I’ve been ready to replace my living room furniture for several years. I purchased my couch shortly after graduating from college in 2007, and while it has survived kittens, multiple moves and three children, it was pretty battered.
A month or two ago, a small tear in one of the cushions had expanded into a large rip in the center of the couch. Across from it were two chairs, one a dozen years old and terribly stained with a million grubby toddler hands and spilled snacks, and another a broken hand-me-down recliner that was old when we got it.
I knew exactly what sort of new furniture I wanted to purchase, but investing in all new living room furniture seemed foolish with our kids still so little (read: messy and destructive). So, for the past several years we’ve kicked the can down the road, and the worse it got, the less I wanted to invite people into our home because of the state of our furniture. It felt like a problem that I just had to wait out.
A handful of days ago, though, someone I know shared a Facebook post about a moving sale, in which someone was selling a couch. As I clicked the post, I saw that the couch had already been sold, but it sparked an idea I had never really considered: instead of upgrading to what we really wanted, we could replace it with used furniture in better condition than our current living room set, for far less cost.
A few hundred dollars and a couple of pickups later, we were able to give our living room a facelift that transformed the space and could withstand the chaos of young family life. I was delighted by the result.
For days since I’ve been thinking about the lesson in all of this. We spend a lot of time together in our living room, and each day, I’d felt bothered by the state of things.
Colleen Cook works full-time as the Director of Operations at Vinyl Marketing in Ashland, where she resides with her husband Mike and three young daughters. She’s an insatiable extrovert who enjoys finding reasons to gather people.
I surrendered to the fact that it was not fixable at this time, assuming I had fully considered the possible solution. If we had more money, maybe it wouldn’t be such a hard pill to swallow with the knowledge that the furniture might be ruined. But from my perspective, I saw no path forward other than acceptance of the issue and waiting for the kids to get older.
I think the lens through which we’re looking at a problem can often shape our ability to solve it. If we view things through the lens of a problem not being solvable, will we try as hard to fix it?
When you think something’s futile, how do you motivate yourself to think outside the box? If you think something’s a lost cause, then it’s a waste of energy and time to solve it. If you are complacent about a problem you’re facing, you’ll miss the opportunity to fix it.
As a culture, we’ve lost our patience for slow progress and solutions that don’t come instantaneously; I say this as the chief offender. If something doesn’t come quickly, our knee-jerk reaction is to write it off. But, as I mature in this area, if I take a beat and allow myself to look at the problem in another way, there might be a solution that’s in my blind spot. What am I assuming about this issue that I need to reexamine?
Everyone has challenges, problems and frustrations. We each have things in our lives with which we’re dissatisfied. Perhaps that dissatisfaction is not a problem insomuch as an invitation to examine our assumptions, look at things a bit differently, work a little harder and seek an inventive solution. It might just surprise us.
