…back when I was growing up, there was one McDonalds restaurant in all of Ireland.
Based in Dublin, fifty miles away, the only time you got taken to it was whenever we went on a family shopping trip to the big smoke. – Which was at most twice a year.
Back then it wasn’t seen as a restaurant, but as a fast food place, you ate at once in a while.
Nowadays, if you can’t be arsed (or fit enough) to get off your couch they’ll bring the food to you.
What once was seen as junk food has become a staple part of some folks’ weekly diet. – All because it became normal to do so.
When it’s normal to do so, we don’t question it anymore.
The same goes for the people we hang out with.
If everyone we surround ourselves with gets fatter as they age, we can be guaranteed to follow suit.
If everyone we surround ourselves with doesn’t have a loftier goal than getting wasted at the weekend, we can be guaranteed we’ll be there too.
If everyone we surround ourselves with has a bad marriage or relationship, we can be guaranteed that we’ll probably veer that way too.
To folks on the outside of our group, all of those things seem crazy to do. – But to us on the inside, it’s the norm. That’s the way the world is for us.
And like the little Lilliputians, we think everyone is like us until Gulliver shows up.
When things become normal for us, they become dangerous for us.
We get lazy and assume that’s the way things are.
We get lazy and assume that’s the way things always need to be done.
We get lazy and don’t think for ourselves or question if what’s happening is the best thing for us.
We take it at face value because we see it around us.
But if we were to question things or look outside the group, we’d find that what we thought was normal wasn’t normal to others.
In fact, you’ll probably find the opposite is true.
That not everyone gets fatter as they get older.
That not everyone gets smashed at the weekends.
That not everyone needs the cops to be called to their home to break up a fight.
But when you live in your fish bowl, the ‘normal’ surrounding you makes you think that it’s the same for everyone.
And when we try to make changes we can easily get dragged back in, because we stand out like a sore thumb and draw attention to ourselves.
Our family and friends question our sanity.
Why would you want to blog, write Kindle books, do TikToks, or try to create an online business? – That’s not what we do around here.
And they’re right, that’s not what they do around there.
That’s why you’ll be seen as odd, never get support, and get ridiculed for trying to attempt something new.
Too many of us run back to the group in those moments and give up on our dreams.
Not realizing that our biggest problem isn’t what we wanted to do, but that what we surround ourselves with is the biggest hurdle to our success.
And like boiling frogs in a slow boiling pot, sometimes we don’t realize it until it’s too late to act.
As they’d say in the X-Files TV show, question everything… and especially what you accept as normal.
For me, my normal used to be stacking shelves. Until I realised that you can actually do some work once, and have it repay you over and over again making you hundreds if not thousands of dollars. If you’d like to know what I discovered, head on over to https://www.writecome.com now.
