The following is an excerpt from ‘The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Chris Williamson: If You Don’t Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over!, Dec 28, 2025’
Chris Williamson shared this question, which Steven Bartlett offered back to him, “If this was a movie and the audience were screaming at you, what would they be screaming?”
Here was Chris’ response:
“You’re already doing enough. You’re already doing enough. Stop whipping yourself into submission, thinking that your happiness sits on the other side of the next set of goals that you’re going to achieve.
You’ve already achieved goals that you said would make you happy. So if you haven’t made it now, if this isn’t when life is going to begin, then when are you going to start? There’s this wonderful idea of the deferred life hypothesis.
Deferred life hypothesis is basically the sort of common belief that our life hasn’t yet begun, that what’s happening now is a sort of prelude, it’s an intro to our life truly beginning. And upon reflection, what a lot of people realize is that this prelude that they run through was a mirage that sort of faded as they approached and they were actually just running toward the end of their life. Like they’re permanently putting things off.”
Wow! This is powerful.
“You’ve already achieved goals that you said would make you happy.”
How much do we defer for after we reach the next goal, the next stage, the next level or achievement? We neglect to celebrate our successes while in pursuit of the next… and the next… and the next… success.
I’m left thinking of my #OneWord for this school year: PAUSE.
“There is a lot I’m going to miss when I leave this job, what I don’t want to do is miss things while I still have time to enjoy them. I’m going to seek out opportunities to take pause in my day and truly experience the things I cherish.”
I want to leave my two schools in a way that they will thrive when I’m gone. The thing is that I can’t get lost in this goal and not take the time to appreciate all that I’ve already done. I’m not going to postpone happiness now so that I can feel slightly better about retiring and moving on. Joy doesn’t get put on hold ‘until I retire’.
This concept has really hit me. I am already doing enough… Appreciating this over the next 6 months will make this journey far more enjoyable. I will have spent 14 years with Coquitlam Open Leaning and 13 since Inquiry Hub was founded. I’ve spent those years hitting targets and goals, and working with my teams to make the schools better. I have done enough. That doesn’t mean that I don’t keep pushing, and I plan to leave everything as good as I can… but I don’t need to put blinders on and defer anything to finish off the last few months. Happiness, moments of pause, a sense of accomplishment… these are things that don’t need to wait.
