Just do it!

We have a tendency to avoid things that we find  unpleasant or that we really don't want to deal with. When something comes up that is suboptimal, we often steer ourselves in a different direction. We believe our lives are made better by finding a different path. This is often not the case.

The other night I heard a conversation between a couple of my roommates. One was going to cook dinner. Impeding her progress was a specific dirty dish. Now I am not clear on whether or not she was going to use the dish to cook with or if the issue was that it was just physically in her way, preventing her from having full access to the sink or counters and whatnot.

But instead of simply washing the dish and then going on about her business of cooking a tasty meal, she decided not to cook. Worry not, she didn't starve. Other food arrangements were made. The point is extra time and money were spent that didn't need to be.

Then the next night, she came into the kitchen, again, planning to cook dinner. Immediately a string of curses could be heard as she started swearing about how that same dish was still there, still dirty. Two days in a row her ability to cook was being hampered by her choice to let a single dirty dish get in her way.

Now, I am not suggesting that we should just ignore the fact that other people leave things in a less than perfect state. It is not okay for us as adults to leave messes behind for other people to clean up. But why let something that would take less than two minutes to wash dry and put away change our plans for the evening? Not only do these things take up our time and energy, we take up the time and energy of others complaining about them. That time and energy could be put to better use finding out who left out the unclean item and getting a commitment from them to do a better job cleaning up after themselves in the future.

We have agreements to keep our home clean, for each person to make sure they don't leave behind things for others to deal with. But, none of us are perfect and from time to time we are going to make mistakes. Some of us more than others, but it happens to all of us. Taking it personally, getting upset or angry when others fail to do as they have agreed does nothing but ruin your mood.

And letting these little things get in the way of our plans for the day, is literally allowing the mistakes of others to control our lives. Each time a big thing doesn't happen or has to happen differently just because we decide to avoid dealing with a little thing that little thing is controlling us. Think about your daily life. How many things are changed or even prevented from happening simply by things that you don't want to, but probably should deal with?

Scary, dangerous, life altering/ending things I can understand not wanting to handle. But something that will only take a couple of minutes to handle and has no other major impact on anything? Just do it and get on with your day.