Why is this so difficult?

In life there are difficult things, and there are easy things... and there are easy things that we make difficult. This post is about the latter.

I used to ride a corporate shuttle to work each day. This was a sparsely populated bus where you could work on a laptop while you sat in a nicely reclined seat. One day I got on the bus, pushed the recline button on my seat, and leaned back. Nothing happened. So I leaned harder, still nothing. I examined the seat for a bit, pushed the button again, and leaned into it, it still wasn’t budging. Hmmm, annoying. After looking at the seat a bit more and trying to figure out if the reclining mechanism might be broken. I pushed the button one more time. Whoosh (what is the right sound for a reclining seat?), this time the seat reclined with no problem.

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What was the difference? Well it appears the button was just a little sticky, and earlier when I had been pushing it I simply wasn’t quite pushing it hard enough. As a result no matter how hard I leaned into that seat it wasn’t going to go anywhere.

This small incident helped reinforce for me something more than just pushing harder on a button. Sometimes when things are difficult in life it is just because we are focused on the wrong thing.

I think most of us have similar experiences in life. We are running into some difficulty, and we just keep pushing on it, and pushing, and pushing. We think we know the right solution and so we don’t bother looking around, instead we just keep going right at it. Sometimes though, if we back up, take a break from the problem, and then with a more open mind re-approach the issue, we will see the solution that greatly simplifies or solves the problem.


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The purpose of “The Couple Project” is to learn more about what makes a strong marriage or relationship. We share what we are learning, which ideas we are trying, and which ideas helped improve our relationship. We realize not everything that works for us will work for you, but we still hope you will find our journey valuable.

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