There is that moment when I am barely awake and I want to stay in curled up in bed, but I need to go the bathroom. Need wins and I get up immediately. Today, the need is losing. I want to relax. I want to do nothing all day and sit on the balcony and watch the sunset. However, I really need to do my taxes. But, unlike the morning’s bio urgency, there no immediate consequence if I don’t do my taxes. There is no priority unless I say, I will do my taxes today. Which I sort of did and then immediately I rationalized why I should I go out for breakfast first.
In the battle of want versus need, want is pretty powerful. Want disguises itself as a rationale. I rationalized I need breakfast because the protein would help me think, then a walk to the pier would settle my breakfast, and now that I’m tired from breakfast and a walk, a little rest will refresh me and now that I’m stiff from all that walking and sleeping, yoga will help my body. I can and I have rationalized myself through an entire day, an entire week and not gotten work done. Not today. After breakfast, I recognized the clever ruse of want. No more rationalization, I went home and worked on my taxes.
Do you rationalize your wants to the detriment of your needs? Are there things you need to get done, that somehow, because you don’t want to do it, other things have taken priority? Stop it. Yes, most of the time, there are things we prefer to do versus the things we need to do. Suck it up, buttercup. * A slight revision of the poets Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, …you can’t always do what you want, but try, try, try, to do what you need. The funny thing about needs, it seems you have all this time to get it done and it’s a lot like sunset. It seems like you have all day, but the window to see the sunset is short and before you know it, you’re left in the dark.
*One of the best things you can say to someone who has dug themselves a nice, deep hole, and has fallen right into it.
Balancing on Unstable Surfaces 