The light bulb in my dryer burned out
months ago. Since I have never seen where the light bulb is located and
never had to change the light bulb in a dryer before, I expected that
changing it would be difficult and complicated. So I put the task of
changing the dryer light bulb on my list of “difficult things to do that
will take a lot of time that I will take care of when I have time to do
them.” Every time I opened the dryer and thought about changing the
light bulb my heart would sink. I had visions of having to remove the
drum, and perhaps even taking the dryer apart to get this done.
Then, last week, after finishing the
laundry, I had a feeling that changing the light bulb just couldn’t be
that complicated. So I got a flashlight and stuck my head in the dryer
to look around. It didn’t make sense that something that would have to
be changed somewhat regularly would be so hard to access. I ran my hand
around the inside of the dryer drum by the door and there, at the top,
was the light bulb. A few quick turns and the burned out light bulb was
in my hand. I went to the hardware store, showed a clerk what I needed
and for $3.00 I got two replacement bulbs. Installing the new light bulb
took less than a minute and now the light in the dryer works.
I was so convinced that this was going
to be hard that I didn’t even think about looking for an easy solution
earlier. Then the situation shifted from being a minor inconvenience (I
really didn’t need to see into the dryer anyway) into something that was
beginning to cause me acute distress every time I thought about it.
Removing the old bulb and installing the new one, minus the time spent
driving to the hardware store, took less than two minutes. Why did I
make it so hard and cause myself so much distress over it? We do this
when we allow our assumptions about how complicated things will be to
override the possibility that they can be easy.
We’re living in such important times
now and we have a great deal of responsibility to hold energy for the
changes that are happening on the Earth. So much so that we can tend to
over-think, over-dramatize and over complicate the process. What if,
instead, we just assume that it will be easy? For example, how many
times today did you think about the earth spinning on its axis? How many
times did you think about the gravitational pull of the moon on the
earth, the sea and on your body? Did you ever even think that the sun
may not rise tomorrow? All of these are highly complex and yet very
simple processes that occur every day. They’re important to us, without
them we would all cease to exist. But they are part of the flow of life,
a process that we are also part of. And when we over-think,
over-dramatize and over-complicate things, we step out of this flow and
make the process so much harder than it really is.
We don’t need to look for the light, it
is always there. We just have to know that it is there and put
ourselves in its path when we assume that everything will be easy,
effortless and simple. What is the easiest, simplest and most obvious
place to find the light, peace, truth and joy we want (by most obvious I
mean the one we don’t over-think)? Here is what I learned from my
clothes dryer’s light bulb:
1. If the process should be simple, it probably is.
2. The light is probably in the most obvious place, but the most obvious place is not where you might look first.
3. Even the most complex process is comprised of simple, smaller steps.
4. If we are afraid that something will
be too hard, take too much time or too much effort, then we’re
over-thinking the process.
5. Once we see how simple something is
and can do it once, we will never forget how to do it and can apply that
learning to everything else.
6. If you look for the light, you will find it. If you look for the problem, you will find that first.
I hope you can use these steps to
simplify something in your life that you think is really hard,
complicated and time consuming. Assume that finding the light, whatever
that means to you, is going to be easy and effortless and it will be.
Copyright (c) 2013 by Jennifer Hoffman. all rights reserved. You may
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