THIS INSIGHT IS ACTUALLY A REPEAT OF ONE I DID SOME SIX YEARS AGO.  I’VE UPDATED IT A BIT, AND I THINK IT’S RELEVANT TO THESE DAYS, AND OUR PROBLEMS WITH CLUTTER!

You will all have heard the question which goes like: “How do you eat an elephant?”, and followed by the answer, “One bite at a time!”?

Everyone usually laughs knowingly, nods sagely and with a huge sigh, carries on doing exactly what they were doing before – struggling through the clutter in their lives! This topic has been coming up quite regularly in conversations I’ve had with a variety of clients. What I’ve started to realise is that it actually defines the paralysis many of us suffer when faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, – be they business or personal in nature. It’s probably never been as difficult in business as it is right now.

Just yesterday, one of my clients was expressing his frustration in not being able to do all the things he needed to do to sort his business out, and the thought of it was keeping him awake at night, bringing on panic attacks and generally de-motivating him. He knows what needs to be done, but the thought of all of it was proving too much.

He’s trying to eat the elephant in one bite. The picture this conjures up is obviously quite ludicrous – a man trying to stuff a 6-ton animal into his ever-widening jaws. (Something out of Looneytunes!) Even if it was possible to get it into his mouth, the weight of it would crush the man, and his digestive system would never cope with all that food. (He would probably need a powerful laxative and a lot of space!!)

Trying to cope with all the problems we take on, at once, is just like that! They tend to crush us, they wreak havoc with our digestive systems, and we tend to become a bit of pain in the butt to all around us! I remember when my wife went to the UK for a three-week trip some years ago. (She won’t mind me telling this story.) She’d been quite anxious and one morning she told me that she’d been worrying about all sorts of things, – getting to the airport on time, what to do when she arrives in Johannesburg, how to handle the crush at Heathrow, managing the transport system in the UK, the finances, and the trip back in three weeks time. And she hadn’t even left yet!

She was trying to take on the whole elephant in one bite.

Many of us do this, – much of the time. We tend to create problems that don’t exist and may never even occur.

So, – how do we overcome this habit? How do we start taking one bite of the elephant at a time?

Let me suggest the following:

• Carve up the elephant into cuts that you can handle at a sitting. You will get a fillet, some rump steak, some wing-rib, some pot-roasts etc. (Make a list of all those problems, those tasks that need doing, those plans that need action, – that have been building up in your mind to be a huge obstacle. Make sure it’s a written list.)
• Decide which cuts of meat you’re going to have first. (Prioritise those problems, goals, into tasks, and first of all, determine whether you should be doing it at all, or whether you can give it to someone else to do; then decide which require your attention first.)
• Decide on which days you’re going eat the fillet, the rump steak etc., and how many people you’re going have around for the meal. (Allocate specific dates to each task, and the names of the people you will require to assist you in accomplishing those tasks.)
• Forget the rest of the elephant and start with the first cut. If you’re like me, you will leave the best, most juicy cuts for last. (Put the thoughts of the obstacle out of your mind and address the first, most important task. Deal with the issues you least like doing first – its amazing how much stress you get rid of!)
• When you’ve finished the meal, clean up and throw the bones away. (Once the task has been accomplished, tick it off on your list and don’t re-visit it.)
• When the time comes for the next meal, take the cut from the freezer, prepare it, cook it, and eat it as before. (Move on to the next task, work your way through it, tick it off…and so on.)
• Eventually the freezer will be empty, the elephant will have been consumed, – and you will be amazed!! (You’ll get to the end of your list, the tasks will have been accomplished, and you will be able to look back on a job well done.)

There’s a wonderful example of this in the account of the creation of the world in the bible, in the book of Genesis. God could have just snapped His fingers and everything would have been in place in one big bang! He didn’t! He took it one day at a time.

Far too many of us allow opportunities to pass us by on the basis of “if only I could find the time to..”. Well, let me say this: – Time waits for no-one, so if you’re trying to find it you never will, for it will always elude you. You have to make the time! It’s a “decision” thing!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 9:24 am and is filed under Coaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.