A few weeks ago the ‘K’ key on my keyboard broke. It’s surprising how many K’s you actually have to use when trying to do anything online. A few weeks before that the charger port of my iPhone decided it would only charge my phone if I messed around with the cable for ten minutes and placed it in a weird position.
You may be thinking, “Well it sounds like you need to purchase a new keyboard or get that phone seen to (or get a new one),” but instead like most people I’ve pushed the problem under the carpet and have decided to work around them which means I’m currently using two broken keyboards which is extremely annoying and unproductive and I’m now used to stressing for ten minutes trying to figure out how to get my phone to charge!
Having gone a couple of weeks working this way, I’ve realised that pain reduces over time as it becomes part of our adopted reality. Typing on two keyboards is now second nature and I’ve just about figured out how to cut the fiddle-to-charge time down to about eight minutes. What worries me the most is just how quickly these annoyances are accepted and how this can often apply to much bigger problems than a broken keyboard.
How many people know their relationship is failing but are too scared to sit down and talk it through? How many people have put on weight and their health is suffering but think they’ll tackle it when they have the time? How many people are doing a job that drains them of life but has become an accepted part of their everyday reality?
“To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.”Viktor E. Frankl
This ingenious mechanism of the mind to dull pain over time for our own sanity can also be a huge obstacle in our ability to live authentically and be at our most vital.
If there’s one thing you can take away from this blog post, it is to gift yourself the time to have a deep look at your daily life and expose ONE thing that drains you but has been accepted as part of your current reality. Once you have done this, start to question your beliefs surrounding it and whether it’s time you faced the opportunity head on. Often the answer and solution is simpler than we think but we have just become a victim of the status quo bias.
