Pump it up or throw it out?

Picture this - you're driving along a beautiful country road. The road is winding, the weather delightful, the tunes blasting from your stereo. Then out of nowhere your car is gripped by a sudden desire to throw itself off to the side of the road. It lurches as thought has a mind of its own to the side veering dangerously towards the edge of the road.

You try to maintain your cool. You slow and as gracefully as you can - pull off to the side of the road. Upon inspection you see that your back tire is now nothing more than a shred of rubber.

This happened to me the other day (the picture is of my back right tyre). I was panicked to say the least! Let me tell you the best part was not then finishing the rest of our 300km journey on our emergency tyre - speed limited to a brisk 80km (50 miles) per hour!

Over the next couple of days, as you can well imagine, I've started taking a long hard look at my tyres. After being flabergasted at the cost of paying $270 to have this one tyre replaced I chose not to get a second tyre replaced at the same time which I was told was wearing thin and had a slight leak.

Silly me - this second tyre has had to be pumped up a number of times since the incident and I'll have to go in and have it replaced urgently now.

The reason I bring this up is that in so many areas of our life, many of us are happy to keep pumping up a failing tyre rather than replacing it with a brand new one. In my case the cost of $270 made me say - not today, when I really should have said "What is my safety worth? A whole lot more than $270!"

In your life you've no doubt chosen to do something similar to pumping up the failing tyre at some stage rather than going to the expense or discomfort of a new tyre. We stay in a career we're not passionate about rather than taking the step to branch out into a new one. We have partnerships and friendships that could be immensely better if we just spoke up about our ideas on how to improve them. We hold off on making that great business idea a reality because the risk of that initial investment isn't in our comfort zone.

Stop pumping up the failing tyres with slow leaks in your life. The cost of a new tyre, (or activity, or project, or idea) if right for you, will pay itself back to you over and over again in the time and energy it saves you in not having to constantly look after a tyre that will never again be what you wanted it to be.

By Kirsty Dunphey with No comments