Life Suck - The Pain of Drain

There is a difference between when life sucks and when you get life sucked out of you. The first has to do with external forces weighing down on us or beating us down physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually. It can be a one-time incident or a series of difficulties or setbacks over time. 

Life is sucked out of you internally when your passion, engagement, and energy dissipate in a short period of time as an internal vacuum leaves us feeling listless and lifeless. With this there can be a quicker fix.

Internal life suck can happen when we are working more from our weaknesses and not our strengths. Correction from this internal drain can happen relatively quickly by finding ways to play to our talents with activities, thinking, or interactions with others that energize us and literally feel life-giving.

A few years ago I was in a university in another country speaking about talents all morning. I am energized by having an engaged crowd to interact with and teach new things. Despite the fact that these students were all studying English there were still language challenges, but I was having an invigorating time facilitating and answering questions.

At noon I was whisked off to a luncheon with several students and teachers. While waiting for food to be served and trying to engage in small talk, I felt my energy and excitement quickly waning. Lacking Connect talents in my top 5 the extra effort to communicate with people with limited English was grueling for a guy who only made it through high school French class by dating a girl who corrected my homework. I quickly found fatigue grinding me down to a shriveling ball of angst. Exhausted, I found myself plotting how to politely finish lunch and make an early departure back to the hotel where I could sleep for the rest of the afternoon.

As our meal wrapped up I was prepared to gracefully bow out and catch a taxi to the hotel, but my host escorted me to a coffee shop where a few students who had actually taken the CliftonStrengths assessment were waiting, excited to understand their talents. I hadn’t expected this and quickly flipped into coaching mode while my host played the role of translator. Within minutes I felt a wave of rejuvenation flow through my senses. It was exciting to see them grasp the concepts and revel in new insights. Before I knew it two hours had passed, and we only stopped because they had to get to class. When I finally got back to the hotel I was ready to go for a jog and pushed the nap back to bedtime.

This taught me the valuable lesson of Gains and Drains, an exercise that you can use and visit weekly, if not daily, to analyze and avoid life suck. We have a two page advanced version of it for our tool of the month that you can download here.

All the Best - Bert