My eldest son, Oli, is nearly 9.
Amongst his other foibles, he struggles to pick out some of the finer nuances in sentences.
For example we often have conversations much like this one:
Oli: “Daddy, can we stop at the shop?”
Me: “We’re a bit tight for time, I’m afraid”
30 seconds later;
Oli: “Daddy, can we stop at the shop?”
Me: “Didn’t I just answer that?”
Oli: “No you didn’t. You just said we were tight for time”
Me: “Sorry, I should’ve said ‘No we can’t stop, because we’re short on time”
Before Oli I’d never noticed that we often don’t directly answer questions.
But give the reason as an answer.
And Oli struggles to see that.
I know this and that I should give a direct answer followed by the reason for him.
But I’m so into the habit of answering questions that way that I struggle.
It’s taken a while, but now I mostly remember to say “Yes” or “No” first.
Changing habits can be hard.
Especially when we’ve done things a certain way for years or decades.
We get that!
The new habit isn’t necessarily any more effort than the old one.
Say yes or no first is no harder than just giving the reason.
Like buying and eating healthy meals doesn’t need to be any harder than buying and eating crappy meals.
Drinking water doesn’t need to be any harder than drinking other stuff (easier if anything).
Sure, exercising is harder than not exercising.
But, often the size of that increased effort in easily exaggerated in our minds (and it helps massively if the exercise is fun –> myrise.co.uk/briefing-meeting).
They key with all these things though is that it get’s easier.
The first one is the hardest one you’ll ever have to do.
Each successive one is a fraction easier.
Until, when the new habit is formed, that’s just what you do.
And the old way would actually be harder.
It’s easy to think it will be hard forever.
And it all seems “too much”.
Remember that it gets easier ever time.
Treat them one at a time.
Go do the next one now.
And you’ll look back one day and wonder what all the fuss was about.
Promise!
Much love,
Jon ‘Inner Rasson’ Hall and Matt ‘Paramand’ Nicholson
P.S. Two bonus ninja points for those middle names – not easy 🙂
P.P.S. Yesterday’s middle names – Andy Kaufmand and Danny Devito were in the late 70s, early 80s American sitcom ‘Taxi’ 🙂
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