Why we hesitate in taking the right action?
Dr. Chandana D. Karathully
We all want happiness in our life. We all have ideas and goals that have the potential to deliver us the happiness, peace and the sense of achievement that we all crave for. Some of us want to lose weight, some of us want to gain weight, some of want to learn, some of us want to have the perfect job, and some of us want to have love and the feeling of being cherished, while others might be dreaming of freedom and independence. The list goes on and on. We might even try a little bit to attain the goals, yet the stories of failure are the ones we hear more often. We give up, and we complain about how sad our lives are, and we go back to our old lifestyle, with a reinforced belief of ‘I can’t do it’. Some people don’t even try. Why? Because, we find it so hard to get out of our comfort zones, and we don’t bother about it too. Even if we all say we have big dreams and goals to attain, in real, in our deepest of hearts, we don’t want to work hard for it.
Why do we do that? Why do we find it so hard to break a sweat? Because, we all are wired for survival. We don’t give a damn until our survival is not challenged. If our lives depended on it, we would have worked out every single morning. If we perceive that our existence is questioned, we would go to any lengths to take the effort to make our health better or our lives better. That’s why, people run like headless chickens in the last minute. People wouldn’t take things seriously when things are going okay. We don’t exercise until our doctor gives us a bad news, or we perceive that we are too fat or we have something to gain from being fit and slim. We don’t work on our relationships to make things better until we fall apart or the day our spouse let us know they want to have a divorce or they have an affair. We wait until last minute to take the effort to make things better. That’s why the most successful people are those who have hit the rock bottom before they have risen up.
The only thing that could save ourselves are our habits. When we practice doing the hard things every single day, we get used to the discomfort and we can get past it to see ourselves achieving goals. And taking steps becomes not that hard anymore. When we get used to the ‘effort taking’ part, the chances are we will be willing to do more and more. So, the important benefit of having great habits is that we will be willing to find comfort doing the uncomfortable. Children should be taught to be okay around doing the uncomfortable. Otherwise how could they get out of their comfort zones, to achieve something greater. For that it is always advised to start developing little habits in children from an early childhood. Daily routines of taking responsibility to water the plants, switching off the television when the parents ask them to, setting aside a particular period of time for academic activities, giving priority to activities that is uncomfortable at the present moment, but really beneficial in the long run etc can teach the kids the value of prioritising our daily activities that could change our life in a healthy way. Otherwise kids would find it difficult to adjust themselves to pressure of difficult tasks of adult life.
Lot of attitude adjustments could contribute to taking an effort in the positive direction at the right time. Taking charge of the situation, giving up the victim role, growth mindset, optimism, consistency, perseverance and finally a touch of the ability to delay gratification can create wonders. Every problem is solvable, we just need to get out of our comfy bed and take action!!