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Making lemonade in a Chick-fil-A restaurant taught me a lot. I’ve written posts sharing those lemonade lessons (Walk A Mile In Their Non-Slip Shoes, The Secret Recipe, Green Lemons, Little Things Matter). This post is on what I learned from what I didn’t experience.

I love the smell of lemons. The sharp tangy scent makes me smile. When I was assigned to make lemonade (which involved slicing real lemons, of course), I was glad because I thought I would get to enjoy the smell of lemons while I worked. But after a little while, I realized I couldn’t smell the lemons anymore. I had  gotten so used to the smell it had faded away.

I don’t know if you’ve experienced this before, but it happens to all of us. Our brains only notice new smells. So when an aroma has been around for a while we stops smelling it. The fragrance is still in the air, but we aren’t aware of it anymore. This phenomenon helped me during my high school sports. The first few minutes in the boys locker room were…pungent. But by the time I’d changed into my athletic clothes I couldn’t smell anything off at all.

Losing the lemon smell got me thinking, as I carefully lined up the knife and cut the next lemon, how many other things in our lives we just get used to. What else fills the air around that we fail to notice? What stressful relationships have become normal to us? What physical ailments do we think are normal?

I thought back to when I realized that being constantly tired had become normal to me. I couldn’t remember not being tired. But when I finally listened to my wife and visited the doctor I was diagnosed with medical exhaustion. Thankfully it was fixable. Today, I shudder at the idea that I could have lived the rest of my life exhausted and thought it was normal.

What have you gotten used to? What could be holding you back? Just because you don’t notice something doesn’t mean it’s not affecting you. Tweet This Get an outside perspective, change your environment, and don’t settle for your normal anymore.