What is Escapism and Why Is it Such a Bad Thing? – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

You have questions. America’s number one business coach has answers. It’s your brought up from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of ask clay. Anything on the thrive time business coach radio show?

Yes, yes and

yes. Thrive nation. On today’s edition of ask me anything, we’re answering the question from a thriver. What is escapism will apparently on a. on a past shows, I’ve mentioned the phrase escapism and I have failed to define what it means and so we’re going to do a brief kind of a quick, deep dive. A quick submersion will escape into the realm of escapism. Please read the definition from Merriam Webster of escapism, escapism, habitual diversion of the mind to purely imaginative activity or entertainment as an escape from reality or routine. Let me give an example. Tattle on myself. You ready for it? For shuttle tattletale. Anytime that we watch a movie as a family and somebody continues to talk during the movie, I immediately go to sleep. I have the power to make myself go to sleep. No, I’m serious. Immediately if someone’s like, what’s going on in this scene?

What’s that? Oh, what? What have you seen this? I haven’t seen this. Who is in? Who is that? Is that. Who is that? Oh, well I remembered that. Richard Dreyfus. No. Is that. Is he from Seinfeld? I just, I can’t do them. Austin. I don’t understand what’s going on. I immediately go to sleep. That’s my move. I like that. I’m, I’m an immediate sleeper as well. Another example of escapism. Whenever they want an airplane, I always go sit in the very back of the plane and I leaned against the window and I put on a hood and I just try to hide until the drink cart arrives because I hate flying. It’s not fun so much. Another example of escapism. Every time I go to the mall, if I’m going to the mall and uh, I’m with somebody who’s shopping for clothes, I will immediately find the Asian massage and I will just pay him whatever it costs to have him just get after it.

Oh, that guy. Because I don’t want to walk around comparing prices or looking at different kinds of shoes or whatever it was on another example. Any time at all that I ever go on any road trip that is more than 20 minutes, I go to sleep every time I say it’s the way to do it every time we drive. And so it was like, come on, it’s been 20 minutes. I’m in full agreement with God to go, but I can’t stand road trips. I don’t know what to do. Uh, another, another example of escapism. Anytime that we go somewhere where it’s really hot, I try to come up with a list of ailments, injuries, excuses, reasons, obligations, and the reasons why I should not go there on vacation. My sweat glands have blocked. It’ll, it’ll be like, you know, we’re going to go to, let’s say Disney world or something.

And I’m always. Is it a good time of the year? Maybe we should kick the can down there. We go to the fall. I’ve heard Zika. I think Zeke is done. They’re going to start writing new book today and right. And so again, but escapism can be kind of a funny thing, right? But escapism also is rough when we’re coaching business owners because we’re coaching a business coach or a business owner and they don’t show up to their meeting, they’ve escaped it and they, uh, you wait 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes, they finally showed up about a half hour late for the meeting, let’s say. And they put down their car keys and their lottery tickets or when they just smell like they’d been drinking Jack Daniels or they definitely are high as a kite from weed or they email you typically always at three or four in the morning and they were playing video games when you’re dealing with an adult man who’s playing video games until three in the morning every night.

Yup. Uh, these are all. These are all forms of escapism. And I think everybody out there for being honest, there’s probably one area of your life go. I know a lot of people that does simply avoid doing their accounting and they play video games instead. They just never want to look at their checkbook. I know people that have a really terrible relationship with their spouse and rather than dealing with it, they just fill it up with soccer games or their phone time, phone time, social media. They just go to every single event possible to stay busy and they love to be on social media all the time. On instagram. Talk about how they feel to avoid dealing with the issue. So I’m going to ask you this question here today. What is your biggest limiting factor in your life or what is. What is the most uncomfortable part of your life right now?

What is the most. What’s the part of your life that is absolutely the toughest area. If you may, if you fix this, if you moved that figured a boulder out of the way, your life will just flow that, that, that, that, that river could just flow. That creek could just flow, but there’s this thing blocking it. It’s there’s something in your fuel line that’s just blocking. There’s something that’s blocking your ability to. It’s like the road to your success is blocked with. What is it? I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. It could be a bad relationship, it could be a bad partner, it could be bad accounting, it could be a bad product, it could be. I don’t know what it is, but you want to write down what that is today and then rather than looking for escapism to avoid dealing with it, you want to deal with the situation head on and it’s probably gonna feel a little uncomfortable, but you’re going to have massive success as a result of tackling that issue. So Chubb, we have a notable quotable from Jim Gaffigan, the New York Times bestselling author, comedian, and entrepreneur. Can you read this notable quotable?

Yeah. He says candy is constantly ending up in my house. It’s my children’s candy that we have confiscated for safekeeping. Suddenly I have this big bowl of temptation in my cupboard beckoning me to eat it. It doesn’t have to be good candy. I’ve eaten an entire bag of stale gummy bears on more than one occasion in the past month. I don’t think of

it as stealing. Hey, it’s my home and those kids don’t pay rent most of the time. I don’t even want to eat their candy, but late at night I’m confronted with the predicament, eat my kids candy or feel my feelings. Eating the candy always seems to win. So true. Freaking kid, he and those freaking feelings. He says, I’m late at night. I am confronted with the predicament. Eat My kids candy or feel my feelings. Always funny because it’s true. No, but I’m just saying everybody out there in our lives, in some area, we have an escapism. Yeah, and I would encourage you this week. Don’t escape the big issue. Deal with the issue. Head on. Deal with the partner that’s making you have problems. Deal with the the, the, the crazy customer that’s making you crazy. Deal with it. If you can deal with it, think about it.

I mean be wise about it. Think about can you handle the tradeoffs if the. If it doesn’t go that well, yeah, but if you can just deal with it and don’t give in to the natural habit force called escapism. Jump. I would say step one and tell me if you agree with this, Business coach clay would be a block out some time to do some actual self reflection and find out what these triggers or these escapism things are and are you referencing going to the mere store and buying a mirror? Yeah, tons of mirrors. If you’re a vampire, this is going to be hard to. What do you mean by reflection is you need to think about what are these things? What are your triggers? What you know Jim Gaffigan and this funny quote, he’s talking about this candy and that’s what how he escapes, but you have to know.

He has to know that that Candy Bowl is a distraction for him. So you need to know what these are. What is the log in your road, the boulder in your river, as you so aptly said, oh, thrive nation. You are an incredible audience. We appreciate you more than you know. Keep those questions coming in. You can email us to [email protected], and if you have yet to book your tickets to our next in person, thrive time show workshop. I would encourage you to do it today. It’s December seventh and eighth. Michael Levine, the legendary pr consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. He’s going to be there. We’re going to have a kin schmidt, the man responsible for the Harley Davidson Motor Company, turnaround from 1985 to 1999. He will be in attendance. Dr Robert Zellner will be there. It is going to be awesome. Learn more about it today by going to thrive time show.com. This is your year to thrive, but we cannot help you if we don’t get a chance to know and now that he knew.