“I’d rather die enormous than live dormant.” – Sean Carter lyric

What is dormant living to you?  In this lyric, Sean(Jay-Z) was talking about how living in a low-income housing area was a constant struggle, as the area he was in was packed with people in 20-story buildings next to messed up roads and schools, making for low-quality neighborhoods.  He was calling this living experience “living dormant”, because it was like wasted time to be around such conditions, as it was not a conducive environment to becoming a valuable person to society.  Later in the lyric he adds, “if this is what I have to live for, I’m going to take the chance to get more.”

Relate His Message To Your Situation

Now, that was his story.  If we switch to your story, you may not live in the same type of conditions as he was in at that time.  However, I invite you to take a look at if your conditions lend themselves to dormant living.  It doesn’t have to be about low-income housing or a certain type of neighborhood as well.  Maybe you have some individuals around you who are continually demotivational, or are stuck in a routine that makes you give up on trying something new.  Maybe no one in your neighborhood talks much to each other, and so that makes you want to fit in and not talk much or make much noise as well.  Maybe you persevere through an occupation that is hectic, but not very involved, so it leaves you little energy to formulate a plan.  This could also be the case if you are going paycheck-to-paycheck, as are something like 75% of Americans(survey).

Dormancy And Frustration Are Good Friends

There are many examples of situations that lend themselves to the people in them living in dormancy, and although they differ in look from Sean’s case, the effect is the same.  They bring about inaction and a frustration with lack of socioeconomic or self growth.  Now, if you are in one of these situations, ask yourself if your time spent living in dormancy is worth anything.  Are we satisfied when time passes and we have little to show for it except remaining similar?  Most at the top of the socioeconomic ladder would be very disappointed when no growth is to be found.  It is in our best interests to think like those at the top of the ladder, because most of us want to be around there.

Think Through The Words

So, then, if that dormancy is “what [you] have to live for”, are you “going to take the chance to get more”?  I ask this question somewhat rhetorically, but this is a thought process that is worth traveling through.  Most people would instantly reject a proposal that they lead a certain unchanging life for the rest of their days, regardless of how good or bad it is, because not only do we desire certain things we don’t have, we want growth to be related to our usage of time.  We want to feel like we were relevant, and that we improved.

Leo Babauta Battled Out Of His Own Dormancy

To relate this to someone in the personal development scene for an example, Leo Babauta seems to fit right in for this topic.  Although he wasn’t in the poor urban ghetto like Sean Carter, I can see that his thought process was similar a few years ago.  He speaks now about how to go for less, and to focus and so on, but looking at his message-spreading desire now, and the message-spreading ability he had when he started Zen Habits, it is easy to see that, even though he had many children and a loving wife and job, he thought “I’m going to take the chance to get more”, because that was a time of socioeconomic dormancy for him.

He guest posted and wrote more than anyone else early on in the self-help scene, and when you put in more effort, regardless of how good you or your content is, you make it to the top.  Now he gets free publicity all over the place regarding how he has 200000 subscribers, or however many it is at the time, and so his site grows faster than any other personal development site can, through exponential gains.  He took the chance to get more, and that is what the “more” is.  What are some of the chances he took to get more?  Some include guest posting when it wasn’t as popular, or picking a short domain name that makes people think it is clever, or other efforts like these.

A Minute Of Dormancy Is A Lost Minute

If your position/condition is not usually satisfactory to you, ask yourself “is this what I have to live for?”, and the answers will come to you quickly.  It correctly sets the tone in your mind that a life of whatever you deem as dormancy is not worth spending another second living.

Let’s say you know you could use less water when showering, by showering for a shorter time, or by turning off the water in the middle, or some secret other way that I don’t know about.  This is a great thing to know of, but it might not be enough to motivate you to do so.  You’re wanting to save that water, but your mind is saying that using less water is not so appealing, and you don’t see what is in it for you.  It’s like there is a used air salesman selling you air, and you’re not up for purchasing it.  That example doesn’t exactly fit in, but you get what I am saying.

You Need A Reason

What you need is a reason for your sacrifice to be relevant.  You may really want to use as much water as you can on your fruit plants.  This changes the dynamic.  Suddenly, when you are showering, you will remember that the water you save from showering in a more efficient way can then be directly used as water for your fruit plants.  Now you have a direct connection between the change in your actions(sacrifice) and the reward you can get from performing it.  Now you are way more likely to change your showering or water consumption habits.

Make A Direct Connection Between Sacrifice And Result

Make direct connections is the way to go.  Think about how taking a 30-second shorter shower might translate to your lemon tree being soaked for the day(lemons are real good), or how drinking water instead of that tasty drink(most are just terrible) will keep your system cleaner, help maintain your weight, and provide you with solid physical functionality.  You have to connect the change with the result.  Once you have made a direct connection between the change and the result, you feel stupid when you don’t implement the change, because you directly see the negative result.  Our minds are not bad, but when we have loose connections in place, we don’t have a set path or direction because it is fuzzy.

Your New Monitor Could Be That Much Larger

This concept is true all over the place.  You might spend $20 at times for leisure activity, and not think much about it, but when you think about how canceling 3 of those leisure activities could allow you to purchase a new monitor that is 4 inches bigger than it would have been, you see the long-term value in your short-term sacrifice.  Sacrifice is always a short-term effort.

Social Sacrifice Sure Spells Success

This can come into play in social contexts as well.  If you sacrifice your pride or ego for a couple of weeks, and let people you know of know about what you think of them and your own weaknesses and such, you will later look much stronger as a person, and you will also have a much healthier network of people around you.  It is not so appealing in the short-term to make such a sacrifice, but you can use the phrase “time flies by” to negate that.  People always talk about time going by so quickly, but yet avoid short-term sacrifices that would be completed speedily.  There has to be some sort of disconnect there.

If Time Flies By, A Week Of Sacrifice Is Nothing

Use the idea that time flies by, and apply it to your decisions.  Two weeks away will be here just like boom bam boom, so if you can make some sacrifice for that short period of time, you will get benefits for a long time from the period that you would probably even forget about.

Concluding Note About Pride

Extending that pride example, if you hold onto your pride right now, and it limits you, you get a short-term feeling of good, don’t really benefit in the short-term, and certainly don’t benefit in the long-term.  I know that any time I hold on to too much of whatever you call as pride or ego or cocky mindset or what not, I soon get knocked down for doing so.  Others don’t like it and we ourselves don’t like it too much.

“Just be yourself” was said by the talking cliche.  If it was so easy or casual to do, the quote wouldn’t exist.  There are many struggles associated with “being yourself”.  Here I discuss this concept, any related ideas that come to mind, and maybe my favorite color.

Being Your Loud Self

For some, the “yourself” in “Be yourself” is a person who likes to be loud.  A loud person runs into struggle when dealing with others who either want to be louder or don’t like loud folks.  In these cases, the original person can take the risk of offending another person or not take the risk and just be quieter.  In this instance, being yourself means not being quieter.

Being Your Leading Self

For another person, the “yourself” is a person who wants to take charge of situations because he lacks trust in others to do as well.  This person always has a dilemma at hand, whether to take charge or to stand back so as not to make others feel inferior or not trusted.  All the great rewards come with taking charge, but that inner battle has to be won before it can occur.

Being Your Opinionated Self

Take another person who is opinionated and likes to call others out on their errors or falsehoods.  To be herself, she has to voice her concerns and messages in the face of looking annoying or rude or petty or any other array of adjectives.  When you call someone out on someone you don’t agree with them on, there will almost always be some tension there.  Folks don’t change up their opinions that often, and so a disagreement represents a potentially long-term difference of thinking.

There’s nothing easy about feeling that tension or having to deal with some harsh words from the person hearing the opinions.  If Chris tells Mike that a certain habit of his is a waste of time, and Mike feels like it is a fine use of his time, Mike might let it go at that time, but could later think Chris is clueless for his viewpoint.  Chris can ignore his inner self and not comment on how he thinks Mike’s habit is a waste of time, but then he will become weaker and have lower self-esteem.  We build self-esteem by being ourselves, and lose it when we provide a false image to others.

The person who seeks to provide their opinion in the face of future humiliation might get mocked or insulted or ignored for a time, but eventually, people will realize that their opinion is really theirs, and will not have as much ammunition against them.  People can only attack you to the degree that you are not sure of your own actions.  If you are 100% into what you say or do, like in providing your opinions, it is very difficult to tear you down.  This is because the attacks on you will be on your real self, and so you will fight back with all your power, as opposed to them being toward a fake image you created, in which case you might only fight back at 30% of your ability because your fake image is not that representative of you.

Being Your Distant Self

There are folks out there who are only mildly interested in occasional group activities.  A person of this type can be more sociable than he likes, or choose to only engage in certain activities that she would enjoy.  Going to group functions when you are not interested is okay once or twice, but if this process is repeated, it will tear down your self-esteem.  There is only so much you can do that is not appealing or fitting to you.  If you like to be alone at the park or while putting out effort or learning something, it is up to you to defend this.  It can be a struggle turning people down, but you will be maintaining your actions in relation to your thoughts or desires.

It Is A More Difficult Path To Not Be Yourself

The thing is, though, that when you don’t present yourself as you are, you make others temporarily happy or glad in some way, but your self-esteem gets reduced a notch at the same time.  It can work to fool others, but you can’t fool yourself, because when you are doing something that is not fitting to you, you will get that feeling of dissonance, and you will remember that you are doing it for someone other than yourself, which then leads to thoughts that you value others higher than yourself, which makes you feel inferior.  This doesn’t mean you are inferior, but your brain has nowhere else to go with the logic.

If you and your desires are most important, are there certain parts of yourself you would show off more?

When you think of your ability to get into a high position, do you think more about the difficulties that are there, or the rewards that will come with the position?  There are hard parts to any task or field, and those are the parts that separate the bottom half from the top half and the top quarter from 2nd quarter of participants, and so on.  These are the parts to focus on in assessing what you can aspire to do in your field or be at a later time.  The rest smoothly falls into place.

Case 1: Congressperson

For example, take the concept of being a congressman.  When you think about what congressperson do, focus your thoughts not on the parties that are had with other big figures, or golf matches, or introductions at speeches, but about the hardest parts of their position.  Maybe this would be the speech given by a congressperson claiming partial responsibility for not dealing with a problem.  Things that are not enjoyable to us are also not enjoyable to congresspeople, so taking partial responsibility for not handling a large city, county, or state problem would be one of the downsides of the position.

Another example of a downside would be the constant maneuvers from people close to the congressperson, trying to damage their reputation or life, possibly to try and take their position.  This is something to focus on, as it takes vigilance and integrity to maintain a position, with folks always trying to take it away.  There is always someone else that wants to be in the position you are in, and some are more aggressive than others in this wanting.

Therefore, when you talk about a congressperson to someone else, or when you think about becoming one, you want to focus your discussion and thoughts only on their difficulties and stresses.  The concepts that are most discussed by the public, including parties, incoming lobbyist money, and free items being provided, are easy to discuss, and that is why they are discussed, but they are irrelevant to gaining insight into the position.  You can be more than willing and ready to take lobbyist money, but there is no difficulty to that, so that is a waste of time to think about, because it doesn’t set you apart from others.

Case 2: Doctor

When you think about doctors, or about becoming a doctor, the valuable focus to have is on the difficult operations or choices they have to make, and not on the great social status or monetary compensation that comes with it.  If you look around the internet, or listen in public chats, you will see that much of the discussion is about what comes with the position, and not so much is about what it takes to get into and handle the position.  Your mind has to be on the complicated surgery that has to be done, or having to see people in their worst conditions, or losing a patient when trying a new method.  It is these aspects that defines who a doctor is, and furthermore, who a good doctor is.

Case 3: Community Group Leader

Another type of example would be of someone trying to set up a community group.  A couple of sections of difficulty can be described for this example.  One would be the period where the group is small and very few people are coming to the meetings.  This is tough because the few people that come wonder if the group will get larger, and look to the group organizer to get it to a reasonable size, and their energy will be based on that person’s effort.  This is one difficult part until the group is full-sized.

The next difficult part is handling all the complaints and issues of members once the group is large enough.  This takes a lot of energy, and only a determined leader will put in the effort for this.

These are the focal points to have, as it is easy to view the group leader as having an easy or cushy position, but it takes some understanding to see what they went through and what they go through to maintain it.

Where Is Your Focus?

The main concept of this article is to check where your focus is, regarding people in their various positions.  When reading what is out on the internet, or listening to discussions people have, you would think that jobs are much softer than they actually are, and that many people are cheating their way through their positions.  While there is cheating and manipulation that goes on in every field(some much less than more), there are certain walls of difficulty in each that have to be accepted to get the good that comes with them.

Focus your discussion and efforts on the difficulties of what you and others do, and the rest is like a strawberry cheesecake, and cheesecake is usually real good.  Frankly, I haven’t had a bad slice of cheesecake before.  Cakes are already good but cheesecake is in its own territory.

“Where there is no difficulty there is no praise” – Samuel Johnson

photo credit: Michel Filion

Whatever it is that is difficult to you, or that you feel would be difficult, or that you avoid, is what you want to be doing right now.  The casual and leisurely activities are what you will regret giving your time to.  This may seem obvious, but my focus here is to point out the lack of value in those leisurely, or less intensive, activities.  We often see short-term gains from spending time working on them, but these short-term gains are not actually there, and realizing this serves to negate the motivation to take part in them.

Time-wasting Enjoyable Activities Are Nothing

Here is an attack on those activities you do for leisure.  They are not what they are cracked up to be.  What are you taking a break from?  A break is a period of less effort or mindless activity after a period of harder work.  Maybe you don’t need to cut out the breaks, but instead make breaks consist of mindful activity, or work that is not as hard as your regular work.  That hard work will get easier the more you do it anyway.

Are You Getting Big Value From Your Breaks?

When you take a break, or a really long break, are you getting enough out of it to come back with vigor?  You have to check to see if your breaks are used for avoidance of something you don’t want to do, and shouldn’t be doing, in the first place.  If you find yourself wanting to extend your breaks far too long, there can be a problem with what your work consists of.

Work Is Opportunity In Disguise

I once read that work is actually a disguise for vast opportunity that is available.  It isn’t the hard thing that is worth trying to circumvent.  Any viewing of work as that tough thing to avoid keeps it as that tough thing to avoid.  You can’t make it the thing that is not there to avoid until you approach it wholeheartedly.  We never hear someone talk about a past thing they did as that hard because retrospect shows us that the things we battled through weren’t actually that difficult in the first place.  This is not to say to assume that everything will be easy from a perspective of foresight, but there are manageable ways through each portion of a large task.

Rush Through If It Helps

If you’ve got some hard work you’re not tackling, it might help you to rush through the initial steps in a confused state.  Whatever it is might look hard to attack from a position of stagnation, but if you can build up momentum in any way, through exercise or doing word searches or learning vocabulary or organizing quickly, you can then take that momentum, and start crashing through the fence blocking you from starting the hard thing.  Also, keep in mind that your competition is sitting there glad that you are standing behind the fence instead of breaking through it.  A gated community is only able to set itself apart from local communities through the use of the gated system.

This post is for those who feel they are behind their peers academically, socially, socioeconomically, or so on.  I’ve got good news for you.  This feeling of being behind means you still have a driving force to catch up to where you feel you should be.  You are the main person who feels you are behind.  Other people are not as focused on your relative position as they are on their own efforts.

See The Positive In Your Discontent

Understand that there are others that quit when in a similar position to where you are right now, and others that quit before they even got to where you are.  This is not to take away from them, but to point out to you that it is a good idea to avoid thinking you are in a terrible position.  At the same time, your discontent means that you see the light on the other side, and still have a mindset of improvement or achievement.  This is something to be thankful for.

You Catch Up Very Soon

In categories or aspects where you feel behind, you will catch up sooner than you can imagine.  I’ve never seen anyone who honestly felt behind remain that way for that long.  Our mind uses that energy to propel us to catch up by keeping us on task, or making unfocused activities seem dull in comparison to the important goal you have in mind.  When you feel behind, you cut off celebrations or fun meetings until you catch up, because it is tough to enjoy in the presence of others when you know you will go back to your state of discontent and they will go back to being up to par.  These changes tend to happen naturally and quickly, and they are defensive responses that do provide some benefits in catching up.  On the other hand, it is vital to not get too distanced from others, as that can affect your attitude or focus.

Your Attitude Won’t Let You Give Up

Speaking about completing one specific goal, what is the difference between a person who gives up on the goal and a rock at the beach?  Both didn’t get to completion, although the rock didn’t have any intent, and is also an inanimate object.  If you feel that you are behind, you are indirectly saying that you are willing to do what it takes to catch up to where you feel you should be.  When faced with a feeling of disappointment or lack of achievement, you either A) give up or B) feel pressure for the work you need to put in, so feeling that pressure means you didn’t choose to give up.  It means you have assembled your mental resources to tackle the goal.

Focus Only On Where You Feel You Should Be

Although your peers can have an effect on if you feel behind, the majority of your efforts should be to catch up to your own ideal or position of desire.  Getting yourself caught up trying to match up to some one’s vision of where you should be would be like reading a book with no ending, since their vision could change at any time, and you wouldn’t be in control of it.  When you’re sleeping, you’re the only one dreaming, and when you perform hundreds of activities and thinking thousands of thoughts during the day, they consist of YOU doing them, and not another person who is either trying to control your efforts, or who you unwittingly allow to control your efforts.  You are the only person who has traveled through all your past experiences, and are the only person who will travel through all your future experiences.

When you look back from the future, you will view this current time and appreciate your successful mindset and positive energy for working with what you had.

It is important to get frustrated.  It means you still want something.  If you aren’t getting frustrated or energized by the mistakes you are making, you are on the wrong track.  If you are getting frustrated by them, you will soon clear up whatever it was that caused the confusion or error.  You might want to smile each time you feel frustrated because it means you haven’t given up.

Where You Are Versus Where You Want To Be

You tend to have an idea of what you want to do later on in your life.  This can create some incongruity in your mind between what you are currently doing and what you would like to be doing.  This is healthy and motivational.  At the same time, your level of current frustration is a good indicator of how far you will go.  If you are a budding entrepreneur that is currently held back in a way or two, or surrounded by folks that don’t understand your business plans, you may exhibit a high level of frustration.  This is fine, and you need to look at that as your greatest asset.

Examples Of This Phenomenon

Imagine a young Bill Gates or Donald Trump before they became established as a presence.  There was certainly frustration in their minds until the position they were in was the position they felt they were able to maintain.  I can see a young aspiring individual telling themselves “I can’t wait until…” because of their frustration with not being at the point they envision themselves in.  A young musician who sees himself adeptly playing guitar as part of a successful band will be disappointed with the unskilled members of his bands until he finally teams up with people at his level, which is when any fleeting past disappointment will become irrelevant and the aspiration will have been achieved.

Know That Disappointment Is A Signal Of Your Aspiration

When you hear yourself directly or indirectly complaining to others about wanting to do more, not less, although complaining is rarely useful, give yourself a pat on the back, because your frustration comes from wanting to rise.  The same people who I see angry about something that most others ignore are the same ones that rise in whatever field they were angry or frustrated about.  The person disappointed with a B+ in their class of interest is the same person that sees themselves mastering the material for future usage.  Where there is frustration is something of value.

You Are Most Troubled Right Before You Bring About Positive Change

It is also the tipping point.  The moment you beat yourself up over something is usually a moment or two before you find a way to fix it or learn how to overcome it.  Your anger or disappointment is a sign that you are not one of the folks that is able to be labeled a “quitter”.  A person who quits an activity out of wanting to reduce frustration may succeed in doing so, but also forfeits any of the larger gains that would show up from crossing the barrier of entry.  Before quitting something, it is good to recall that frustration is temporary but canceling a pursuit is usually not.

Are You Frustrated Enough?

On the other side of this issue is the question “Are you frustrated enough?”.  If you think you fit in this category, start going back to doing whatever it is that makes you feel a bit behind or needing to put in effort to catch up.  If it is a painful activity for you to return to, remember that you should not run from the pain, but go towards it.  These items like frustration, anger, pain, and related feelings of inferiority or disappointment are where your true nature comes out in an uninhibited fashion to conquer them.  There is no need to hold back your mind’s energy until some surprise future event brings your excitement back.  You can get your energy back without that.

“The individual increasingly comes to know who he is through the stand he takes when he expresses his ideas, values, beliefs, and convictions, and through the declaration and ownership of his feelings.” – Clark Moustakas

While most people d0n’t always remember this, our most prized modern world possession is the freedom of speech. The right to express ourselves in any way possible. For instance, if we dislike the fact that a clothes department distributes attire made from animals, we have the ability to a peaceful protest outside of the establishment. It’s rights like these that make me happy to want to express myself.

Nevertheless, there are people who hold in their emotions instead of letting them out. Whether they are too insecure to express themselves or they just feel as if they shouldn’t, their emotions are kept inside, blocked from the outside world.

For those of you who do this, I understand where you’re coming from. I used to do this myself when I was a lot younger. It started when my family moved to the suburbs. I had to leave all of my old friends in the city and it was hard to let them go. Soon after, I attended a new school with new opportunities to make friends. However, for many years since the day I moved, I would never get over ‘being the new kid’ at school. It would not be until the end of my sophomore year in high school that I would embrace unleashing my emotion.

By this, I don’t mean that I snapped at every person who didn’t agree with me. I just felt more relaxed expressing my personal opinion to others.

Here’s some suggestions on how you can do the same:

Express yourself through a creative medium

Put in all the pent up anger, sadness, happiness, and frustration you’ve been feeling into a creative medium. Notice how I put ‘creative’ in front of medium. It’s because just any medium will not do. Don’t drown your sorrows in the boob tube or by eating tub after tub of ice cream. It only associates detrimental behavior to your emotions. You’ll have no choice but to act wrongly in order to actually feel comfortable expressing yourself. Try more productive activities: take up music, singing, acting, drawing, writing, or other paths of expression that require emotion to utilize.

Talk it out with someone

If you’re more of a people person, what better way to express yourself than through people? There are a number of people in your live whom you could talk with in order to get things off your chest. Friends and family are the first group of individuals that you should try and communicate with. If you would like to keep emotional issues away from them, however, you can always contact professional support groups who should be more than willing to help you with your emotional troubles.

It’s understandable to want to shield your emotions from others. People use this method to protect themselves from being hurt. They think that if they open themselves up and be vulnerable, people will disrespect them for expressing their feelings.

Yes, people do take advantage of vulnerability, but by putting up a wall, you are effectively blocking off relationships that you could make. People become close because they express emotion and make themselves vulnerable to each other. Why do you think that during crises, individuals help each other out? It’s because they all share the same pain and live the same situations.

Limiting your expression on location depends on you

This was what I tended to do. I would freely express myself in one place, but act differently in other. For example, at home, I would be open to my family, happy, and smiling with my sisters. At school, however, I would turn into a completely different person: closed off, reserved, and not willing to share my feelings with nearly anyone. As you would suspect, many people thought I was a fake person or something was wrong with me. I don’t know about you, but I’m not an open book willing to be read by just anyone. I have to get a sense of trust from a person before I can open up to them. Others might disagree with me a say that it shouldn’t matter who you talk to. It depends on how comfortable you are expressing yourself in different places and on the level of trust you require to be open.

You must have the courage to own your feelings and be ready to take any criticism. So don’t bottle up your emotions – set them free.

———–

John Anyasor is a guest blogger for Timeless Information who writes for the HiLife2B: Blog on Personal Improvement for a Good Life. He gives advice on personal development, life lessons, college life tips, and more.

If you liked this post, please share it on Twitter, Digg, or Facebook. It’ll do the both of us a world of good.

photo credit: Etwood

A reader of the site has asked me to discuss extreme situations and the aftermath that follows them, where you assess the mistakes that you made during the predicament.  Here is an area of analytical importance, because looking at how you respond to uncommon situations that take you completely out of your comfort zone is a way to easily see where your weaknesses and strengths are.  It is said that the situations you get into will always be ones you can handle at that time, or else they would not be provided to you.  It is up to you to learn from them.

See How You Respond

The examples that were provided to me by the reader were of a woman’s purse being snatched in public, or an unexpected argument becoming intense quickly.  In the situation of a purse being snatched, you might not respond well to the situation as it occurs, but can then see how you responded.  Let’s say you, assuming you have a purse, which is potentially the case if you are female, responded to someone attempting to steal it by cowering in fear.  This would let you know that you need to start working on your defensive responses to others.  Backing away from conflict doesn’t tend to reduce how much of it you confront, and tends to reduce your preparedness to deal with it.

Studying What Pulled You Into An Argument

In the example of the aftermath of an intense argument, that is the time where you see what in the argument caught you off guard and caused you to get sucked into a cycle of unhelpful communication.  By seeing what triggered your loss of verbal self-control, you can get a better sense of what you either need to confront head on, or clear out of your daily routine, so that you don’t end up in the same kind of argument later on.  Taking a pro-active sense in this type of instance can keep you out of future arguments that you would regret having, as the time lost during one of that type can’t be redeemed.

Don’t Relive The Experience

The idea behind analyzing an uncommon intense situation in your day is that you want to analyze, but not relive, the predicament.  If you got into a heavy argument, and find yourself replaying the argument in your head, or even continue the argument with the person after even they were done, the cycle continues.  You want to cut it off where its natural ending is, and then analyze it from a distant perspective.  There is nothing to gain from doing the same thing twice, as that mostly leads to frustration.

Tough Situations Are Needed

With these occasional pressure-filled situations, you find out more about yourself than you would in weeks of routine activity.  Once in a while, it is good to be in a predicament that tests your current ability to respond.

There are experiences you don’t take part in, people you don’t interact with, actions you don’t take, because of the pain you perceive to be involved with them.  You tell yourself it is too much to handle, cancel it, and then switch to another activity that you feel does not contain that level of pain.  The message provided in this discussion is to not make that switch.  Often, you make the switch quickly before even taking a minute to think about what you are doing.

Is There Even Anything Worth Avoiding?

Most of what you avoid comes down to the people involved.  You avoid a situation because the people that will be there will think negative things about you, or you will have to do things you think you aren’t prepared for, which comes back to looking back in front of others.  Here is a way to work through thoughts of worry related to others.  There are people that have good intent towards you, and you want to work with and be around them.  At the same time, there may be individuals that don’t have such a good intent toward you, so they shouldn’t be in your thoughts, as that would take up your thinking time.  It doesn’t mean that they are wrong, but that you won’t benefit from spend time with them or thinking about them.

Pain Means There Is Something There

When you are worried, or feel that a future experience will be painful, that means there is something good worth defending in the process.  Pain only comes from the possible loss of something good.  You don’t feel pain or worry about billions of things happening around the planet because you don’t have a certain connection with the people involved that provides you with a source of foundation and pleasure.  For those few people you know and connect with, there is something great there, and so affecting that in some way is the source of pain.

Thus, running from pain in any way is akin to running from the essence of what you actually desire.  You will always regret running from something you perceive to be as painful, because in hindsight months later, the pain or pressure that would have showed up will seem to be so small you will wonder why you avoided it.

Avoid A Cycle Of Avoidance

If you run from pain in one situation, it is likely you will run from it in another, and another, closing up opportunity after opportunity.  The issue here is that you ran away from one large thing, so then the next one seems like it would be good to avoid as well, and then you are out of the loop, communication-wise.  Keep the communication and activity channels open regardless of the circumstances, and others will see that the outside world doesn’t control you, but that you have some control over your environment.