Overcoming Obstacles

Photo by cproppe

I’d love to do that, but…

I’m sure we all have excuses, I’m sorry – reasons, for why we don’t do things that we know we probably should do, whether it’s exercising, getting organized or going green. We don’t have time, or energy, or money, or enough information, etc. – and the list could go on and on.  There always seems to be some good reason we can use to put something off until another day.

I know this because I myself am a huge procrastinator, and I am pretty darn good at coming up with some pretty good excuses, ahem, reasons – just ask my hubby.  It is not something that I am proud of, but I have come to recognize it about myself and I try to fight it as much as I can.

More often than I would like to admit though, in my life, things get put off, and put off, and put off until some kind of crisis happens and I am forced to do whatever it was that I had been putting off for so long.

And you know what usually happens.  When I finally do the much dreaded task, that I knew I should have taken care of long ago, it really is not as bad as I made myself believe it would be.  Either it doesn’t take as long as I thought it would, or it’s really not as hard or unmanageable, as I thought it would be.  And I always feel so much better when it’s done, I feel a sense of accomplishment I didn’t have when I was just procrastinating.

In talking to friends and family I often hear all kinds of excuses for not going green, ranging anywhere from, “Global warming is just a myth, so going green is not that important.”, to “Gross, how do you clean your house without paper towels?  That is just something I could NEVER give up.” and everything in between.

While I know that sometimes there are legitimate reasons for not making a change, money is often a big one when it comes to bigger changes like upgrading to energy efficient windows, more often than not I think that the excuses we come up with for not making a change are simply a reflection of our desire to remain comfortable. We as human beings don’t like change.  We like to just go on doing things the way we are used to doing them because that is what is easy and comfortable for us.  Making a change would usually involve having to overcome some sort of obstacle.

I’m assuming that if you are reading this blog that you are familiar with making green changes, and have probably made a lot of changes in your own lifestyle over the past months or years.  But, as we know, life is a journey, and we are continually taking baby steps, moving forward, making changes, or even resisting making changes.  If you’re anything like me, I’m sure that there are lots of changes on your “to do” list, things that you still want to try, or learn to do better, and obstacles you need to overcome.

If you didn’t get a chance to share your biggest obstacle in the giveaway post last week, I would love it if you would jump in and share with us in the comments what changes you haven’t made yet, that you want to make, and what your obstacles are to making those changes.

Tomorrow, I’ll share some of the changes I am trying to make in our home and life,  and the excuses, and obstacles, that I am running up against.

Hopefully as we share our obstacles, and walk together through this series on overcoming obstacles, we can learn from each other and make some long awaited changes in our lives!