Small Luxuries

For the past like 6 months, the passenger side door on one of our family cars always used to get stuck halfway through being opened. The plastic below was dented and so every time you got in, you had to only open the door half way and try to squeeze in, or tug the door until the plastic sort of snapped past the dent, which was a real pain. Well, the dent just got fixed today, and now every time I open the passenger side door I'm pleasantly surprised at how smooth it opens. It's funny, I never would have thought that having a working door on a car could be considered a luxury, but after 6 months of the dent it's awesome to go for a ride and not have to deal with the hassle of the door. 

I guess it's like a lot of other things, you get used to a minor annoyance in your life, but when it gets fixed or removed it comes as a gift rather than a "repair." That's what the fixed door feels like now to us. Small things like this that we never notice until it gets broken or in our way. A sticky door, a handle that doesn't turn, the light bulb that always flickers, the key on the keyboard that isn't sensitive enough, pop-up ads on your computer, a chair that wobbles... it makes you realize that we actually have a lot of small "luxuries" that we have in our daily life. 

Learning to Say No

There are a lot of little things in our daily lives that we could easily do without. Sometimes it's just a matter of learning how to say no. If you're anything like me, I try to please everyone around me. So much so that sometimes I forget to think about myself and my own responsibilities. If someone asks me a favor, I would likely drop whatever I'm doing to help them (or at least finish what I'm doing and then help them as soon as possible). If someone chats me on Facebook, I don't have the heart to tell them I was just about to log off, and so I keep up the conversation, using the same amount of energy to keep up the conversation as if they had chatted me when I had an hour of free time. "Hey, what's up? Good to see you too! I know, lol... *insert comments about random things that come to mind to keep the conversation flowing*"

So yeah. Learning to say no to certain things can be really helpful. And I'm not talking about saying no to drugs or the thing we learned in D.A.R.E. to say no to peer pressure (though seriously, say NO to drugs!! =].) It's smaller than that, and I find it's mostly self-pressure. For me, it's the pressure that if I say no, someone will be hurt or think less of me. But in actuality, that's not true at all. "Hey, do you want to go see a movie at noon today?" If I were faced with that from a friend and I ended up saying no, that friend might be a little bit disappointed, but they would probably still end up having a great time with some other friends. Same thing with the friend chatting with me on Facebook. If only I could say something like "Oops, I'm really sorry *name*, but I was about to log off. Catch you some other time?" then it would all be fine. I could get to doing what's important to me, and the friend will soon forget that tiny bit of rudeness.

I guess it's hardest to say no to your friends. (I was about to say that it is actually hardest to say no to yourself. But then I realized that's just self-control, which is a whole other topic =P) While sometimes saying no to your siblings lead to squabbles and conflicts, chances are they've lived around you enough to understand the reasons behind you saying no. With friends, they are mostly left guessing whether you said no because you don't want to talk to them, or if you really have something more urgent to do. So be a good friend and learn to say no, but explain why- are you really short on time? Money? Or you do you just need a break to be alone for a bit? I find the really good friends will respect that and like you more for it.

Importance of keeping with a habit daily

Yup, I'm back. (Just a quick apology to those who checked my blog expecting new posts but didn't find anything. I was on vacation with awesome awesome cousins and now I'm finally back home.)

Chances are, if you've ever promised yourself you'd change a habit or start a new one before in life, you started to flounder a bit after a month or two. You'd hit up the gym, feel great about doing workouts for a month, and then suddenly find yourself going every other day, twice a week, only on the weekends, and then not at all. Or maybe you promised yourself you would write every day or scrapbook or practice scales or do devotions, only to drop it after a week or so of continued effort. It's weird how unpredictable life can be, huh? There always seems to be "something" that happens to mess up your plans. And after that one day of missing your habit, it stretches into another longer gap, which eventually snowballs into destroying your self discipline. 

The thing to do is not to give yourself any excuses. You're just so tired and sore from a week of work and you think you can't possibly go to the gym. So, do a few push-ups and crunches at home. You'll be out of town for the weekend. Bring your notebook or scrap booking stuff and force yourself to cut out a block of time to do it on your trip. It takes more effort to start up a habit after a brief hiatus than to just do the habit every day. Commit to something daily and eventually it will become routine. 

On vacation with my cousins, I suddenly found myself without the time to keep up with my blog. I would've felt much better just doing a short post everyday, rather than feeling like I "have to catch up" now that I'm back. But I'm not that worried- spending time with my cousins was definitely worth it. And now that I have the first post in a long while done, I can comfortably get back in my habit.