Quick Tip: Buy the Damn Thing

TL;DR: Buy the thing that’s going to make your life easier; invest in yourself, your comfort, and your success

Image by Natalie Sysco via Unsplash.

 When we moved into our new house last August, we bought a new can opener. A few weeks ago, it stopped working properly. You can still get it to open cans, but doing so basically requires a series of puncture maneuvers around the entire circumference. It’s maddeningly slow. And yet, I couldn’t move past the idea that this can opener—the one we just bought last August—really should be working. We just got it! It’s a mere babe in can opener years. Never mind that it came from Target and probably cost $10. I was ensconced in the idea that appliances bought less than one year ago should still be good, and firmly resistant to the reality that this can opener sucks.

I finally broke down and bought a new can opener, and wouldn’t you know that using it is a bright spot in my day? I’m no longer sweating and swearing, hunched over a tin can, opening it one puncture at a time, sloshing its contents all over my hands and the counter.

My new can opener--it really is good.

And this brings me to my advice for you. If there’s something you can buy that’s going to make your life or your work easier, just buy the damn thing. Invest in yourself. Invest in your own ease and efficiency. Invest in joy!

If taking notes in a cute notebook that you cover with stickers is going to give you joy—buy the notebook! Spend some money on stickers. (Have you heard of Pipsticks?!) If your life would be made easier if you learned a particular skill or offloaded the responsibility to a service—buy the class, buy the subscription.

We can be surprisingly reluctant to make even very small changes (like ordering a new can opener) that would make our lives meaningfully better.

Food for thought:

Where are you resisting reality in favor of imposing your view of how things should be?

• Are you looking at a work or life situation in terms of how it “should” be—or how it actually is?

• If you acknowledged how it is, would you change anything about how you’re dealing with it?

• Would you buy yourself the damned can opener?