Last week, my husband and I had a handyman in to take care of a few small household repairs that had accumulated. One of the tasks on the list was to repair the loose bottom step in our unfinished basement. My husband led him down the stairs, stopping halfway down to switch on the light. The handyman said, “You know, I can move that switch to the top of the stairs for you.” And he did. In less than half an hour, he had moved the light switch.

For 25 years, we had lived with the nagging inconvenience of descending halfway down the stairs in semi-darkness to access the switch. It had not even occurred to us to put it on his list of repairs. For 25 years, we just treated the darned light switch as one of the inevitable and unavoidable aggravations that comes with living in a hundred-year-old house. In a few short minutes, the handyman had improved our quality of life.

The whole episode got me thinking: our handyman provided a service not unlike the one I provide to my coaching clients. He came into our unfinished basement space (my least favorite spot in the whole house), saw it with fresh eyes, and suggested a small change that could make a big difference in our daily lives. That’s kind of like what I do with clients: I listen to them identify frustrations—frustrations that they often have accepted for years as “just the way things are”—, look at their situations with fresh eyes and help them identify small changes that can address those frustrations.

What about you? What’s one thing in your life that you’ve been accepting as “just the way things are”? Maybe a coach can help you shed a little light on that corner of your life.