Hi guys! Welcome to episode 546 of the wildly successful lifestyle podcast! What’s going on out there? There’s so much that’s good and beautiful in this world, I hope you’re looking for that everywhere you go, because that means you’re finding it! Speaking of beautiful things. Sometimes unfortunately we have things that are nagging at us about our life, but we aren’t taking the time to fix them.
I’m embarrassed to admit that years ago I went against my better thoughts and bought lights for my front porch that are integrated which means you can’t change a bulb if it goes out, you have to change the light. As an interior designer that is one of my biggest pet peeves with lighting right now, who wants to change out an entire light if something goes wrong? I’m not a fan of integrated lights and they are everywhere. So I bought these lights for the front of my house because they were everything I wanted except they were integrated they lasted probably 10 years but now part of one has burned out. It has been that way for 6 months. It bothers me quite a bit. But to fix it, I have to buy two brand new lights, you can’t just buy one, I have to replace both and I have to get an electrician to come and take the other ones down and hang the new ones. Having enough I finally sat down and ended up ordering the exact same lights with hopes that they will last another 10 years. They came in this week and now I just have to call the electrician which I’ll do today. But that light being burned out really bothered me, I would be embarrassed if people were over and it was night, I sometimes hesitated to turn them on at all at night even though they are the only lights on our front porch. I wasted a lot of brain energy on worrying about the light being burned out. So why in the world did it take so long to fix it?
Have you ever had something small in your life, a broken thing or an unresolved issue that just nagged at you but for some reason you put off fixing it?
In life we often overestimate the effort it will take to fix something whether it’s our diet, having a hard conversation or maybe even tackling debt. In my mind, the pain of fixing the light was worse than the dull constant pain of it being out because I thought about the time it would take to research new lights, then deal with the installation and if I changed lights am I now going to have to paint the whole porch again? I just kept saying I’ll deal with it later. But you know what? Once I just made the decision to get the same lights, the task became super easy and now I just need the electrician to come out and all will be well. I was making it seem harder by being indecisive about what I wanted. I was also blowing the task out of proportion in my head, it wasn’t that difficult to get fixed.
I agonized more than I should have about those lights partly because my identity is tied to being an interior designer with a heavy focus on lighting. Changing them to something different when I LOVE the current lights was part of the problem, I couldn’t find a light I liked as well that had changeable bulbs. So making the decision to just replace them with the same thing was easy and somewhat painless. I had to ultimately accept that buying the same thing again was way better than doing nothing and being embarrassed every night when I turned them on. There’s no shame in accepting that one thing I don’t like in order to have beautiful working lights. Is there something that’s holding you back because everything isn’t exactly the way you want it? Accepting one little imperfection is a lot of times better than just complete inaction.
I wasted a lot of mental energy worrying about that light! Small unresolved issues zap our mental bandwidth leaving less energy for creativity, relationships and growth. Unfinished tasks linger in our mind, causing stress. What’s your burned out light that’s taking up mental space?
Maybe it’s the yearly checkup you’ve put off? Maybe it’s a phone call apologizing to a friend? Once I made the decision to order the lights the problem immediately felt smaller. And action creates momentum so now that the lights are in all that’s left is to call the electrician, which I will do today. Remember from episode 544 Tony Robbin’s reminder to never leave the site of a goal without immediate action. Small, immediate steps are the key to overcoming inaction.
Kicking the can down the road becomes a habit we do with other things as well. It also costs us emotionally and physically too in some cases.
Not fixing the light was an ongoing dull pain for me. Taking the time to have it fixed was a slight temporary pain once I accepted that just replacing them with the identical light was better than doing nothing. You don’t need a perfect fix, sometimes you just need progress.
My challenge to you today is to ask yourself:
What is one thing that’s bothering me and what’s one small step I can take towards fixing it?
find your version of a burned out light, something that’s been nagging at you and you’ve been putting it off, it could be a physical thing, a habit or an emotional weight. Take one small step to fix it and notice how it immediately affects your energy about it.
Success isn’t about perfection. It’s about tackling what bothers you one small step at a time to create a life that feels lighter and more aligned. Share this with 3 people who love progress, I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days!
