“If we put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately try to get out. But if we put the frog in water at room temperature, and we do not scare it, it remains calm. When the temperature rises from 21 to 26 degrees, the frog does nothing, and even seems to be having a good time. As the temperature rises, the frog becomes increasingly stunned, and is finally unable to get out of the pot. Although nothing prevents it, the frog stays there and ends up cooking. "
Why is this happening to the frog? It appears that your internal apparatus for detecting survival threats is primed for sudden changes in the environment, not for slow and gradual changes, reason why it does not get to perceive the temperature changes.
As happens to the frog in the parable, often we are not able to notice how every day we deviate a little more from the path that we would have liked to take, from what we would have liked to be, from our dreams ..., to the point even of doing nothing to remedy it.
Perhaps we suddenly ask ourselves: what has happened to my work? Why am I going without the motivation and enthusiasm I started with? When have my children become so old? How long have I been so far from my partner? How older I look suddenly!
Small but continuous gradual changes, although they tend to go unnoticed, have serious consequences in our lives. So how important it is to stop once in a while and spend a few minutes thinking: where am I? Is this where I want to be? Should I change something?
The vortex of life many times does not allow us to incorporate the conscious habit of supervision in the different areas of our life. But, if we just let ourselves go, it may happen to us like the parable frog and we only notice those more sudden changes that make us feel uncomfortable but not the small and continuous changes.
Maria Jose Ortega