500 Words a Week - The Cost of Inaction

The cost of inaction isn’t felt today, it may not even be felt tomorrow. But sometime in the future, the cost of our inaction will knock on our door. At a time when we least expect it, we may face a form of calamity. Maybe it will be from failing to act upon looking after our health, that we run the risk of developing something sinister down the line. Maybe it’s by neglecting our mental health, portraying an “I’m fine” mask for the majority of our lives, we might reach a point of breakdown when we can no longer put up a front and we crumble in on ourselves.

Every decision we make has a cost. Even if we don’t make a decision, we are still making one with further implications for us in the future.

The more I attempt to write, the more I feel certain ideas and messages resonate with me. A primary one is that we must live a life of intention. That we must stop drifting aimlessly through the motions that is our life, and start to be more intentful with our thoughts, actions and behaviours. 

As we go through life, particularly in our early adulthood years we somehow have the feeling that real life hasn’t started yet. We hide behind our ignorance of the realities of the world, and feel that by not acknowledging them, we can remain in this blissful carefree state. Endlessly drifting through life. By constantly deferring action and not taking responsibility for our lives and our future, we are only delaying the pain, turmoil and confusion of confronting the reality of the world to further down the line. 

The power of compounding shows us that no matter how small an action we start with today, as long as we are consistent, we can hope for exponential returns in the future. We start attempting to make simple production actions, and repeat them in a consistent manner. These simple repeated actions may not look dramatic or look like they are making a difference, but in fact they make all the difference. The reason people stop these simple productive actions, is that at first, they don’t add up to success. The results are invisible. The things that create success in the long run don’t look like they are having any impact in the short run. 

Equally the easy choices we make today, don’t cause us pain or trouble immediately but will further down the line. The easy choices of not exercising, or not eating well, or not attempting to find our own meaning about what our life is about will not today cause us pain or trouble. But if we continue making these easy choices, we may find ourselves in a difficult situation further down the line.

We must recognise how there are simple actions we can take today that will greatly improve our future life circumstances.

By continuing to hide and seek comfort in our inaction, we are only hindering the capacity of our lives in the future.