How can we categorize the myriad things/chores that we do on a daily basis? Some that we like to do, some that we don’t mind doing and some that we hate to do, isn’t it? It could be different activities for different people. Those activities that we hate to do could range from cleaning the house to filing tax returns to driving through a certain part of the town to buying grocery to entering a timesheet to hiring a new employee to visiting a dentist. What I mean to say is that, these activities are not restricted to home or work or a place. The only common underlying factor being, we just hate to do them.
Why do we hate some activities?  It could sometimes be a genuine difficulty in doing it or it could be something about the whole process that rubs us the wrong way or sheer laziness or as bizarre as not liking the smell of the taste of that thing.(couldn’t get more bizarre than that i guess).
One of my blogging friends had recently written about how she hated going for an oil change, citing the reasons for the same. I get it, Lacey. Why would someone like to go for an oil change when each time you go there you are told to do do a hundred other things.
( https://bigandpinkytoes.wordpress.com/2018/03/12/i-hate-getting-my-oil-changed/)
 
Some time back, I faced such a situation. I was supposed to do an activity that belonged to the above mentioned “hate-to-do” category. I procrastinated it for as long as I could. But then, finally there was no running away from it.
As I was doing it, I sat down to understand what was happening to me. I could actually feel the resistance that I mentally had towards that activity, impact my body. I was so “not relaxed”. My body was stiff and my limbs just wouldn’t move. I was breathing heavy. I was angry. I felt as if I was pushing a stone uphill.  Any such resistance eventually ends up in a migraine and that is exactly what happened. I must say that the activity went on smooth and got over soon. But the impact of that resistance stayed with me for much longer.
I decided that day that I would not let it happen again. Becoming aware of something is half the battle won. Once aware of a particular problem, we can choose our course of action. That is exactly why analyzing and dissecting a problem is so important.
Now, I could deal with this issue in two ways: Either tackle the reason as to why I hated that activity or tackle the way I reacted when I had to do that activity. When I tried to work on the reasons, I felt that a lot of activities in this list did not have a valid reason for hatred. And whenever I negated one reason, my mind was capable of coming up with another. I had to give up this method and work on how I could alter my reaction while doing an activity in the list.
Last week I had to go through a similar episode of doing an activity from my “hate-to-do” list. But this time I was better prepared. I knew I had to do whatever it took to overcome that resistance which was the biggest challenge in getting that work done. This is what I did:

1. I kept telling myself there was no point resisting it. It had to be done.
2. I relaxed my muscles each time I felt them stiffening up.
3. I kept drinking cold water.
4. I planned for a lunch outing once the activity was over.

 
I realized that the ease of doing an activity is inversely proportional to the amount of resistance we have towards doing that activity. So it’s just about tricking our mind and getting distracted from the resistance itself.  
As the day unfolded I could feel the change. I finished the activity without much hassle and most importantly without an adverse impact on myself. Yippie.. my 4 point mantra worked!
Phew! I would say it takes a lot of bribing to get some activities done. But I am not complaining. Loved the lunch date that I had with myself.

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