The Buyback Loop
With every endeavor, we enter a buyback loop. This is especially true with our dreams. As we go forward in our quest to achieve, we will inevitably hit a point that hurts. It might hurt from the repetition. It might hurt from the boredom. It might hurt from the monotony. We all get sick of doing the same thing over and over again, no matter how exciting that thing was at the beginning.
We’ve been talking about consistency, though, and this is where the rubber meets the road. How do we balance the pain of repetition with keeping our mindset right so that we are staying consistent with what our dream demands? Because, the thing is, if we mentally check out of what we are doing because of how many times we’ve done it, then our quality dips. When our quality dips, our progress drops, and our frustration grows, which only pushes us closer to quitting on our dreams. So, how do we buy our dreams back? Let’s talk about the buyback loop.
1. Pain Point
If we stay in the magic of our dreams, we won’t hit the pain point. But it isn’t always possible to stay in the magic. Bad things are going to happen, and some of them will affect us more profoundly than others. This pain point occurs when we are grinding for our dreams. Whether it is doing the same thing repeatedly and burning out, or if something big happens that really hurts, we will hit this line.
I’ve been hitting a pain point with this PCS. Between the problems with the house we picked (we aren’t really sure we’ll go through with closing at this point), rushing to prepare our current house to sell, and overall just feeling very overwhelmed by the number of unanswered questions sitting in front of us, I have started to really struggle. Moving to Georgia and buying a new house were two of my dreams, and now they feel overwhelming. It’s not that the work has become monotonous; instead, it has become too much, and I was unprepared to handle it.
2. Audit
Once we hit that pain spot (or ideally before), we need to audit the tasks that are causing us this pain. We cannot delegate away our dreams. They are ours to achieve. But we can identify the parts that are genuinely sucking the life out of us at the moment and see if there is a way to bring someone else in to take care of that.
Usually, it takes my husband forcing me to sit down and explain the problem for me to reach this point. I’m much more naturally inclined to push through to the point of burnout rather than sit down and acknowledge where I need help. It’s definitely not the healthiest way to go about it, so I do recommend stopping before we hit that point or making sure we have someone in our lives who will stop us when they see us getting close to it. For this situation, it meant actually laying out everything we needed to do rather than keeping it all in my head. Then, we could figure out a real and achievable plan for how to get everything done on the timetable that we had.
3. Transfer Tasks
If we know precisely where the problem is, then we can seek real solutions to fix it. The solution isn’t to throw out our dreams entirely, but it is probably worth getting help in the areas we struggle. We don’t need to feel shame in handing off these things. This doesn’t show that we aren’t capable of handling our dream. This demonstrates that we are prioritizing our dreams by protecting ourselves in the process. If we burn out, our dream burns out with us.
This is why we have a community. We have to be willing and able (or have people who force us) to ask for help. My mom and I have already planned a second house-hunting trip to Georgia if we decide to look for a new place. We had two friends come over to help us basically empty our house into a storage unit for pictures. And then, another friend came over the day after and helped me deep clean my entire house for photos. Because we have an 11-month-old, everything requires an extra set of hands beyond my husband and me. It’s pretty hard to clean the bathroom when I’m also trying to keep my son from eating a bottle of shampoo.
4. Fill
Once we’ve transferred those tasks off our plate, then we can fill our time with the things that bring us life. These things energize us. They make us happy. They are why we got into this dream, to begin with. Not every day will be pretty on this journey to achieve, but if we can set ourselves up to stay in the games, the end will always be beautiful.
Maybe I didn’t get to fill my time with life-giving activities during this period because life quickly settled out once we passed the photos. But we did make it through without things turning into a fight between my husband and me, which can frequently happen when I hit a pain point and keep trying to push through. It also meant that we got through this while still getting a decent night’s sleep, which is definitely a win with a baby. Rather than staying up incredibly late to accomplish things at a standard that I really wouldn’t be proud of, we were able to finish everything in a timely manner and actually have a few minutes to relax before bed.
I know it’s not fun to think about the day when our dreams become really hard, but that day is coming. We see that with every dream we’ve had. We dream of parenthood but struggle with a child who is getting in fights at school. We dream of the perfect family pet but struggle when they eat our favorite shoes and get diarrhea on the rug. We dream of marriage but struggle with our partner constantly being gone on deployments. The pain is coming, and yeah, it’s going to suck when it does. But if we recognize the buyback loop, we can find a way to recover the love for our dream and keep pushing forward.