Have you heard the story about the man who
brought peanut butter sandwiches to work
everyday? He was always complaining.
He hated peanut butter sandwiches he would
tell his co-workers.
"I'm so tired of peanut butter
sandwiches. And the white bread is
always too soft."
"Oh, no! Here it is again,
another peanut butter sandwich," he
would say as he opened his lunch pail.
His co-workers pitied him and assumed that
his wife or someone where he lived always
prepared the same sandwich, day after day.
One day, one of the men said, "Why
don't you ask your wife to make a different
kind of sandwich?"
To which the man replied, "My wife?
I don't have a wife. I make my own
lunches."
The morale of this story is that so often
we, ourselves, are repeating in our
lives what is unpleasant and distasteful.
Oftentimes habits have set in and we don't
even realize anymore that something
unpleasant has been set in motion, not by a
stranger, but by ourselves. For
example, I was uncomfortable sitting at my
computer in my home. Why? Simply
because the chair was not the right height
for me. It would catch my knees at a
bad angle and they would ache a lot after
working at the computer.
One day, I realized that I had the power to
sit at the computer with a different chair.
Of course, on some level I knew that all
along. But habitual patterns had set
in and so I never thought about replacing
it. It was probably even less on my
mind, as my husband was perfectly content
with the old chair.
Once I took back my power it took me less
than a week to break my habit and buy a
really comfortable office chair at a
discount office supply house. I love
my new chair. The seat can go up and
down, even forward and backwards and my
knees really thank me.
Take a look around your world and see how
many peanut butter sandwiches you are
eating!