“Doing the right thing and doing the hard thing are usually the same thing.” This is one of life’s hard truths. None of us likes doing things that are difficult or uncomfortable. It challenges our thinking, gets us outside our comfort zone, forces us to confront problems. Doing hard things is well…hard! Yet most times, this is where we grow. Additionally, doing the right thing is pretty instinctual. Most of us have a general sense for what is right and wrong. Our gut, our 6th sense, out intuition. We KNOW when we have a choice on what is going to help us or others and what is going to hurt. We KNOW if we make the hurtful choice, there is a chance we will pay for it later.
I bring this topic up this week because I am going through a difficult season and I have had opportunities to make a good or a bad decision. It will move me towards improving my situation or it will make the situation worse. These aren’t complex scenarios; in fact they are everyday choices. They are simple things but powerful things. A few examples. I wake up feeling tired, lethargic, unmotivated. “What will I have for dinner? Should I even eat dinner? I don’t feel like prepping the vegetables, making the healthy grains, having the balanced meal. Maybe I’ll just make a sandwich. That’s easy and I could certainly eat worse.” The trouble is, not having the proper nutrition has a high likelihood of making my feelings worse, or at best, not improving them. I can be the main guest at my pity party and justify eating poorly but that is just going to justify, it’s not going to actually improve my situation. Another example; my morning movement routine. A few basic exercises: squats, pushups and situps. I do 20 each. Just something to move me. I wake up and think “pssh, it’s 3 exercises. I can blow it off. It’s not like I am sweating, exerting myself or spending a lot of time. And maybe I can just sleep another 5 minutes or do something else.” Again, not a helpful line of thinking. In this example, I can turn those same questions around. Since all the above is true, it won’t take me more than 5 minutes to do the exercises and they aren’t that challenging. But that’s the point; doing something so easy that making poor excuses is more effort than just doing the right thing. The exercises.
It’s easy to lie to ourselves, make excuses (and some are valid) and find away to get out of the responsibility we have to take care of ourselves. It’s not easy but the good things hardly ever are. I’m sure we can all think of a time we had do do something that was difficult and if we look back and reflect, it was worth it, even though we didn’t want to do it at the time. In the above, I found a unique verse “Better a poor man strong and robust, than a rich man with wasted frame. More precious than gold is health and well-being…” (Sirach 31:14-15) So be strong and choose the right thing.
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