Doing is Faster than Dreading

When my husband and I bought our house around this time last year, it was staged, and the room that we wanted to use as a guest room/office for me was set up as a children's room with yellow walls (fine), dark royal blue trim on the windows, ceiling and floor (not fine), and a wallpaper border of bunnies, moons and stars (very not fine).

The first week we moved into the house we put white primer on the blue trim and then both preceded to get long, nasty winter flus and by the time we recovered, the holidays were over and we were back in the work grind with less time to spend on the house.

About once a month or so we would say, we really need to finish that room, but how are we going to deal with the wallpaper? We were both sure that peeling off the wallpaper would require us to repaint the yellow walls, so we put it off and moved very little furniture into the room because we knew we would be painting it "soon."

As the months passed, we asked friends about how to remove the wallpaper, apologized to guests staying in the room about the bunnnies, bought a special scraper and goo to take it off, shared an office because I didn't want to move my stuff in to move it out to paint, and generally avoided the prospect of taking down the wallpaper.

Yesterday, my husband announced that today was the day to take down the wallpaper, and guess what, when he started scoring the wallpaper with the special scraper to put on the special goo to use another special scraper, he realized that the paper was so thick and loosely adhered, he could just peel it off the wall.

It took 10 minutes, and it was down. Well, it took us one year and 10 minutes.

Why am I telling you about our wallpaper? Because as we stood there laughing at how long it had taken us to do this little thing, I thought about the career counseling clients I work with, and how I always tell them that if you are trying to figure out what you want to do with your life, or you want to reach a specific goal, talking about it is helpful, but taking action is the best.

So, when you begin working on your New Year's resolutions, whether they are to change careers, to have fun * do good or to lose five pounds, don't wait to take action 'cause it may be easier than you think.

New Year's Resolution
career change