September to-do list: be more organised, exercise, prioritise better, don’t work so much.
Just writing it down, I’m already tired.
And that’s no coincidence.
“I have to.” “I must.” “I can’t manage to.”
It seems harmless.
But these words set up an obligation, even a debt.
And sometimes the idea that who we are or what we do today isn’t enough.
Beyond the to-do list, there are sentences we end up taking as truths.
“I’m not strategic.”
“I lack self-confidence.”
“This team resists all change.”
“Here, managers don’t take responsibility.”
“This person will never change.”
I hear them often in my work.
The problem isn’t naming a difficulty.
It’s the moment an observation becomes a truth.
Because words direct our attention.
By repeating certain sentences, we end up looking for what confirms them.
We notice the situations that point that way more.
We interpret events through them.
And above all, we start acting on what we already believe to be true.
“I lack confidence” becomes a lens.
“This team is immature” becomes a way of managing.
“Everything has to be controlled” becomes a way of organising work.
And our behaviours sometimes produce precisely what they were trying to avoid.
If I see my team as immature, I control more.
I delegate less.
I give them less room to decide.
And a few months later, I can observe:
“See, they’re just not autonomous.”
That’s how a sentence can gradually become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Words don’t just describe our reality.
They help create it.
So this September, there may be another list to make.
Not the one with everything you need to achieve.
The one with the sentences you repeat so often you’ve forgotten they might only be hypotheses.
What sentence do you keep repeating about yourself, your teams or your organisation…
To the point of helping make it true?