For this week’s bettering yourself challenge, “ stop having a big reaction to a small problem”, I realized that my thoughts turn small tasks at home into much bigger problems than they are.
For example, we put a pantry shelf beside the fridge in the kitchen, and filled it with food.
A few weeks later, I started worrying how I was going to vacuum behind the fridge with the heavy shelf in the way.
I obsessed about the task for three days:
DAY 1 – it”s going to be so much work emptying that cupboard that is stuffed with food.
DAY 2 – I’m not going to be able to move that big shelf out of the way to get the vacuum in its place.
DAY 3 – It’s going to be hard to stack all those cases of beans and corn and soup back into the shelf.
The more I thought about the task, the more I dreaded it, and the more defeated I felt.
This week, I employed the “just do it” Nike philosophy and started removing the cases of beans and corn from the shelf. To my surprise, with only four cases of canned goods out, the shelf felt like it was made out of cardboard with only crackers, cereal and pasta remaining in it.
I was easily able to slide the cupboard a few feet out of the way so I could squeeze the vacuum in.
After spending three days having a bad reaction to a small problem in my mind, I completed the entire job in 20 minutes.
photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshyoung07/3605587113/”>jwy.</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/”>cc</a>