Unfortunately, we humans get used to problems quickly.
Too often, when we get used to problems, we stop reflecting on them. When we stop reflecting on them, we stop trying to fix them.
Two examples:
- At first, if one of the burners on your stove stops working (as I personally experienced), you notice it and are annoyed by it. Soon, you find that you’ve stopped trying to use that burner. You’ve been trained by annoyance to use a different one instead. Or, to put it another way, you’ve subconsciously internalized that the burner doesn’t work. The possibility of fixing it doesn’t enter your mind anymore.
- If your knee sometimes hurts when walking up steep hills, you are very aware of it at first and wonder about it. After enough time passes, though, you just view it as a thing that happens to you, an automatic consequence of walking up steep hills, or an inherent part of what your life is like. You don’t see it as something you should seek physical therapy for.
A reasonably good term for this is “acquiescence”; acceptance of something bad, without protest. In this case, it is something you don’t need to accept.
It’s certainly the case that some problems in life are either not fixable, or not worth the time to fix. And in those cases, the default strategy of getting used to them is the right strategy. Furthermore, it can be a bad idea to try to work on fixing too many things at once, so it’s important to prioritize. The problem, though, is that people often get used to problems quickly even when they are fixable and well worth fixing.
So: what problem in your life (that is worth fixing) have you gotten so used to that it doesn’t even occur to you to try to fix it?
Now’s a great time to remember that the thing IS actually still a problem, that problems usually can be fixed, and that fixing things means coming up with a strategy and carrying that strategy out. Don’t let your problems remain problems. Resist acquiescence.
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