drive you towards the need for uncertainty, fulfilling your life and making you more of a rounded person. If your life is dull and boring right now go create some drama. Get dramatic.
By Gemma Bailey
www.peoplebuilding.co.uk
