How to Face Things Head On
So something that I’ve been sort of obsessed with recently is how to face your problems head-on. In so many areas of my life, I struggle to do that. In my professional career, tasks that stress me out send me to my couch with my phone. When I don’t know what to say to my mom and my dad, I immediately turn on my audiobook, eager to dull the pain in my chest. When I am feeling stressed about a fight in Valorant, I rush and try to ignore the mounting feelings of anxiety.
I would really like to find a way to flip the script because it is so rewarding. When I do a task that I worry about, I feel energized, and not tired from work. When I focus on my feelings of anxiety in Valorant, I become much more aware of what my intuition is telling me, that I need to slow down and play the situation very carefully.
I think this is a really interesting concept. I want to make a bit of an amendment. In the video they talk about trying to get better problems, that being able to have money problems when you are rich vs money problems when you are poor is much better (where you invest, vs how to survive). But I kind of disagree. The problem of survival is ultimately a much more rewarding problem for me than where to invest.
I do think that this is a powerful idea, and a way to reframe problems. My thoughts are as follows:
- Avoiding problems comes from the fear of failure
- We can address this by embracing failure
- But we don’t want to just fail at anything…this is where choosing your problems come in
- Instead of failing at a random problem, embrace failing and learning from a meaningful problem
- Ex: I am afraid I don’t know how to respond to my parents
- The meaningful problem here is to learn to create a bond with my parents while standing strong in my own life and boundaries
- Accept failure and believe in my ability to learn from a failure at this problem
- Essentially, turn every problem into a challenge
- Another example: I don’t know what to do next in my demo build and it’s overwhelming and a lot of work
- The meaningful problem here is finding how to be efficient at my job, and to work as a team without people pleasing to my own detriment (creating boundaries)
- Accept failure at this and my ability to learn from that failure
