Wants and needs

When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.
George Bernard Shaw
1856 – 1950

For decades, I’ve enjoyed reading the Sunday comics in the newspaper. They usually spark some humor, and occasionally they contain profound wisdom. I’d like to share a story from The Family Circus that provided a great lesson we can all use.

If you’re not familiar with The Family Circus, it’s a comic strip about a typical family: a couple with four young children, two dogs and a cat. In this particular strip, the first section showed a young boy standing next to a towel rack in the bathroom. His hands are dripping wet, and he calls out, “I can’t reach the towel.”

The next section shows the same child, cup in hand, standing next to the kitchen sink. He tells his mother, “I can’t reach the sink.” The problem recurs in the third frame at the hall closet: “I can’t reach my coat.”

The final frame shows an entirely different scene: he’s used a number of stacked objects to climb onto the kitchen counter and stood on other items to reach the cookie jar on the top shelf.

He asked for help with the things he needed to do; he only accomplished them with assistance from his mother. The cookie jar — something he wanted — was much more difficult to reach, but he found a way to get it without any help.

It’s hard not to laugh as you picture the scene. He made very little effort for the things he really ought to do. He was looking for reasons to avoid them. But when he wanted a cookie, he didn’t let the obstacle of height deter him.

We might find it funny that children vary their efforts this way, devoting all their wits and energy to gaining their wants while giving the bare minimum to secure their needs. But sadly, I’ve observed the same behavior in adults.

When we really want something, we’ll move heaven and earth to get it. But when we’ve been told to do something, we often look for an acceptable excuse to skip it.

From an early age, we seem conditioned to try to avoid tasks we’re required to do. It’s fairly easy to find this behavior in many different areas of our lives. Part of the problem is that the things we need to do are usually dictated by others, and we have a natural resistance to being told what to do.

I think it’s important that you become aware of this tendency. If you want to motivate yourself to accomplish more in life, change the way you communicate with yourself. Don’t tell yourself that you need to do certain tasks. Instead, reframe them as things you want to do. Changing your perspective from need to want will change your attitude toward the task, and your effort will improve accordingly.

There is very little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude.
W. Clement Stone
1902 – 2002

Copyright © 2022 John Chancellor