Gretchen Rubin from the Happiness Project posted a wonderfully insightful and interesting perspective about what a mistake it often is to tell ourselves and others that things should be "easy" I love the detail and examples she gives. For example,
"... if you ask someone to do something, and you characterize it as difficult or a lot of trouble, paradoxically, in my experience, people are more willing to help. They know you recognize their effort. Once a friend sent me an email with the subject line, “Quick favor.” In fact, the favor was going to take some work on my part, and I was irritated by her characterization of it as easy."
Haven't we all been annoyed when someone says "oh it will be easy" and it's anything but!
This is a principle I learned in education psychology and it has served me well in organizing. When you tell people that something is not easy, and they achieve it, their motivation and self-esteem is enhanced.
Almost all my organizing clients have gotten very down on themselves because they think it should be easy to be organized. Or perhaps their family members tell them they should be able to do it without help. They see people for whom it's "natural" and feel bad about themselves.
But organizing is anything but easy for many people. It takes energy, time, motivation, effort, analytical skills, creativity tools and knowledge. It means knowing yourself and realizing that what works for one person won't necessarily work for you and your lifestyle.
I think learning to organize is a lot like learning a musical instrument...there are gifted people for whom organizing comes naturally and they can "play by ear", but many of us have to learn new ways of looking at our things and the tools we use to organize, some of us need a teacher and have to practice every day before we making harmony in our lives on a daily basis becomes a habit that we incorporate into our lives as seamlessly as brushing our teeth.
The same is true with happiness, we aren't designed for 24/7 happiness nor are we designed to be orderly 24/7. We can't be "cheerfully" happy all the time nor can we be organized ALL the time. Organizing and Being Happy, pretty much everything in LIFE is NOT all that easy! And it really can very annoying when people make it seem like it is easy. But with effort and practice...we CAN help make life a little easier for ourselves and each other by trying to be organized and trying to be happier. It's not easy, but it can be done - and the rewards ARE worth the trouble!
Gretchen, Thanks for being my guru of happiness! I love getting your posts in my email!
Here' the link to Gretchen's post
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