Renegotiating Your Contract and Change

When we are born, we are handed a contract, environment, family, etc, and we aren’t given a choice. This is the hand you are dealt. Even if you read through the contract from front to back, there isn’t much you can negotiate. This is what you’re given. As we grow into adults, we learn we have choices, and new contracts to consider. We start to understand that even though we might have been molded into our given role through the non-negotiable contract, we have new choices now. We are familiar and well-practiced with our roles from years of being locked into the same contract.

Each year, we grow older, and we evaluate our situation. But do we ask often enough if perhaps we are too well rehearsed in our role and comfortable with our contracts in life? 

This is what I notice after years of athletics, coaching, and hopefully helping people actively pursue constant improvement. WE GET STUCK! WE GET COMFORTABLE! WE HAVE BLIND SPOTS! ALL OF US!!

We are driven by a combination of life experiences, our personality, our environment, our beliefs, and our inner passions and fears. Each year, we need to look at ourselves and ask, WHAT DO I WANT? How close am I to getting there? What is holding me back? And am I actually willing to change? 

Someone recently said to me, “Marilyn, why are you asking? What outcome are you trying to get by asking? What is it that YOU want?” The thing is…I knew exactly what I wanted. I knew the outcome I wanted. But was I willing to face fear, accept challenge, and actually make change to create the outcome I was hoping for? Hope is great, but we’ve all heard the saying, “Hope is nothing without action.” 

As you go into your new year, I challenge you to do this:

Ask yourself what you want.

Write down the fear you have.

Then make the change.

Make change by recognizing what YOU want. What contract do you want to sign this year and what are you negotiating for?