Remind yourself that you are too smart to be complacent about a steadily deteriorating situation.
THE BOILING FROG SYNDROME ?
Put a frog in a vessel of water and start heating the water.
As the temperature of the water rises, the frog is able to adjust its body temperature accordingly.
The frog keeps on adjusting with increase in temperature.
Just when the water is about to reach boiling point, the frog is not able to adjust anymore.
At that point the frog decides to jump out.
The frog tries to jump but is unable to do so, because it has lost all its strength in adjusting with the rising water temperature…
Very soon the frog dies.
What killed the frog?
Many of us would say the boiling water.
But the truth is what killed the frog was its own inability to decide when it had to jump out.
We all need to adjust with people and situations, but we need to be sure when we need to adjust and when we need to confront/face.
There are times when we need to face the situation and take the appropriate action.
If we allow people to exploit us physically, mentally, emotionally or financially, they will continue to do so.
We have to decide when to jump.
Let us jump while we still have the strength.
Think about It !
When we are confronted with an abrupt negative change, we tend to react immediately and decisively. Coming in contact with a flame will cause us to pull away instantly to avoid getting burned. We don’t think about it; we just react. Yet we will sit in the sun for hours and get badly burned. We know full well that we’re getting burned, but we tend to sit there anyway, because there is no instantaneous sensation to trigger a decision to get out of harm’s way.
It’s this absence of decision triggers that causes people to miss opportunities or to get into trouble that could have been avoided. Fortunately, being smarter than frogs, we have the ability to create decision triggers for our own good. If we’re sunbathing, for example, we might place an alarm clock deliberately out of reach and set it to go off every half hour. When it goes off, we have to get up, go over to it, and turn it off. This triggers a decision: “Should I expose myself to another half hour of sun, or have I had enough?” Without the clock, deliberately placed at an inconvenient distance and annoying us every 30 minutes, we are likely to keep telling ourselves, “Just a few minutes more,” and then a few minutes more after that, and so on, until it’s too late. The “time to get out of the sun” decision trigger arrives the following morning when we turn over in bed and wince in pain. By then, it’s too late to avoid the trouble.
The frog-in-boiling-water syndrome, as I like to call it, can arise in other, more serious, situations throughout our lives where we willfully ignore an increasingly dangerous situation, telling ourselves that we’ll do something about it “soon.”
Take putting on weight as an example. Nobody decides to get fat, yet many people will just keep putting on more and more weight without doing anything about it. They keep telling themselves, “I’m going to lose some weight soon.” Similarly, people don’t make a conscious decision to keep smoking until they get lung cancer. They tell themselves, “I can stop anytime, and I will, but another day, or week, or month won’t matter.” So they remain like the frog in the pot, slowly burning up their lungs.
The frog-in-boiling-water syndrome doesn’t apply just to self-destructive behaviors. It can trap people facing important career decisions.
This is the case for people who stubbornly remain in a job or occupation that isn’t satisfying or isn’t offering sufficient opportunities.
Like the simmering frog, they stay where they are, telling themselves that things might improve while knowing they won’t, instead of changing employers or acquiring new professional skills. They may complain about the situation to others, but they never do anything about it until they find themselves trapped in a miserable, dead-end job, or worse, they lose their job without any updated skills to go forward in a more successful direction.
People stuck in deteriorating or stagnating relationships also fall prey to the frog-in-boiling-water syndrome. They are unhappy, but they just go on being unhappy without deciding to do anything to improve the relationship or to get out of it. Just like the frog, they stay where they are as the water slowly reaches the boiling point.
This syndrome can also trap people who are not in a relationship but would like to be. They do not take any action to help themselves meet someone, and the years pass. Slowly they lose their “window of opportunity” to meet a person who might become a lifetime partner.
Some people even believe that the frog-in-boiling-water syndrome applies to the way a society can ignore critical decisions. For example, we may be gradually depleting our limited resources without making any conscious decisions about replenishing them or slowing the depletion. Instead, we’re letting the situation boil away until it becomes too late to preserve a sustainable environment. We may be creating global warming, yet we ignore or reject any solutions until our polar ice caps melt away and we find our coastlines submerged. Likewise, as the economic gap between the lower and upper classes increases, we do nothing to avert the inevitable ramifications from such a gap.
We sit in the water of our own apathy and denial without taking action.
Don’t be like our friend the simmering frog. You are smarter than the frog. Step back from time to time and take stock of situations in your life such as your health, your relationships, your career or job, your business and your investments. Do this regularly.
You might take stock on New Year’s Day, your birthday, or every three months. Set that alarm clock, and put it someplace where you’ll have to get up and go over to turn it off. Remind yourself that you are too smart to be complacent about a steadily deteriorating situation.
Moreover, if you think a friend is falling into the boiling-frog syndrome, share this story. It might save a life.
Sourced from:- Decide Better! For a Better Life
Improve Your Life Through Better Decisions [Chapter 1]
Author Michael E. McGrath
Some Facts To Be Known:
• Strive to have a strong and healthy body.
• In a ‘high end’ hand phone, 70% of the functions are useless.
• In an expensive car, 70% of the speed is not needed.
• In a luxurious villa, 70% of the space remains un-occupied or un-utilized.
• In a whole wardrobe of clothes, 70% of them are seldom worn.
• Out of whole life’s earnings, 70% stays behind for other people to use.
70% of talent is not utilized
So, How to make full use of our 30%.?
• Go for medical checkup even when you feel fit.
• Drink more water even if you’re not thirsty.
• ‘Let go’ your ego, whenever you can.
• ‘Give in’ even if you are ‘right’.
• Be humble even if you are very powerful.
• Be contented even if you are not rich. Have a very good Life !
A journey with good memories…. Have a Blessed Day Today and Always !
Author Unknown
Quote:
“If you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will hop right out.
But if you put that frog in a pot of tepid water and slowly warm it, the frog doesn’t figure out what going on until it’s too late.
Boiled frog.
It’s just a matter of working by slow degrees.” ~ Stephenie Meyer, The Host
Impressed by the thought