Why Do We Make Things Harder for Ourselves?
If you’re around my age, you remember riding in a car with windows that needed to be manually rolled up and down or front seats that were adjusted by pulling a lever which hurled you backwards so fast that you were immediately in the back seat, and you had to scoot your way up to your desired location. Or you owned a large, heavy walkman with cassette tapes that needed to be flipped over to hear more songs, and you changed the channel on the television by actually getting up off the couch. Need better reception on that aforementioned tv? Simply fiddle with those rabbit ears or just give it a good whack!
The last couple of years things have changed dramatically. My kids now reminisce about how they used to have to drive themselves to get fast food, or when curbside pick up didn’t exist, and they had to go searching for something inside the store. Why have things evolved this way? We can definitely thank Covid for a lot of the more recent changes. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? But we can also thank the people in charge at successful companies who know that it’s in their best interest to make things easier on the consumer. My question is, why don’t we know that? Why do we still make things harder for ourselves?
Think about what happens when someone we know gets sick, loses a family member or has a baby. We spring into action. We call, text or send cards. We swoop in with meals, we offer to give rides, and we drop off care packages full of pajamas, books and magazines, snacks, baby items and the like. We are fully aware when someone else needs help, but when it comes to taking care of ourselves, we tend to put that on the back burner.
Even the idea of self care is relatively new. Remember when you needed a day off from school but you weren’t even sick? We called it a called a mental health day. You kind of whispered it to your friends when you went back the next day- you didn’t want anyone to know that you needed a day to recharge. When will we finally admit that a mental health day is just as important as an actual sick day? When will we see the power in a day free from work, school, stress and worry?
Let’s do an experiment this week. Try to do something for yourself that makes your life a little easier. It can be a small thing like getting your groceries delivered or having take out one night instead of cooking. Or maybe it is something bigger like hiring a cleaning service. Whatever it is, do it unapologetically. No guilt! At the end of the week, I bet we’ll all be saying the same thing… why didn’t we do this sooner?
