Unable to handle your workload? Struggling to maintain your relationship? Can’t figure out what to do next? When life becomes difficult, you wish to escape it. Life challenges make anyone want to run away, thinking things will get easier on their own. If that’s your usual approach as well, you may find relief for some time at least. Knowing you won’t have to deal with the day-to-day challenges can make you feel liberated.
It’s understandable why you’d like to take the easy way out. Sweeping problems under the carpet is easier than dealing with them. While this might appear as a practical solution, by doing so, you are deceiving yourself and making things worse. Running away from problems might reward you with short-term happiness, but that’s all there is to it.
Essentially, what you are doing is hurriedly tying up loose ends of your life that have gotten tangled. It will only make your life more complicated as the pending issues will catch up with you and dealing with them will be extremely difficult later. Simply put, running away from your problems is self-sabotaging behaviour.
This is why you need to work up the courage to face difficulties in life at the onset. Taking them head-on may be tough but running away isn’t a solution either.
So how do you deal with such life challenges? Here are a few tips that can help make things easier for you.
Pause and reflect
More often than not, we tend to give in to the fight-or-flight instinct whenever we find ourselves in tricky situations. Without thinking, we react and possibly overreact to them. We become overwhelmed and act in haste. But that does nothing but aggravate the situation. To effectively deal with such life challenges, pause for a moment and reflect. Consider all the steps you’ve taken and what you could’ve done to make it better.
It is better to first understand what’s happening, to take our time to think and reflect, we don’t feel tempted to run away from our problems then. We see the situation for what it is and that lowers the stress helping us prepare mentally to face the problem.
Recognise your behaviour
Running away from problems may give you a moment of comfort, but it is not a long-term solution. Your issues will catch up with you in time. For instance, if you are struggling with a huge amount of debt, ignoring calls from financial authorities is not the solution. It will only make the situation worse.
Avoidance makes the problem bigger. Recognise your behaviour and take steps to deal with it. Otherwise, such behaviour can harm many aspects of your life including your career, relationships or hobbies. Soon you may find yourself avoiding job interviews, social gatherings or even hanging out with friends in an attempt to keep your anxiety at bay.
Some people avoid facing difficult challenges because they believe it’s easier to run away from them, seeking short-term happiness and comfort.
Running away from problems can make life more complicated as pending issues catch up with you later.
One can effectively deal with life challenges by pausing and reflecting on the situation, recognizing their behaviour patterns, embracing discomfort and stepping out of their comfort zone and finding actionable solutions.
Embracing discomfort and stepping out of one’s comfort zone allows individuals to face life challenges with courage, break free from limitations, and pursue new opportunities, ultimately leading to personal growth and achievement.
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