The Great Pretend - Why We Never Act On What We Know

Picture this. Another new year has ticked over. You’re determined this year will be different. You want things to be better. You want to be better. Maybe it’s the Christmas weight (Let’s be honest. It’s five Christmas’ weight) you want to lose, or you want to start that business you’ve always dreamed about, or maybe you just want to make more time for the kids in that schedule. Whatever it is, you’ve decided to make a plan. So you sit yourself behind your laptop, open a new google page and type, “How to achieve your goals”. Immediately you’re inundated with millions of results filling the screen. Crap. You sit staring at the screen wondering which one will work for you. So you start clicking links, and skim reading as fast as possible. Trying to find that one article that says all the things that you want to hear. But none of them really do. They’re all filled with far too much self-discipline for your liking.

Instead of pretending that we need a new strategy or plan to help us overcome obstacles, why not do what we already know to do? Because the truth is, we already know what we need to do to make it happen, but we don’t like it. So we search for easier ways, more attractive ways to do it, pretending that we need those new ways to succeed. More accurately, we’re apathetic.  We don’t need another five step program, another article, or another inspirational video. All these things are great, but unless we actually act upon them, they are useless. They just become hard-drive fillers, google results, bookshelf fillers, and Instagram posts. They make us feel good for the fleeting moment that we consume them, like we are actually serious about taking action. What has contributed to this mindset? Is it decades of a progressive society that tells us there’s always an easier, faster, more efficient way of doing and being? Perhaps.

I blame infomercials. Those awfully tacky attempts to sell us the new “ab-pro-thingy-mah-jig”, filling up our daytime television. Every time I see a new version of these machines, it’s an attempt to make exercising as easy as possible, use as little effort as possible, and hopefully, not produce one drop of sweat. But, in just 48hrs you’ll achieve the six pack you’ve always wanted. Excellent! Please sign me up! Yes, I’m using an overly dramatic example to illustrate my point. But it’s perfect! There’s so much noise and confusion we face every day, vying for our attention. It’s a cacophony of distraction. One good idea after the next, and nothing actually getting done. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. We are spoilt for choice. Sometimes I think life would be so much easier (yet a little boring) if we only had two choices for everything. Go to the gym, and you have to choose between the treadmill or a bike. Hungry? The pantry only has baked beans or canned tuna. Want to get married? Well you’ve only got Cheryl or Beatrice to choose from. Or you could choose to be alone if that’s what you’re into. "What colour should we paint the walls honey? A light beige or mother-of-pearl?" You know this lack of choice is actually a reality for so many people. And guess what? They’re far more grateful than the rest of us. They value friends and family over things. They’re thankful for every day, while the rest of us roll out of our 5000-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets in the morning, debate whether to get on that treadmill or not, make our perfectly brewed coffee, go through the day’s motions and hit the pillow feeling less content that we’d like. Somewhere during that day, we lost our sense of meaning. Or perhaps we didn’t even have it when we woke up.

I’d like to suggest, that for those of us who are serious about changing our world, that we simply start. Start with the small, not concerning ourselves with what’s next, but creating small, achievable habits that we can gradually build upon. But there are some of us who say they want change, but that’s actually the greatest pretend of all. For them, change is the most terrifying thing. They’re so comfortable with pain and mediocrity, that to change would mean becoming something they’re not familiar with. We are all a little guilty of this. God forbid we would ever do something that’s good for us.

So what can we do about this? How can we stop pretending, and start doing? As mentioned before, start with the small. Forget about what others are doing. Being competitive will only make you feel inadequate. Create a habit out of that small action, then add another step. For example, if you aspire to be a writer, but you’ve never written a day in your life. Start journaling every day. Will anyone ever read it? Probably not. But that’s the place to start. If that’s a habit you can actually stick with, then you’ve got a foundation to build on. What about that extra weight you’ve been carrying around since five Christmas’ ago? The idea of exercising every day is overwhelming at best. So why not start with three days a week instead? See, we have to start with what’s achievable before we achieve the unbelievable. We need to stop setting ourselves up for failure. And we need to stop seeking out strategies that just feed our apathy.

We need to simply do what we know.