Hesitating to Cut the Cord

Why do we balk at making the needed changes in our lives?

Today I was walking in my Castro neighborhood in San Francisco and overheard a conversation. Two women who were I would guess to be in their 70s were walking together nearby and engaged in a serious chat.

One woman said to the other “I stayed married to him at least 5 years longer than I should have.” The other woman said something to the effect of “Yes, I understand. I’ve been in that situation too.”

The specifics of that conversation aside, it made me think about the times in my life when I’ve continued on with something even though all signs were that its freshness date had expired.

I chose a default major in college for which I possessed no love but I did it anyway. I’ve been in relationships that I held on to despite red flag warnings appearing multiple times. I continued an education degree program later in life only because some part of me felt it was necessary for my career and then later realizing I had already accomplished exactly what I wanted the degree for in the first place. Until fairly recently I stuck with a tedious process of goal and task creation for decades only to finally realize that it was never serving me. I was only doing it because all the self-help and productivity gurus I binged on in my youth extolled its benefits. I could go on.