There’s a project you’ve put on the back burner, there’s a phone call you need to make and you’re still putting it off. That said, just imagine how much freer you’ll feel and how much less stress you’ll have, if you stop putting things on the back-burner.
We Need to Do the Things We Don't Want to Do
If life teaches us one thing, it's that we need to do the things we don’t want to do and nothing goes away until we deal with it. All too often and in hindsight, it's the things we ignore that are the things we wish we’d dealt with, further down the line.
Learn to see the merit even in the most mundane of tasks, see those as something positive, an accomplishment yet to be achieved. Of course, it’s not just 'things' we put on the back burner, we also put people on the back burner too and on our part, unless we’re good at reading people’s body language, it’s easy to get caught out.
The Back-Burner
In terms of 'you' being on the back burner – it means you’re a second or third choice. Others will want to keep you interested, but will not show signs of committing, and when prompted they’re full of excuses. In the beginning you don’t recognise the signs, but weeks roll into months and months into years and you’re still waiting for things to change.
Conclusion
But are people so busy that they can't make the time, or are they just stringing you along while they weigh up their options? It's usually because they're weighing up other options. Some people seem to be okay on the back burner – having come to accept they’re not someone’s priority. The point is, do you really or should you be someone's priority?
My life has been on the back burner for such a long time, I don't know any different. My parents especially my mother always forced me to put their needs before mine, so it's no wonder I have consistently ended up in the same type of relationships, time and time again.
There was a time I tried living my own life, but the guilt, shame and remorse of my childhood training, kicked in and I flushed my life down the drain.
I have been trying to recover ever since, but it's only recently that I began to realize I could do things differently and have been trying hard to do so ever since.
Thanks Randy. You're working on your life and that's important. Yes, unless we consciously think about our experiences, it's easy for those experiences to stay buried in our unconscious.
I know you can do things differently. The guilt, shame and remorse, aren't yours to carry. Those belong firmly with your parents.
They will have both been shown their life stories and will know what they have done. It's important to let those experiences and your feelings towards them go.
I have a number of things not so much on the back burner but shelved altogether and sometimes it's hard not to be regretful about those things.
Life goes on. It's important to match our expectations and our priorities change over time. I know I sound like an old timer, I'm hardly that, but I know these things are out of reach to me now.
It really depends on what we're leaving behind and why we're leaving those things behind. If it's in the interest of other people, we must accept that as part of the reason.
But if those things can be replaced by something else, they should. It depends on the person though. Some people hold on to things more than others, but I agree some things are difficult to walk away from.