I was reminded about something very important today: compromise = happiness.
That’s my wife Natascha and I getting ready to enter the belly of the beast… (I don’t know if you’ve ever been to IKEA, but the place is nuts. They literally sell everything, from floor mats to hot dogs, you can find it here.)
Note: If you were jogging, it would easily take you 45 minutes to get from the entrance to the exit because of the way they have it laid out. It’s like a maze and they send you through every square inch of the place, with each section sorted by the different rooms of the house. We should have known that there is no such thing as a quick trip to IKEA, but that’s what we had intended when we left the house this morning.
Anyway, we carried on, armed with a short list of items for our new place and a few gift cards we received from our wedding last month. We both had things on the list that we wanted to get – I wanted some rugs for the living room and my office and an organizer for my closet and she wanted some items for the bedroom and decor to make our place feel like home. Sounds easy enough…
The first section you go into is the living room section, where they have all types of makeshift living room setups showing the different way you can utilize IKEA products, and this was where the fun began. The first item on the list: rugs.
“A rug is going to be a hair trap for the dog hair, plus I don’t really like rugs babe” she said after looking at a few of the examples, “you do.”
“Ok, but they make it all cozy under your feet, plus i need one for my office because it’s like an echo chamber in there when I’m recording podcasts” I replied.
A little back and forth, and… well… no rug for the living room. (I still got one for my office.)
Next was the coffee table – we had to work out whether it was going to be square or round…
Then the TV stand (because your television should not be sitting on a chair in your living room.) Big or small? We went with medium.
One thing after another, we had to discuss all the different options and possibilities and why I wanted it my way vs. her wanting it her way.
IKEA is really a great test of your compromising skills and level of compatibility!
4.5 hours later and we’re finally making our way to the cashier with 2 carts full of stuff… and we hadn’t murdered each other in the process! The total ended up around 673 CHF (Swiss Francs) and we managed to surprise ourselves with how much we were able to compromise on.
We both got things we wanted, we both compromised on our own desires in order to make the other happy, and we came home and had fun building the furniture and enjoying the new vibe in the house.
The moral of the story is this: Having things your way all the time at the expense of another person’s happiness will just leave you feeling empty and alone. (This is why so many people today live in glass towers, flexing on social media, trying to gain acceptance through the screen from their followers – but that’s a whole different post.)
Life is about relationships and sharing happiness and joy with other people in your life, and if you can’t find ways to compromise on things, you’ll end up pushing people away.
How do you compromise in your life? And with whom? Let me know in the comments!
