Trade-off time?
Are you someone who believes the hype that in this day and age you really can have it all?
Forgive me, I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but I’m here to tell you that you can’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer in the saying you can have or do ANYTHING, but everything is out of the question.
Those of you who read my last blog might recall my analogy to life being a book of chapters and the fact you can – and should – be the author and hero of your own life story.
I’d like to build on that today and suggest that you will navigate the plot a lot easier if you accept the basic premise that life is a series of trade-offs.
They say that a happy marriage is based on compromise…I’d go further than that and say that’s true for any aspect of daily life – business, higher salaries meaning greater responsibility, achieving a comfortable work-life balance, personal finances, health, nutrition, the list goes on.
Whatever we do, we achieve some things at the cost of others. Life is not perfect and the sooner we accept that and move on to make the best of the cards we are dealt by balancing gains and sacrifices to create the healthiest possible options, the better that life journey will be.
It is up to us alone to make the choices that best match our values and priorities in our lives. Nobody else can make those choices and we should accept that some days we will choose wisely and others we will not. That’s life.
And bit by bit, from the seemingly trivial to life’s sliding door decisions we all face at some point, we create our own feelings of satisfaction and success. It’s not for others to judge – my balance will be different from yours as I’ll be prepared to trade different things.
Some will put a higher price on private family time, others on fame and notoriety, some will go all out for sporting success and acknowledge the sacrifices that involves around partying and lie-ins while their neighbour cherishes their busy child-led schedule so is prepared to forfeit promotion and higher salaries at work to accommodate such a routine.
Of course, things happen on our journeys that are absolutely not of our choosing – it doesn’t take a genius to work out I would not have opted for a near death experience in a train crash to reveal different options to me in my life.
But in the aftermath of that traumatic event, I quickly came to realise trade-offs I could make to improve my situation, albeit they are not all ideal.
I wake up every morning glad to be alive against all my doctors’ expectations. But the trade-off for that is I suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that I will have for the rest of my life. It means that for 90% of the time I’m fine but two weeks of the year I suffer excruciating and crippling depression. That, however, still means there are 50 weeks when I’m getting on with what I want to. In my book a reasonable trade-off.
My recovery from the physical injuries is far better than the doctors envisaged but I’m left with bad arthritis which will get progressively worse as I age. In my mind, that’s an unwelcome but fair trade-off.
The problem comes when we’re not prepared for a situation involving a trade-off. That lack of foresight is what leads to our feelings of disappointment, resentment or thoughts that something is unachievable.
Get your mind round the fact that there WILL be trade-offs along any route you take and suddenly life will seem a whole lot more positive. You will strike not only a sense of balance that suits you but also a sense of power – you’re in control of your own destiny and life really is worth living.
For 2 weeks I’m crippled by depression….but that leaves 50 weeks when I’m fine. A fair enough trade off in my book.
