Core Messes

Any time you find yourself fighting against an annoying tide of the same seemingly never-ending problem, you might be looking at the wrong mess.

If your kitchen counter is constantly cluttered and you’re constantly moving things around, the problem isn’t the counter. It might be the other cabinets in the kitchen, or it might be just that you have too much stuff in general. But the counter is the symptom, not the core mess.

Now think about that with larger things – your relationships, your career, your health. Are you constantly getting sick and having to buy cold medicine and miss work? Then colds aren’t the core mess – some aspect of your health or environment is. Are you having the same fight with a loved one over and over? Then that fight is a symptom; the core mess is something else.

Look deeper – what causes the same little problem over and over? What would have to change in order for that little annoyance to become a rarity? That’s your core mess – put your effort into that. Approach that with intentionality, even if it might seem harder or more complicated to solve initially. It probably will be! But it will be worth it.