Exhibit 1 — the leaking tap.
In my old house (in which I lived for about three and half years), the tap in the kitchen had a leaking faucet. This started about two months into living in the house. Initially, it was just a few trickles and then eventually, it became this every 5 second interval drop of water.
That may sound as benign as a baby's backside but when that runs all day, first the limescale build on your sink is the first thing you notice (especially on that spot where the water lands on); then the constant having-to-clean-up water-from-around-the-sink-as-the-drop-splashes-water-everywhere becomes a chore and IMPORTANTLY, the annoying sound of dripping water.
That sound or noise was even worse in the middle of the night. I could hear it from my bedroom if I had the misfortune of waking up abruptly in the middle of the night.
Eventually, I found a temporary solution — place a rag in the sink at the spot where it would normally drip. That solved one problem but the other problem was having to squeeze dry the rag every morning or every time we had to use the sink again.
This continued for almost two years and in hindsight, I wonder how we survived or why we didn’t make any changes any sooner. Eventually, one day, the Mrs had had enough and told me to get a plumber in. We got a plumber in and he said to replace the entire tap unit and suddenly, the routine of wet rags and blocking your ears to eery sounds disappeared.
Why did it take us so long to make the bladdy change?
Exhibit 2 — the temperamental mouse
Some years ago, my home computer had a mouse that I must have been using since 2006 or so. It had done many man hours of work but then at some point it became very temperamental.
It would suddenly lose power and the cursor would varnish and eventually when it connected itself back by some magical means, would crash the computer.
It was mostly frustrating when I had worked for minutes without saving and without warning, it decides to act up. I had tried to figure out what was wrong with it but concluded it was just death coming to redeem its mouse debt on that mouse.
But being a stubborn person, I still continued to use it like that suffering every couple of days until one day, I came to this special moment of enlightenment!
A new mouse was so cheap that I didn’t need this stress and pain! So, I bought a new wireless one from Amazon and it was as though I had never used a mouse before. It was all a new experience.
No more crashes! No more having to save every couple of seconds and to be disappointed to no crash or not save and be disappointed without warning.
Why did it take me so long to hold on to that mouse?
Between the mouse and the faucet, there must have been a span of 3 or more years of headaches — headaches that were totally needless.
I didn’t even spend up to £100 to replace both yet it didn’t cross my mind to just replace them. I tried to make it work rather than move on and make changes. I probably had memories and a sense of attachment to my mouse. I probably had my ego challenged by a lifeless and inanimate object in my own house and my ego fought hard to show the tap I had a brain that worked and could figure things out.
I was bottom-lines(and my wife in the kitchen mostly) frustrated. I moaned about it under my breath when that annoying sound became noticeable and audibly swore out my sugars when my mouse crashed my computer again.
I allowed this to be because I wanted to fix a mess I didn’t have a need to have in my life in the first place. I could blame it on my DIY sense or blame it on my stubbornness or blame it on just sheer foolishness but whichever way my blame might have shifted, I suffered very well for something I could have changed right from day one or week one or month one or even year one.
The point of this moment we both are is this: What we allow to be in our lives is what will get to be!
If you have a messy situation, the situation wouldn’t really change until you change. The image wouldn’t become different unless you move your feet and take action in a direction that’s called better. It’s all down to us and we can’t pin it on someone else or anyone else. You can try to mortgage your happiness but you are the still going to be the one suffering the cost of the repayments and most times, the cumbersome interests lumped on it.
You can find fixes around the issue but it’s just as futile as wrapping a bandage around a cancerous growth. No matter how pretty your bandage looks, the growth beneath is still ebbing away the use of that body function.
Friend, be encouraged to refuse to adapt to problems that shouldn’t even exist in your life in the first place.
Sometimes, money is not the issue! Sometimes, resources (an abundance or a lack of it) is not the setback. Sometimes (and if not most times), we just need to shift our mindset(s) and make changes to how we see the problems that we’ve not been able to conquer so far.
Now that you’ve read this, what will you do about your catalogue of problems? Take action now or continue to convince yourself it’s not as bad as it looks or sounds or how you’re managing it?!!
