It might feel like a stretch, but chances are the problems you’re facing now have been encountered before—either by you or someone else.
So, why entertain feelings of agony in the face of problems?
Because answers that exist outside your consciousness are about as useful to your challenges as apathetic white clouds drifting across the sky. You can only use answers you know.
And there lies the crux of the matter: You agonize not because of the problems themselves but because you lack knowledge to eliminate the problems.[1] With all that comes at you vying for your attention it's easy to miss this distinction.
But you do have two things working in you favour: your mind and your awareness of your mind (or, at the very least, your ability to become aware of it). And that matters, because it means you can learn and create.
This might leave you with the overwhelming sense that you are to learn and create your way to the solutions of all your problems. And in a way, you'd be right. But the feeling becomes less overwhelming when you see the effort you (are to) apply as a process rather than a task to be completed.
How you deal with a problem already has an approach - the approach you are applying right now. It could be that the problem makes its way to your consciousness and you begin ruminating without realizing it. Only to later wake up to find that all the rumination did little to eliminate the problem. And you, more often than not, find yourself move right back to mindless rumination rather than shift to another approach to address your problem.
Think of your approach to address a problem as the protocol you adopt to solve the problem. Whether or not you are conscious of the protocol you adopt is another matter. But for general purposes, it can be useful to be. The usefulness to being aware of the adopted protocol is the opportunity it provides: to modify and iterate towards better (or, at least, good enough).
Few things are to going help with allowing the protocols you use stay within the confines of your awareness as well as taking notes of them. What is worse than encountering a problem is encountering a problem you have solved before and being unable to solve it. And this happens all the time: That car key you never find when you are just about to leave for work. Those messages you never send to loved ones at important moments. That tendency to lay in bed while playing host to feelings of I-don't-feel-like-doing-anything.
It would serve you to record the protocols you use to address particular problems, gauge whether they do in fact address the problems and update them with steps necessary to arrive at desired outcomes. This is particularly useful for recurring problems. Your recording of the steps necessary to arrive at desired outcomes can be as simple as a list of checks or as detailed as a protocol characterized by a decision-tree. The important thing is to having an adequate guide on hand to provide direction for how to respond in the face of difficulties—especially familiar ones.
Let's say you find yourself with a discomfort about the amount of time and number of times you remain inactive because you "don't feel like doing anything", you can write out the decision action steps that would take you to move to a more desire state.
In conclusion, your agony with problems arise because solutions to address them remain out of reach. The good thing is you have a mind capable of taking you to solutions. From writing easy-to-retrieve protocols on finding those who have faced and overcome problems you now encounter to drafting timeless checklists on ingredients to have for preparation of a meal, you can document steps necessary to arrive at desired outcomes - and keep them within reach. And in so doing, (you might) come to realize that the drifting white clouds you once thought apathetic may be more useful than you now know.
Notes
1. Replace ‘knowledge’ with skill, talent, or wherewithal—the message remains the same at its core.
Photo Source: https://www.istockphoto.com/
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