Settling for easy

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When we are faced with the hard work that our day-to-day routine can throw at us, when things are getting a little challenging and the reserves are a used up, we can often look at an ‘easier’ existence, job, work whatever and think ‘yes, I could do that and life would be easier’.

However, before you are too hasty in settling for what seems ‘easier’ take a rain check.

Is any life, job, activity, existence easy?

It might seem attractive to step into someone else’s shoes and take an ‘easier’ option. The fact is, if it’s easy, then there is probably no value to it, no fulfilment, no meaning and after an initial period, it is likely to lead to boredom. If it doesn’t have those things, then, in reality, it is not ‘easier’ it is in fact much harder.

A good exercise for all of us to do now and again is to go a do another person’s job or try their life for a day. I think we would conclude that the grass isn’t always greener and perhaps we would appreciate what we already have much more.

That doesn’t mean always being satisfied, it means to focus on what you have and commit to making it better, adapting it, and evolving it. However, do not wish for an escape to an easy life, as easy is not what fulfils us, it is just an escape route to avoid commitment to making what we have better.

There are no shortcuts to something better.

I don’t know how to

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Often when faced with a change or a new task, especially one that is likely to take us out of our comfort zone, we use the reason for not starting as ‘I don’t know how to do….’.

So we become stuck and then we search around for other reasons too not to do.

Yet we live in a time where the clever people at Google have indexed almost all the world’s knowledge, courses, coaches, advisors etc into a very simple and easy to use search engine. We can simply type ‘how to…..’ and up will come enough results to keep us occupied for a very long time.

In addition, the kind people at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many other networks have made it as easy as typing these words to connect with almost anyone who could help us anywhere in the world.

So we can easily access people to help us, we can access billions and billions of websites, articles, pieces of information and so on. We can even ask real people around us to help.

Yet we still say ‘I don’t know how to do…..’.

Perhaps there is something else holding us back? Perhaps we are frightened to learn as that might mean doing something and becoming successful.

‘I don’t know how to…’ is just an excuse.