What if your problem, wasn’t your problem?

I want to share a new practice that I have adopted over the last quarter. Whenever I am faced with a personal challenge that I can’t seem to solve, I try to remove myself from the situation.

This does not mean that I avoid the situation till it kind of awkwardly fades away until it comes up again. It means that I look at the situation from an outsider’s perspective.

What if instead of dealing with it as my problem, I was solving it for somebody else? How would I look at the situation then?

Would the level of stress be any less? Would that kind of mental distance from the problem give me the clarity of mind to deal with the situation better? The answer is usually in the affirmative.

So here’s what I do- I lay down the facts of the problem on a piece of paper or on the notes app on my phone or just say them out loud- as I would if I was sharing them with a friend. And when all the facts are on the table, I make a suggestion as the friend would in helping me out of a tough spot.

I don’t reserve this method for only the big things. I’ve had success in trying it for small everyday things. Give it a try- with regular practice it will become your second nature and you will find that the disassociation of ‘me’ from ‘the problem’ makes x much easier to solve for. It keeps at bay questions like- ‘Why do I have to deal with things like these all the time?’ ‘What if it doesn’t work out?’ ‘What is at stake here?’ And makes it possible to keep aside the frills and focus on the problem itself.