How to Stop Accepting a Default Life
How many people do you know that are just accepting a default life?
What do I mean by “default life?”
A default life is a life that feels out of your control, where things just keep happening to you.
It can look like:
Being unhappy in your work but feeling too exhausted or overwhelmed to make any major changes.
Feeling hopeless when it comes to creating meaningful relationships.
Experiencing major burnout that spirals into health problems or even crisis.
Doing the same thing every day, year after year, and wondering where the time went, with your dreams and desires continuously being put on the back burner.
Or worse, not even having dreams or desires because your default life feels like a hamster wheel or roller coaster that you can’t escape.
It can feel like a powerless way to live, but through my work as a life coach I’ve seen that living a default life is more common than uncommon.
When someone decides to work with a coach, it’s usually because something happens that’s a reminder or wake up call that life is temporary.
Time goes by much quicker than we realize.
Or sometimes it feels like it goes by too slowly.
This is another clue to indicate you may be living a default life. If you’ve ever watched the clock, wanting your day to go faster so you can escape being present in your situation, you may be living a default life.
I used to be a third-grade teacher. I taught for twelve years before I realized it was not how I wanted to live the rest of my career and life.
In early October of my twelfth year, I decided that school year would be my final school year as a teacher. I told my principal, and she tried to talk me out of it. She said since I had the rest of the school year to change my mind, she wasn’t going to take me seriously until the following April, when I had to turn in my resignation paperwork.
But I was serious about it, so I told everyone. At first my colleagues all thought I would change my mind. Afterall, I had a secure, tenured teaching position. I could have stayed there for the rest of my career and never worried about money or health insurance again and I would have had the summers to travel and do whatever I wanted.
But that would have been my default life. I didn’t want to live a default life because I had seen my mother die much younger than any of us ever expected. I knew life is temporary and living by default was something I vowed never to do.
So when my teacher colleagues started finding out that I was really leaving the profession, it was interesting to me that so many of them wanted to talk about it. Many of them would come up to me on the playground during recess duty and say, “I wish I could quit, but now I’m too close to retirement,” or “I should have quit years ago but now it’s too late.” Those comments made me feel sad, but also I realized it’s not easy to step away from a default life.
Stepping away from your default life takes bravery and a leap of faith. It takes being able to break away from the security net that a default life often brings.
But that security net is something that many people get stuck in.
The first step is to decide you will create the life you want instead of living by default. Its a conscious decision.
So if you’re brave enough to decide that you do not want the default life, remember that you are probably different than most people. And remember that you can do it and it will be a better life than you can ever imagine.