Get Off the Cactus. Get Back on the Path

Maybe you’ve heard this one…

MA: "Pa, what's that howlin' noise out there? I'd go look, but I'm comfy here in my rocker, and I'm too tired to move."

PA: "Gosh Ma, I don't know what that godawful noise is. I'd go look, but I'm all comfy sittin' here in my recliner, and I'm too tired to move. Junior? Go see what all that howlin' is out there!"

JUNIOR: (Slowly gets up and goes to the window.) "Ma, Pa ... it's just our old dawg Rover. He's just sittin' on a cactus plant, and he's too tired to move." 

It’s a funny image to think of a dog sitting on a prickly cactus, howling in pain, but not enough to motivate him to move. But the truth is, it’s often our own laziness or complacent behaviors that prevent us from moving from misery to success.

What CACTUS are you sitting on?

That dripping faucet in your spare bathroom.

The 15 pounds the doctor keeps telling you to lose.

That slow leaking tire you have to inflate at the convenience store every week.

That negative employee that does her job pretty well, but who continues to poison the culture for the other workers.

We howl about these things to others and we howl to ourselves. Ironically, we know the solution and it’s one that is well within our grasp. But we delay taking action for yet another day reasoning that there’s something more pressing that needs our attention.  

Or maybe…

…maybe we’ve just grown used to the discomfort. Maybe a bit of howling is all it takes to relieve our stress for a while.  So we accept that annoying pain in our rear and howl, when we should actually gather our energy, get off our butt, and fix the problem once and for all.

…and we’re going to do just that!  First thing tomorrow.

THE COVID EXCUSE

For me and for many, the pandemic became a convenient excuse to accept things that we would not have tolerated 14 months ago. The gym was closed so we stopped exercising. Our call to the service department was not returned so we didn’t do the required maintenance. We got lazy and allowed negativity to creep into our business, and now it’s infected our workplace culture.

So let’s own it and call it what it is: Laziness. Indolence. Complacency. (Your choice.)

Rover and his family serve as a good reminder that howling ain’t the answer.

It’s time to get off the cactus.