Wife was grocery shopping with daughter yesterday. She was hurrying around, as usual, when she stopped and realized something powerful.

“There’s no rush!”

Nothing was pressing. There was no deadline for returning home. No other duties were demanding her attention.

What would you do in her shoes?

On the contrary, there’s always something you should be doing, right? There’s always another task to cross off the endless to do list. If you’re bored, you’re surely forgetting something urgent.

Whenever I encounter a life situation like this, I try to establish the guardrails. This helps me uncover the balance between them — the target which calls us.

It seems the one guardrail is being over-productive. Over-ambitious. Caring about too much — maybe everything.

Let’s call it anxiety.

That said, the opposite guardrail would be not caring at all. Unproductivity and ineffectiveness. Laziness.

Sounds like it would be indifference.

In between those two guardrails is a path worth traveling. One which requires an integrated life.

For lack of a better term, let’s call it a mix of peace and productivity.

Wife was able to separate herself from her default script — hurrying. She stepped outside herself and was able to analyze her actions. (It’s all about the meta!)

In an instant, she snapped out of her previous paradigm of anxiety and settled in on the path of peace and productivity.

Thus, wife relaxed and strolled through Publix, enjoying the time with daughter.

There was never a rush. It was perceived, and so it was felt and stressful.

If you are always hurrying then you may be missing out on the path due to hugging the guardrail.

But there’s no rush.

And it feels great to both realize it and live it out.

FYI: This marks an entire year of Leadership Vacuum — my sincere gift to you, Reader!

Want to know how to ruin anything? Your job, your family, holidays, and many other great and wonderful events?

It’s simple! Just follow my quick and easy formula.

How to Ruin Anything

1. Live in denial.

It’s great. Why confront reality when you can envision your own?

2. Get your hopes up.

Breed unrealistic expectations and grasp onto your ideals and envision your personal utopia daily.

3. Make plans on the ideal outcome.

Everything will be as good as you hope it will be. You can take that to the bank!

4. Crash and burn when reality fails to meet your expectations.

Man, and this time I was sure it would be absolutely perfect, just like I imagined a thousand times.

Expectations aren’t exactly dangerous, but they can be a real jerk. We set ’em up but they knock us down. Every time.

When we walk in the door with a gameplan written in stone and life rips it up, it’s a rotten day. When we change with our environment and allow our plans to change, we can often find a much better subplot in our story.

You still need a plan, but you need margin and flexibility for when things change.

Does that make sense?

Let’s establish the other guardrail, before anyone goes off the deep end.

The opposite of ridiculous expectations would be hopelessness. Carelessness. Don’t spend your time here either.

Either guardrail hurts and leaves you reeling in frustration as your experiences lie in ruin.

But between expectations and hopelessness is a wide area where you can be free to enjoy the gift of life.

I was holding my newborn daughter as we felt the occasional raindrop hit our skin. She didn’t make a single peep after we walked out of the apartment. It was warm. Warm, damp, and intriguing.

Lightning pulsed through the cloudy sky as we watched, exposing towering silhouettes of palm trees all around.

There have been many storms recently, but this is one we get to enjoy together, outside, in the dark.

We should have been inside — the sensible thing to do. Who would want to get all wet, anyway?

A man and his brand-new daughter, who apparently loves these kinds of experiences.

I wonder why we avoid and dislike storms so much. Storms are neutral. The ominous attributes we perceive are added by our minds.

Still, storms can cause quite a bit of damage, leaving us much worse than before.

But only if you see it that way.

It seems we could perceive them differently. What if we grew eager to see storms headed our way, knowing that destruction yields change which yields new life?

It’s too bad all we tend to see is an impending crisis.

We forget growth can be a significant by-product of storms.

God, thank you for the storms.

If you’re breathing, you’ve been through hard times. You’ve dealt with pain and frustration.

With the perspective which comes from time and maturity, you can look back at your experiences… and even appreciate them.

But what if it was possible to skip the frustration and pain, jumping straight to the appreciation of tomorrow?

First, let me validate whatever you’ve gone through. It was no picnic. It was rough and you don’t ever want to go through that again.

Yet somehow, you got past it. You moved on and lived to tell about it.

Now that months and years have passed, you can see the experience has shaped you in some beneficial way. Molded you for the better, perhaps.

Excellent! Nothing like a little perspective to improve your attitude.

Introducing my theory.

Since you know you something good will come of your hard times…

And you are eventually going to appreciate the hard times later…

And it will be another good story in the book of your life…

Why not skip to the end result right now? Why not experience today from tomorrow’s perspective, when you can appreciate your hard times more.

It’s a ridiculous idea, I know. Incredibly difficult to pull off, too.

But it just might work.

It’s too easy to focus on treating symptoms and ignore the root problem. For an example, allow me to mock myself for your enjoyment.

My grades were poor in certain key classes in college. Not so good. My study habits were deplorable and I knew it.

My response? I buckled down and forced myself to have marathon study sessions. I worked hard on the homework. I got help from classmates. I went to the professor’s office hours.

The result? My grades hardly improved. I saw my study habits as the main issue and I worked on it — only to realize I was just treating the symptom. Thus, I didn’t get the result I wanted.

The issue is not the issue.

The real issue, the root problem and not the symptom, was my major. Though I enjoyed the odd class, I am definitely not wired to be an Electrical Engineer. This observation is painfully obvious to me now, but it evaded me for too long.

Once I woke up, I switched my major to Computer Science. That, combined with good study habits, brought my grades up from “embarrassing” to “stellar!” I thrived and thoroughly enjoyed my classes.

(My grades would have improved dramatically even without better study habits, purely because I was much more interested in the material.)

The way we see the problem is the problem.
– Stephen R. Covey

The next time you have an issue, step outside yourself and examine the root cause of the problem. Are you using a band-aid when you actually need surgery? Are you taking antacids instead of eating better? Are you quitting your job because of your boss when you really need to work on your personal boundaries?

Instead of treating symptoms, your time is better spent discover the underlying problem.