Who likes to do housework? I have met a few people that say they love to do housework mostly because it is a distraction from other things. But have you ever met anyone who is ‘happy’ when they do the household chores like laundry, vacuuming and washing windows? There are a few that can afford to pay someone to do those things but for the most part we all have to juggle our schedules and include housework on our already busy schedule.
The more you hate housework the harder it will be. You will find every excuse to not get it done. That could mean the laundry piles up to look like Mount Everest requiring a SWAT team to tackle it. Or the dishes start to grow strange things in the sink. Don’t worry, we have all been there.
What if you could change all that? I have not met anyone that can crinkle their nose like on Bewitched and make it go away, but what if you could change how you feel about it? If you could, it would make all the difference.
Try this out. STOP THINKING about it and just do it. Too often we assign emotion and feeling to things we don’t want to do. It may be too big of a step to like something you don’t like to do or don’t want to do so I suggest something a bit more realistic. Remove all emotion from the task. I know this sounds crazy, but become an emotional robot when you are doing the housework and try to do the task without any feeling at all good or bad. Try and not think about it too much and just do it.
After awhile of practicing being emotion-less about housework you will find that negativity will disappear. Often times, the absence of negative feelings is actually positive. By removing the emotions you will eventually have a more positive experience. This doesn’t just apply to housework, it can apply to anything you don’t want to do, but must do.
E. M. Gray, in a famous essay, “The Common Denominator of Success,” written more than 50 years ago, says, “Successful people have a habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.” He goes on to say that successful people don’t like doing them either but they subordinate the feeling of dislike to get the task done. You too can do this by first not feeling anything and then letting a more positive emotion grow inside of you.
Kirk