Nick Powills: Swallowing Pills With Apple Sauce

Have you ever given your children applesauce (or some equivalent) to help them take a pill? Of course you have. The beauty of this process is that you are creating an alternate route to accomplish the same goal. 

In a career, for instance, there are many things that can be frustrating – or fall into the category of things you don’t enjoy doing – those are the pills. But with those pills, you have choices. You can grin and bear it, or you can fight it – and most likely start to hate your job. Or, you can use apple sauce.

Just like your children swallowing that pill via an alternate route, you can do the same with things you don’t like. There are the childish approaches – like turning something into a game or giving yourself a reward at the end of completing that task. And there are ways to change your perception of how much you hate that pill.

All routes come with choice, which I would label as one of the most powerful superhero tools we have as human beings.

Mowing the lawn. Taking out the trash. Doing homework. Pills, pills and more pills are all over the place, but the insight is that when you are able to cover those pills in applesauce, the challenges are no longer as challenging as they once appeared. The power of the mindset is amazing – it can help you accomplish great things and fight through life’s pills. At the end of the day, mindset is also in your control.

So, hate your job? What are you going to do about it? Sure, the environment (or culture) could have a lot to do with your lack of satisfaction. That, however, can be somewhat controlled by you being a culture add or a culture subtraction. If it is pay you disagree with, you can also do something about that by creating a plan to win and giving that to your supervisor. If it’s your boss you don’t like, that will be tougher.

To this day, I don’t love life’s pills. I do love applesauce, though. I also love the way applesauce helps make those pills easier to swallow.