(credit) Brave | Kate Berube Illustration @ etsy
#2. START FACING YOUR PROBLEMS HEAD ON
Continuing on with item no.2 on the list of 30 things to stop doing to yourself / list of 30 things to start doing for yourself. I started with #1 HERE.
START FACING PROBLEMS HEAD ON
It isn’t your problems that define you, but how you react to them and recover from them. Problems will not disappear unless you take action.
Do what you can, when you can, and acknowledge what you’ve done. It’s all about taking baby steps in the right direction, inch by inch. These inches count, they add up to yards and miles in the long run.
which also means….
STOP RUNNING FROM YOUR PROBLEMS
Face them head on. No, it won’t be easy. There is no person in the world capable of flawlessly handling every punch thrown at them.
We aren’t supposed to be able to instantly solve problems. That’s not how we’re made. In fact, we’re made to get upset, sad, hurt, stumble and fall. Because that’s the whole purpose of living – to face problems, learn, adapt, and solve them over the course of time.
This is what ultimately molds us into the person we become.
BABY STEPS
I have run away from problems, or at least snubbed many of them in the hopes they would go away miraculously on their own. What is that? Wishful thinking or passive-aggressiveness?
I’m starting — baby steps — with turning my thinking around to not react to other people and problems. You know what I mean? It is true that we are made to stumble, hurt, get upset, get sad, be disappointed in someone or ourselves, and fall and fall and fall.
THE HARD PART
The hard part — but it is the part that I continue to do every day — is getting up after the falls. And I have. And I do. I wonder why I forget this?
I have war scars — or “problem scars” — from all the bumping into problems, and falling down from them. But I have always, always gotten up and finished the race….or at least forfeited if that was the right thing to do. And when that happened, I was harder on myself than other people were hard on me.
TENACITY
The more I’ve come to confront my problems head-on….the less problems I seem to have. Do I have many problems now? *thinking* Of course! But nothing that is impossible. I’m beginning to realize I’m a lot more tenacious than I give myself credit for.
I can do this. Just do this, Tamiko. Gingerly may not always be the way…And I do. And I fall down. I cuss. I blush. I may cry. I wince. But then I get up because tomorrow is another fresh day.
Thank goodness.
