The root

Onerous

What puts you off starting something? What puts you off carrying on with something? What puts you off going somewhere. Did you feel better for going last time. Many don’t think about whether they are going to go, there is no stalling, they just go. People with mountains to move aren’t daunted by the scale of the task. They tune out and get on with it. Some like to get the whole job done in one day. Others break the job down and do it bit by bit. A little each day until completion. A job half done is much easier to complete than a job not started. If you are procrastinating, ask yourself, will I feel better if I get a bit of this done?

Some sit about waiting for things to happen like a farmer hoping for rain. It usually does rain, but we can’t be sure. Others make a solid effort to irrigate the land by getting water from somewhere else. You can meander through your life if you want to, hoping for something fortunate to happen, but those that thrive take positive steps to help themselves. Progress rarely comes easy. It takes a lot of shovelling. Lots of false starts. There will be times where you take the wrong path and accept that that is progress in itself. It may not be until you have failed a few times that you begin to get it right. If there are five ways of doing something, then on the balance of probabilities, you won’t find the best way first. Once you have tried two or three, you then realise that there are even more than five, but each dead end is one idea killed off.

She had long black hair and found ironing a chore. She realised why she disliked ironing so much. It wasn't the ironing itself; it was the hassle of unpacking the iron and setting the ironing board up each time. The solution was simple. She stopped putting the ironing board away. She left the board up, ready to be used when needed. This anecdote is trivial and trite compared with the struggles felt by people in some places yet makes a significant point. Isolate the part that deters you. Find a resolution. I have only used an iron to transfer stickers, but I too like certain tools and equipment ready to roll - all plugged in and without piles of junk atop. With everything having a set place, thereby easy to find, I am not put off by having to clear the mess and faff about before getting a job underway. It must have stemmed from life growing up where there were never the right tools to do what I wanted, just rusty rubbish that left you hours out of pocket and deeply frustrated.

While some delay tackling jobs around the house. Others shy away from going somewhere because they don’t want to face the uncomfortable journey. We put up with it in our youth but now the sufferance is harder to bear. More favourable travel times, more spacious seating arrangements help. Comfort is an odd beast. Many forms of discomfort are temporary - a few hours or so with no lasting damage to our body. The torture of a trip maybe transient, but that is not the point. It is the dread prior that gives us the will to find ways out of it. Do you need to suffer a bit from time to time to appreciate your comforts? Maybe, but commuting every day amongst so many self-absorbed people is grim. You find yourself becoming less and less graceful by the month. This can lead to rethinking the virtue of an otherwise wonderful job. It can make the idea of working somewhere closer to home much more attractive. You can use mentality to overcome the hate of it for sure. One may switch off during the pain and reconcile it with it being the means to an end whereby greater wealth down the line will free you from this, hopefully, eventually.

Lions, tigers, elephants, buffalo, baboons scattered in the savanna. People set off in minivans to see them grazing, wallowing, lazing in the sun. They returned hot and visibly worse for wear. Bumpy dirt roads, sitting in cramped seats. So, we decided to hire a hunky chunky savanna-mobile. Too dangerous they said but we eliminated the danger of being crushed if in a traffic accident. We could stop where and when we wanted. We had a better view - standing half through the hole in the car roof. Do it right. I could also educate my partner on her driving habits. I got her to see the benefit of going around the holes in the road rather than through them all the time.