Where do we apply our effort?

Have you ever sat back and watched people at work and thought…”If you put as much effort into doing your responsibilities as you did in trying to avoid them, you would be a top performer?”

I have.

Of course my brain went a step further on this and I couldn’t help but apply the same thought to every-day life, to the people I know, the strangers I watch. Hell I even applied the same thought to myself.

What if we stopped putting so much effort into avoiding confrontations and more effort into having that confrontation and resolving it? What if we stopped putting so much effort into not trying to hurt someone’s feelings and more effort into being real with them and then dealing with the aftermath? What if we stopped putting so much effort into trying to look like we aren’t the bad guy now and more effort into not being the bad guy in the future?

Sometimes circumstances and situations are inevitable. If we prolong the inevitable or try to avoid the truth of the situation, what does that makes us? We tell ourselves that we are doing it for the other person, but in reality, we are just doing it for ourselves, right? We are giving ourselves time to process and accept what is while we give the other party false hope. I can’t think of anything worse. I’ve been the recipient of false hope once before and it was the worst thing I’ve recovered from yet.

Sometimes we are cruel to ourselves. It doesn’t even have to involve anyone but us. Why do we put so much effort into avoiding things about our lives or ourselves that we don’t like? If we put more effort into eating healthier than complaining about it, we would improve. If we put more effort into holding promises to ourselves rather than making excuses to ourselves, we would find it easier to love ourselves. When did we become the least important person in our lives? You should be the most important person in your life. To be the person you want or need to be to someone else, you have to make sure that you are happy, healthy, stable, and strong. Put more effort into being the person you want to be instead of putting effort into bargaining with yourself of why you keep falling short. I am such a culprit of this. I need to change. Stop making excuses for the things you haven’t changed about yourself, your habits, or the people that you keep in your life and start improving yourself.

A long time ago I read this and I will carry it with me always. I wish I knew who had said it:

“What is better…A lie that draws a smile or the truth that draws a tear?”

That small sentence really resonates with me.

There may be some people that think ignorance is bliss. I would much rather have the truth. Tears always cease. Gaining truth is the first required step to allowing yourself to heal, to give the chance to someone else to heal. It may be long, it may be ugly, but eventually, you heal and you become stronger. Smiles are as temporary as the mood we are in and the people that surround us. The act of the lie becomes more damaging than the lie itself. It quickly spirals that one thing so far out of your control that there is no going back. You haven’t just deceived them, you have deceived yourself because whatever advantage that you think you will have by making sure the other person isn’t upset in that one moment is false. Eventually, you will face the initial consequences but with much more devastation than that was needed.