Yes, I said it. Shortcuts and compliance are signs of laziness. Take control of your own life and do the work to do what’s best for you.
“The consequences of every shortcut are greater than its temporary benefit.”
“Compliance is easier than questioning their solutions. And their solutions were much easier than taking ownership of my own life.”
This.
I’m not sure I can add anything to those two quotes from Love People Use Things, but of course I’ll try!
Let’s talk about shortcuts for a second. Shortcuts are for driving and that’s it. (Wait. And computer desktops.) But then…if everyone took the shortcut, it would lose its value, wouldn’t it? It would be crammed with vehicles and make the trip longer than if you had just stayed on the highway.
When we take shortcuts for learning, we lose the value we get from the experience of study. When we take shortcuts on our diet, we lose the weight quickly, but we also lose the experience of learning to live in way that keeps that weight off and makes us healthy instead of just thin. When we take shortcuts within our relationships, sending a gift instead of connecting over lunch, posting to social media instead of calling and relating with individuals, we lose the real meaningful connection with others that we crave.
Shortcut’s suck. Funny…I just heard that same idea on a podcast I was listening to. I wrote about it in my post “Travel Anxiety Ended: Podcast Roundup #3.”
And what about compliance isn’t taking ownership of your life? When we blindly go along with whatever everyone else is doing, whatever the “authority” says you should do, we give the power of our lives to someone else. Don’t get me wrong, there is much good in taking the advice of experts and making informed choices that look much like what others around you are doing. What I’m talking about it is doing what others say you should without thought, even with the feeling that something is not right in your heart and mind, it’s just what one does, so you do.
What kind of things? Everything. Going to college, a career choice, joining the military or a church, getting married, having children, sending those children to school, going on vacation, what you eat, where you live, how you live. The list goes on and on and on.
When we give the power of making choices to others, when the results come in, we can say, “Well, that’s what happens. It’s not my fault.” I call bullshit. It is your fault. Everything we do is a choice, whether we are conscious of it or not. Take back your power.
If you’d like to read some of my other posts about quotes from this book, click back to “Love People Use Things: A New Read” to start at the beginning. At the bottom of that post, you’ll find links to others.