The Work Wasn't the Problem

Every year before we go on holiday, my family asks me to make the same promise.

"Please don't work."

Every year I agree.

Every year I genuinely mean it.

And every year I fail.

Not spectacularly.

Not by disappearing behind a laptop for the entire holiday.

But enough for everyone to notice.

Last year it was a campaign that simply couldn't wait.

The year before it was a CEO facing a crisis in one of my businesses.

This year...

Well, this year I've found another perfectly reasonable explanation for why I need to spend "just a little bit of time" working.

The strange thing is that every reason feels legitimate.

Every task really is important.

Every deadline genuinely matters.

Which made me wonder...

What if the work isn't the real reason I keep returning to it?

As a coaching psychologist, one of the biggest shifts in my thinking came when I stopped asking,

"How do I stop this behaviour?"

and started asking,

"What job is this behaviour doing?"

Because repeated behaviour is rarely random.

If it keeps showing up, it's usually doing a job.

So this holiday I turned the question on myself.

What job was the work doing?

At first, the answer seemed obvious.

I enjoy solving problems.

I enjoy helping people.

I enjoy making a difference.

All of that is true.

But it wasn't the whole truth.

The uncomfortable truth was that every crisis gave me something else.

It reminded me who I was.

When there's a problem to solve, I know exactly what to do.

I know how to help.

I know how to add value.

I know how to be useful.

Standing on a beach with my family is different.

There are no urgent decisions.

No crises.

No grateful emails.

No immediate evidence that I've made a difference to someone's day.

Just me.

A slightly out-of-shape sixty-year-old throwing a ball with his children.

As I stood there, I found myself wondering why it was easier to feel valuable in a business crisis than on a beach with the people I love most.

That wasn't an easy question to sit with.

The answer, I think, is that somewhere along the way I learned to measure my worth by what I contribute.

Not by who I am.

By what I do.

Suddenly the work made sense.

It wasn't stealing me away from my family because I lacked discipline.

It was reassuring me.

It was proving something.

Not to anyone else.

To me.

And that changed the way I think about behaviour.

Perhaps we spend too much time trying to eliminate behaviours without first understanding why they exist.

Perfectionism may be protecting us from criticism.

People-pleasing may be protecting relationships.

Overthinking may be protecting us from regret.

Staying constantly busy may be protecting us from having to ask much harder questions about ourselves.

The behaviour isn't the problem.

The behaviour is doing a job.

The difficulty comes when yesterday's solution quietly becomes today's limitation.

I've come to believe that every repeated behaviour was once a solution.

The real question isn't whether it's good or bad.

It's whether it's still solving today's problem...

...or yesterday's.

The irony isn't lost on me.

The people I love most have never asked me to prove my worth.

They've never measured me by how many problems I solve.

They've never asked me to earn my place in their lives.

They've simply wanted me there.

You'd think that would make it easy.

It doesn't.

Because understanding a pattern isn't the same as changing it.

Patterns that have protected us for years don't disappear simply because we've had an insight.

They loosen their grip gradually, as we learn that we no longer need the protection they once gave us.

Maybe that's why lasting change is rarely about trying harder.

Maybe it begins with understanding.

With recognising that the behaviour you've been fighting has been trying to help you all along.

And perhaps real change starts not when we ask,

"How do I stop doing this?"

but when we ask,

"What has this been trying to do for me?"

I'm writing this from my family holiday.

Which probably tells you I'm still learning.

But this year, instead of trying to fight the behaviour, I'm trying to understand it.

And somehow, that already feels like a different place to begin.