Understanding Simple ≠ Easy
Simple. Easy. Despite our conscious or subconscious beliefs, these are not the same thing.
Simple. It has many meanings, but the one I'm talking about today is this:?readily understood or performed.
Easy. Same thing. Many meanings. Today's choice: causing or involving little difficulty or discomfort.
Let's take a concept we can all relate to: Weight Loss. I mean, who couldn't stand to lose a few pounds?! Losing 5 pounds is quite SIMPLE, but that doesn't mean it's EASY.
How it's simple: Scientifically and biologically, I know that to lose 5lbs I need to create a calorie deficit of 17,500 calories. Easy, right? At first blush, yes, that sounds easy. It's a math equation, and I'm rather good at math, so this should be easy for me. Right?
Wrong! And here's why.
Making the decision to lose 5 pounds by creating a personal commitment to create a 17,500 calorie deficit is one, tangible, logical decision. Which is simple. The difficulty lies in the fact that the actions required to maintain that commitment are thousands of micro-decisions.
Thus begins an exhausting internal conversation that occurs over the next few days or weeks: What do I eat? How much do I eat? When do I eat? Can I have a beer at the Bucks game? It's my birthday, is that cake OK? Are carbs good or bad? How do people eat only vegetables? Is this a "good" fat or a "bad" fat? Maybe I should intermittent fast. Don't we have technology for this? I'm going to track all my calories on an app. Yikes that's a lot of work. Did I just eat 5 ounces of chicken or 8? Is organic chicken the same as regular chicken? This is hard. I'm exhausted. My husband wants to eat out tonight. Can I just take weekends off? Why am I only down 1 POUND!?!?!
You can see how something exceedingly simple becomes exceedingly complicated and difficult. We know WHAT we want to do, but we don't know exactly HOW to do it. Sometimes we do know HOW to do it, but we forget about all the external factors that will make it difficult to execute.
So what happens next? We give up. We think, "Wow. I'm a failure. I suck. There's no way I'll ever lose 5 pounds if that's how hard it is."
If any of this sounds familiar, I'm here to say that you don't suck, actually. In fact, I'm quite sure you're awesome. You are just experiencing something called DECISION FATIGUE. As a naturally curious person, I am a student of human psychology, so I read a lot of books on subjects like this. In short: IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT.
In fact, this is why we have a $60 billion diet industry. Some of the solutions are great and will absolutely work (assuming you follow the rules). Some are swindles, preying on your desire for the "easy way" out. But you already knew that, didn't you? You knew that there isn't a pill you can take once a day then eat 10 slices of pizza and lose 5 pounds, right? You knew that, deep down. Don't feel bad if you believed it, because I think we would all love it if there were. Hopefully, someone is working on that! If that pill really existed, you wouldn't find it though an Instagram ad. It would be all over the news. The point is, you would see physical evidence of a pill like that, working for people you know. You would see a logical, scientific explanation for how and why it works. In which case, you should totally buy it.
My husband and I sometimes like to watch a reality show called "Finding Bigfoot." While I find it somewhat entertaining, I can't help but feel like it's a waste of time because I already know how every episode ends. They don't find Bigfoot. Not necessarily because Bigfoot doesn't exist, because I think there's a good chance that he does. There are way stranger things than Bigfoot on this planet, just look around! I just know they aren't going to find him on the show, due to a similar logical thought pattern as what I shared above.
领英推荐
Point 1: If they found Bigfoot, it wouldn't be a series. It would be a documentary.
Point 2: If they found Bigfoot, given our track record as a human race, namely the fact that we love to capture beautiful things and put them in cages, surely that's where he (or she!) would be. So logically, I wouldn't need to watch Finding Bigfoot to know if Bigfoot has been found. He would already be in a cage, visible for all of us to see.
Point 3: People from the news would go to the cage and inform the world that we found Big Foot.
Now how did we get from diets to Big Foot?! Logic. The theme is that we need to use the logic, that God has given us, to open our eyes and pay attention to the world around us. Pretty please?
If you're wondering if it's exhausting to be this much of a deep, logical thinker, here's your answer: It absolutely is! Thankfully, God also gave me a good sense of humor, and I find all of this very entertaining. Hopefully you do, too.
Now go out there and have a great day. And good luck with those diets! :D
With Love, Amy
Sources:
Love this- thanks for sharing!