The cost of not doing it
Are you sure those are the only options?
Running a tiny, weird school exposes some fascinating and frustrating human behavior.
From prospective families who decide not to enroll, I often hear, "We love your program, but we're going to give our public school a try first. Who knows, maybe we'll be contacting you again if it doesn't work out!"
It’s understandable that people would be reluctant to take the risk, financial and educational, of trying something different. But I also hear, equally often, "We wish we had started with you sooner!" from parents who return a year or two later, finally ready to give us a try.
However, my school, which serves grades six through eight, is unable to take on eighth graders for the upcoming year. This is a first. This means we are now having to say no to the people who are now desperate to leave the public school they had high hopes for. It’s really hard.
The challenge we face as humans is that it’s easier to see what’s there than what’s not there — what’s real as opposed to what’s possible. And that means that we tend to only calculate the cost of doing something, forgetting the cost of not doing it. This is true for big, scary, change-the-course-of-your-life decisions as well as mundane ones.
The first time I hired a coach, I couldn’t believe I was forking over five figures to someone when I could barely afford to pay myself. So much cash, gone in a flash! But she helped me to transform my business and life, all for the price of a part-time employee. A bargain.
Around Eclectic Music, we have approximately 4,506,923 different software subscriptions that we use to streamline operations. Each carries a monthly or annual fee, and it was scary at first to think about spending all that money. But each one more than pays for itself with the time and energy that we save.
Naturally costs aren’t just measured in dollars. Might it hurt financially to fly to the funeral of a beloved friend? Yes. Might it hurt worse to wish, ever after, that you had gone when you stayed home? Possibly. And what about the computer backup app you were too cheap to buy, the thank you notes you didn’t have time to write, and the vacation you didn’t take because you were too busy? Each one carries a price.
It doesn’t do any good to wish we had planted shade trees thirty years ago. Regret is not very useful. But if we can practice seeing the choices ahead of us in fresh ways, we may discover that we have the wherewithal to do something that we had always assumed was out of reach. There are often more options than we can see at first. Training ourselves to see the invisible ones opens up new possibilities that we can act upon with courage.
When you consider something you’re thinking of doing, what would be the cost of not doing it? Does this influence your decision?