#89: How to Know If Complacency Is Slowly Killing Your Dreams: 5 Questions to Ask Now

You know that great year you had with your spouse? The one where things finally felt easy? Somewhere in there, date night disappeared, conversations turned into scheduling logistics, and that loving feeling faded. You got comfortable. Things were fine, even good. And somewhere along the way you stopped doing the things that created it. That's complacency. And it happens to all of us, in our relationships, money, jobs, and dreams.

Today, we're talking about the difference between complacency and vigilance. We'll do the math on what it's costing you to be complacent and how to stay vigilant and enjoy the good place you're in at the same time.

You'll answer five questions to help you see where in your life complacency has quietly snuck in and catch it before you get surprised if and when everything goes sideways.

3 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE 

1️⃣ The things that got you to a good place — the check-ins, the effort, the attention — are the same things you have to keep doing once you're there. 

2️⃣ Vigilance isn't about being fearful. It's about being watchful so you keep the momentum going. 

3️⃣ A good year is a data point, not a finish line.

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Transcript

Speaker 3 0:01

You're never too busy, too tired, too old, or too anything to pursue your dreams. Welcome to the Distracted Dreamer Podcast, where you'll learn how to move all those never ending distractions aside and chase your dreams with confidence.

0:24

Hey, this is your host and friend, Carlene. Welcome back to the Distracted Dreamer podcast. If you're new here, I am thrilled to have you be part of this community, and if you are new, or even if you aren't new and you just haven't done so yet, make sure that you sign up for my free newsletter where I talk about the stuff going on in midlife for me and for you that doesn't quite make it onto the podcast. So you can go to coachcarlene.com/newsletter, or you can just click the link in the show notes, and then I'll land in your inbox every Tuesday. Okay. So today, I wanna ask you something, and just sit with it for a minute before you answer. Where in your life have you already let a good verdict convince you that the case is closed? Hang on to that question because we're going to come back to it. But first, I wanna share a story with you so you know where we're going here. Every time that I go in for a mammogram, I feel like I'm the defendant walking back into the courtroom. It's like the jury's been out, and now they're calling everybody back in, and I'm just standing there waiting for the foreperson to read the verdict. And, you know, there is nothing quite like the relief of hearing the word clear. And, you know, I felt that relief earlier this year. I'm more than three years clear. I've been moved from high risk to low risk. And on paper, that should be the end of the story. Clean verdict, case closed. Except it's not really. You know, the cancer could come back. They have all the stats in the world, and they don't still fully know. But here's what three years means to me. It means the risk went down. The risk didn't go away. And I have never once let a good verdict talk me into standing down. Every scan, every year, I still watch. I still ask the questions. I still treat my body like something worth staying alert for because I learned early that a clear result is a data point. It's not a finish line. Now, here's the part that I didn't expect, though. That same instinct that keeps me vigilant about my health is the exact instinct that most of us, including me, we lose it the moment our health, our money, our dreams, or our life look fine. It's like we have one good year, we get that one raise, or we have one quarter in our business where everything was great, and the vigilance, it just quietly clocks us out. And I've said this for years, complacency is the first step to crisis. It's not about being reckless or being ignorant. It's just the decision that you didn't even realize you made to stop paying attention the moment things look fine. And that's exactly when the real warnings get missed, whether it's your health, your money, your dreams, or your life. So that's what we're talking about today, what complacency actually is and how it sneaks in disguised as relief. And then I'm gonna give you five questions to help you find where it's already happening in your life. And then we're gonna do some math, I mean real math, on what it's costing you to stay comfortable right where you are. If you don't have anything to write with right now, pause me, go get something so that you will be ready when I give you the five questions, 'cause you're gonna wanna capture those. Now, by the end of this, you'll have so much clarity on where you've become complacent, because we all have these places. And you'll know what to stop doing, and what to start doing, and what to focus on so you aren't surprised when a good thing suddenly goes sideways. So let's start with the basics. What is complacency? Well, I can tell you what it isn't. It, it isn't laziness. It isn't giving up. Complacency is much quieter than that. It's actually what happens after you get a win. Like, you get the good scan, or you have that good quarter, or you're having a good year with your marriage, or maybe a great year with your kid and you're really connecting, or maybe your health is the best it's ever been. And then you know what your nervous system does? It does what it's supposed to do, and it kinda exhales, and it relaxes, and it says, "Hoo. Okay, we can stop watching now." The problem is that exhale says, "Stop watching." And then you keep not watching for a year, maybe for five years, and maybe nothing bad happens until it does. And when it does, it never feels like it came out of nowhere to the people who are paying attention. It only feels sudden to those of us who already clocked out. I think about this with money a lot. Let's say somebody pays off debt, you finally get some breathing room, and then you stop checking the accounts as closely because things feel fine right now. Or I think about it with marriages or relationships, where a hard season, it gets better, and the two people quietly stop doing the thing that actually got them to that good place. You know, like the check-ins and the date nights and the honest conversations. Because you know what? It just doesn't feel urgent anymore because everything is fine. Everything's good. And then I think about it with dreams, where you finally get some traction, and then you coast on that traction instead of staying in the work that built it. So this is just what happens when relief says, "Hey, you have permission to stop watching now before we go any further, I have a feeling there might be some tension here, because I don't want you leaving this episode more anxious than when you started it. Yes, of course, you should breathe a sign of relief when the good news comes. You should celebrate the good place that you're in. You should let yourself focus on what's going well instead of standing guard over it like it might get stolen from you. You are not supposed to become a Debbie Downer sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop. So this gets tricky really fast, right? If you're living in the moment and actually enjoying it, does that mean that you're being complacent? And if you're staying vigilant so you don't lose ground, does that mean you're not actually happy with where you are? I don't think it's either one. I think the difference isn't whether you feel good, it's whether you're still paying attention while you feel good. You can celebrate the clear scan and still show up for the next one. You can enjoy the calm season in your marriage and still have the honest conversation. You can sit in the relief of a good quarter and still open up your accounts. Complacency isn't feeling good about where you are, it's using how good you feel as a reason to stop looking and to stop watching. This isn't permission to white-knuckle every good moment or bracing for it to go wrong. That's its own kind of exhausting, and that is not what I'm asking of you. I'm asking you to hold both at once, to genuinely enjoy the good place that you're in, and keep the small habits that got you there. So celebration and attention, they were never in competition, but we just tend to treat them like they are. Okay, so with that in mind, I'm gonna give you those five questions. Go ahead and grab that notebook and pen if you haven't gotten it yet, because these are worth writing down so that you can go back to them anytime. Here's the first question to find out if you are being complacent anywhere in your life. So question number one: Where have I already let a good result talk me into standing down? Maybe it's a health thing like my scans. Maybe it's a really good performance review that made you stop tracking your own growth. Or maybe it's a relationship that finally feels calm, like there's not so much drama or questioning, so you stopped doing the work that got it there. Name the place where the good news turned into, "Well, there is no news because I'm not watching." Question number two: What am I no longer checking that I used to check closely? Now, this question is so practical. Here you're gonna think about the actual habits. So did you used to look at your bank account every week and now you don't look at it for months? Or did you used to ask your teenager real questions and now you just accept fine as an answer? The habit that you dropped, that's usually the tell Okay, question number three. If I'm honest with myself, is this me just being calm or is this avoidance? Real calm feels settled. Avoidance feels like relief. Like, you can usually tell the difference if you're willing to sit with it for a second instead of rushing past it. But this one you do need a few minutes to sit with it, so don't think that you can answer it right now. It's not meant to be answered quickly. Okay, question number four. What would I need to see change before I'd start paying attention again? If your honest answer is something like, "Well, I guess I'd need to lose a job. Like, if I get fired, I guess something went wrong. I guess I should've been paying attention," or you need the scan to come back different, or maybe you need the relationship to start falling apart, ooh, that's a warning. Waiting for a crisis to justify your attention means the crisis gets to go first. It means the crisis is in charge, you're not The last question, question number five, is what is staying comfortable here actually costing me right now? Not eventually, not in the future, right now. This is the one that most people skip, because it's easier to think about some far off future risk than the quiet cost that's happening today. Because complacency, it has a today price. It might be a marriage running on autopilot instead of connection, or it might be a dream that's technically still alive, but it hasn't had your real attention in months Okay, now let's do the math because I promised you that. And I don't want this to just be an idea that you're kind of nodding along and going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it." I don't want you to forget about it by dinner tonight, here's what I'm inviting you to think about. For whatever area came up the strongest in those five questions, ask yourself two numbers. First, what's the real cost if I stay complacent here for another year? Like, not a vague feeling, like an actual answer. Like, how much income will you lose? What about a marriage that is, is drifting? Are you gonna lose that marriage? Is divorce on the horizon if you don't keep going, if you don't pay attention? What about a dream that you have that goes another year without real progress? And the second number is, what's the cost of paying attention again? This is usually about effort, and it's usually smaller than you think. Like a monthly check-in on your bank accounts. That's just time. You can do that, or maybe it's having an honest conversation with your spouse or a friend. Or maybe it's rescheduling that appointment, you know, that doctor's appointment that you keep putting off. When you put those two numbers side by side, complacency almost never wins the math. It just wins the moment, because avoiding is easier than attending, right up until it isn't. So here's what I'm inviting you to do this week, starting with the mindset shift and then the action. The mindset shift is this: vigilance is not the same as fear. You don't have to live braced for disaster to stay engaged with your own life. I'm not scared every time I walk into that mammogram. I'm just not willing to let a good result convince me I don't need to keep showing up. And that's the posture I want for you, too. I don't want you to be anxious, just awake. Here's the action. Pick the one area that came up strongest for you in those questions. Just one. Don't try to fix your health or your money or your marriage and your dream all in the same week, because that's how nothing gets fixed at all. Pick the one place where you've gone quiet, and put one small check-in back on the calendar. This is not doing a massive overhaul to your life. Or maybe, um, make a monthly date with your money, or maybe ask your kid a real question instead of a surface one. Or maybe have a specific scheduled hour for the dream that you've let coast. And you know, if you wanna catch it earlier next time, build in a regular pause to check in with yourself. Once a month, once a season, whatever's realistic, sit down and ask, "Where have I gone quiet lately? What have I stopped watching because it's been calm for a while?" You don't need anyone else to hand you the answer here. You already know where you've stopped looking. You just have to actually stop and ask yourself. Go back to the question that I asked at the very top of this episode. Where in your life have you already let a good verdict convince you the case is closed? You have an answer now, and maybe it came to you in the first two minutes and you've just been waiting for me to catch up. That's the place to start. So let's recap real quick here. Complacency isn't recklessness or ignorance. It's the quiet decision to stop paying attention once things look fine, and that's exactly when the real warning gets missed. It also is not the opposite of enjoying your life. You can celebrate the good season and still keep watch. Again, here are the five questions to check in with yourself. Number one, where have I let a good result talk me into standing down? Number two, what do I stop checking? Number three, is this calm or avoidance? You might wanna sit with that one for a few minutes. Number four, what would I need to see change before I'd pay attention again? And what is this actually costing me today? And the math is simple. The cost of staying comfortable is almost always higher than the cost of paying attention. Getting a clear result is a gift. Just don't let it become the permission slip to stop showing up for your own life. If this episode spoke to you, send it to someone who's maybe been coasting on a good season and enjoying themselves, as they should, but it might just be a friendly reminder, to somebody who's gotten the good news or had a great quarter or finally feels settled because this is exactly the moment that they need to hear it because this is the moment that it's easiest to miss this stuff. Okay, my friend, thank you so much for being here with me. I will see you back here next week. Bye for now

Carlene 17:46

oh, and one more thing. This is the legal language. You know, the stuff that the lawyers put together, and they say that I need to read this to you. So here we go. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I'm not a licensed therapist. This podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professionals. Got it? Good. I will see you in the next episode.