All of our problems are the same. This is the 156th time I’ve
written this fact (for those of you counting).
Problems are forever and we can’t avoid them. You’ll wake
up tomorrow and have problems for breakfast. You’ll jump on the train and read
a problem in your email inbox.
You’ll get to the
office and get a problem smack bang in your pretty face!
The typical problems we face can be solved.
Here are 15 typical life
problems and how to solve them:
You didn’t reach
your goal.
Just because you set a goal, doesn’t mean you’re going to get
it. Many of life’s toughest goals take lots of attempts.
Some
of the goals I missed are:
• Dream careers
• Girls I wanted to
date
• Saving enough money to build a school in Laos
• Reaching 100k
followers on LinkedIn
The best feeling about reaching a goal is the journey it took to
get there. If all your goals were easy, then you’d feel nothing at the end
of the process.
Solution:
Take the goal you didn’t achieve and try a different
approach. Doing the same thing over and over to achieve your goal is the
definition of insanity.
Your heroes miss their goals too. What makes them stand out
is that they don’t give up. The fun of goal-setting knows
that you’ll fail.
Someone criticized you.
If you want to make a dent in this world, then the critics will come out
of the closet. The bigger your aspirations are, the more you’ll be
criticized.
The number of critics you have is in direct proportion to your success.
“I had an entire blog
post written about me saying how stupid I was. It felt like *** on day one. By
day seven I’d made peace with the criticism and kept writing”
Solution:
You can’t please everybody that you meet in life.
When you speak on a stage, for example, 25% of people will like you, 25%
won’t know who you are and 50% of people will think you’re an *** even
though you’ve probably done nothing wrong.
Critics are not all bad. You can learn things about yourself from them
too. The solution is to learn from criticism, not be afraid of it.
Your career got
messed up.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a happy-go-lucky office
worker, your career is going to get messed up at some point.
The definition of business is this: Moving from one problem to another
and making money in the meantime to fuel your mission. Business is
really just problem-solving.
·
Redundancy
could right hook you in the face.
·
The business
you founded could go backwards and even bankrupt.
·
Your
career skills could become outdated.
·
You could
get fired for making a mistake.
Your career is going to get messed up. Things you can never predict
in your career are going to happen.
Solution:
See career challenges for what they are: an opportunity to try
something different. If your career never got messed up, then
you’d probably stay in your comfort-zone for your entire life and never try
something different.
The solution is to see your career getting messed
up as a chance to grow.Getting made redundant could be
the one reality that makes you want to create your own startup.
Having a customer leave could decrease your workload and create space
for clients who won’t drain your time and make you no money.
You have financial troubles.
That crazy little
thing called money will let you down at some point.
Upon reflection, the time I’ve been the happiest has been when I’ve had
the least amount of money.
Countless studies have shown that money isn’t what your life’s
about. As humans, we seek meaning, love and our own version of happiness.
Money won’t give you any of those human needs.
That doesn’t mean money doesn’t matter; it just means that it shouldn’t
be your main focus or something you obsess over.
Solution:
Lack of money is a gift. When you don’t have money, you become
resourceful and creative at the same time.
Lack of money helps
you decide on what matters and what doesn’t.
If things get really bad, then you’ll likely prioritize
feeding your family over buying another useless car that will never make you
happy. You’ll take joy in the simple things in life.
The solution to financial problems is to see them as a gift
and choose a meaning for your life instead.
You’re unhealthy.
Our health has become
a real problem. We wonder why we feel tired, sick and get headaches. We’ll all
experience health challenges at some point in our life.
How many health challenges we experience in our younger years will come
down to food and exercise. The strategies for being healthy haven’t
changed.
There’s no mystery around being healthy it’s just that we’ve become
lazy.
Convenience powered by apps has overtaken our ability to do basic tasks
and not binge watch Netflix every night.
Solution:
Take ownership. Quit feeling sick and do something about
it. Have some blood tests. Change your diet to be
more plant-based.
Drink more water. Get your lazy *** to the gym 3 times a week for 30
minutes. Stand up from your desk every now and then so you’re not sitting
for the whole day and messing your spine/neck up.
Whatever you do, take ownership of your health and quit being
ignorant.
A relationship ended.
There’s less than 1% of people who met ‘The One,’ lived happily ever
after, and never experience a breakup.
Even that 1% will have that relationship end at some point when either
side passes away.
For the majority of us who don’t strike gold the first time around,
we’re going to have to deal with breakups and the trials and tribulations of
romance.
We’ll probably find
ourselves in a toxic relationship for too long.
We’ll probably get cheated on at least once.
We’ll probably have
our hearts smashed into a million pieces when we discover that someone ‘No
longer loves us anymore.’
These are the realities of the human condition and our need to reproduce
and keep our species alive.
Solution:
Finding love is about understanding what love is not. You need
relationships to end to find out what love really is. All
breakups suck in the beginning until you grow and move on. Then, the
solution to this problem is to find yourself.
Once you find yourself, the heart will be ready for love again. How you
move forward from there is up to you.
You can try the good old fashion nightclub scene. You could go to
Meetups. Or, you could start swiping left and right on a few dating apps.
“Have your heart
broken just don’t let it stay that way”
You made a *** of yourself.
Geez, this one is an
ugly truth for me.
I’ve made an *** of
myself more times than I’ve had protein and veggies for dinner. Here’s a few
just for laughs (and your entertainment).
• There was the time
I tried to pretend I could be the Wolf of Wall Street and got laughed out of
the interview due to not being able to explain derivatives
• There was the time I thought this girl liked me and tried to hug
her while we were walking only to have her hate my guts
• There was the time
I went out with friends and threw up on my friend’s couch after having a single
shot of Tequila
• There was the time I did my first public speaking gig and messed
up a speech about my own life which I’d rehearsed over 100 times
We could talk for
days about how I’ve embarrassed myself over the years. We could even compare
epic fails to see who’s are worse. This is not a game though.
We’re all going to go into situations with the best of intentions or all
the experience in the world and still screw up.
Solution:
Making a *** of yourself is a sign of courage. Courage is what is found
in leaders and those who are doers.
Making a *** of yourself is an acceptance that you might fail in the
short-term.
Those who fail in the short-term will eventually win in the long-term
with practice.
“The opposite of
making a *** of yourself is perfection.That’s a life where you think your *** doesn’t stink and you spend your entire day trying to impress everybody to
eventually impress nobody”
Making an idiot of you is perfectly fine. What’s not fine is being
perfect
Someone messed your
*** up.
Car, home or insert other material possession that doesn’t matter. None
of these material things that got messed up are joining you in the afterlife.
You can’t bury the Bentley with you (although someone tried) so you can
drive around with your great, great, great grandpa and do burnouts in the
afterlife.
The stuff that is
going to get messed up doesn’t matter.
Solution:
What matters is that you don’t get messed up. What matters is that
you take care of yourself so you can take care of others. Maybe when your
junk gets messed up, you’ll realize that you didn’t need it in the first place.
You feel like your life has
no meaning.
These moments where nothing makes sense is where you get to
explore. We’re not born with a meaning for our life. Meaning comes
from learning who we are and growing as a person.
The meaning for your life when you’re 19 will probably change from when
you’re 51 and got three grown-up kids.
The quickest way to destroy your life is to believe that life has no
meaning. A lack of meaning leads to depression, carelessness, drug
taking and even crime at an extreme level.
Solution:
If you feel like your life has no meaning, then it’s time to
experiment.Standing still is not how you find the answer.
“Being intensely
focused on one’s self only leads to more suffering”
A short-term solution to this problem is to experiment with helping
those who have nothing. Spend time with people who’d kill to be in your
position and get some perspective.
I’ve found in my life that the greatest meaning for your life is
normally tied to finding something you’d be happy to do for free that helps
others.
You feel like you
can’t go on.
We’ve all had those days. Those deep and sometimes dark thoughts
can lead to a place you’ve never visited.
Some failures in life hurt more than others. Some failures can’t be
solved through a listicle post such as this one with a dose of inspiration.
If you truly feel like you can’t go on, then there’s another way.
Solution:
Seek real help. These dark thoughts must be treated and sometimes
the best medicine is to seek professional help through counseling, or for
an extreme case, by calling Lifeline.
While I’ve never had
*** thoughts personally
“There is a way to
come out the other side, but you have to put aside your pride and
seek help”
Please don’t become another victim of *** by doing nothing.
Every day feels
the same.
You wake up. You eat.
You go to work. You eat. You come home. You eat. You go to bed.
Life can feel the same if you do nothing. It’s up to you to create
variety and shape your habits into something more than a fixed schedule which
makes you feel bored.
Days feel the same when there’s no purpose behind anything you’re doing.
Solution:
You must find joy in the repetition. You do that by taking those reps
and making them mean something. Add some variety in by breaking your
comfort zone. Set a goal to do something wild during your day every so often.
• Travel to another country
• Talk to someone new
• Try learning a new skill
Even after trying something new, you have to get used to some level of
repetition. Let that repetition become habits that serve something which
can help others.
Your friends are screwing
your life up.
Dump them. Delete their number.
Every relationship you have in your life is a choice. The people
around us often hold us back. They fill our minds with limiting beliefs,
stories and goals that give us no sense of meaning.
Friends can kill our
dreams or make us believe something we never thought was possible.
Solution:
Everyone deserves a second chance. Start by telling your toxic friends
how you feel. Give them a chance to change with the new you.
If they refuse, take a break from them for a while. Ask yourself whether
you want them in your life long-term.
‘Fitting in’ is what we’re taught to do. What I’d advise you to do is be
you instead and that will attract the right people into your life.
You feel stressed.
77% of people in the
US alone experience regular stress.
This young,
previously blonde blogger has also recently learned about the effects of
stress. I had a cortisol test and the doctor found the levels to be twice the
normal range.
This stress led to brain fog, tiredness and a lack of mental clarity. Stress
is also caused by what you let into your life. Having options can be a bad
thing.
Solution:
“We don’t need more;
we need less to destress”
• Declutter your home and office
• Say no to more meetings
• Say yes to invites from people that make you feel like saying
“ Yes!”
• Buy less material things
• Have fewer people in your life
• Listen to one podcast instead of many
• Read fewer books instead of every one that’s recommended on a
podcast
• Have less recurring subscriptions
• Invest and save more money so you can stress less about
unexpected bills
• Take regular breaks (quarterly has worked for me)
A fear is standing in
your way.
There are so many
common fears — fear of spiders, flying, public speaking, dying, career change,
heights and maybe even a fear of expressing yourself.
Fear is a concept of the mind. Nothing is scary or not scary. Our
mind makes that choice for us and provides meaning to everything.
Fear can be overcome and that’s why we love stories of battling with
fear. I’ve famously spoken about creating fear lists and then knocking
them off one at a time.
Solution:
Smash the fear into tiny little pieces. Don’t avoid it.
Don’t let it stand in your way any longer. Make a decision to
overcome each fear you have and you’ll be unstoppable by the end.
Don’t let nerves trick you into thinking you’re fearful. We all get
nerves, but we can still keep moving forward with nerves — I’ve even learned to
use nerves to my advantage by using them as an extra energy source.
Nerves tell me I’m on the right track.
I’ve overcome my fear
of public speaking and my fear of flying — my fear of spiders remains, but I’m
working on that one
Real fear can be overcome through deliberate practice.
Dealing with the concept
of death.
Last but not least,
the old chestnut of death. Death is the one life problem we all have in common
and can’t solve. Sorry for the bad news.
Death is going to take us eventually and it will take people you love
through your life too.
“The solution to
dealing with death is not to overcome it but to accept it”
Death can be our greatest motivator if we let it. Once you understand
what death means in all of its darkness, you’ll understand life.
You’ll see death, not as a problem but a fact. That fact will
change the way you see everything going forward. For me, it took several
near-death experiences (almost being murdered and a cancer scare) to see death
for what it is.
Death is not an easy
pill to swallow. No short blog post like this is going to give you all the
answers you probably want to know.
The only way I see of dealing with the reality of death is to go out
there and live the best damn life you can, while you can!
Use your life to do something that gives you meaning and then you’ll no
longer see death as a problem when it comes upon you.
Peace, love and
respect — thanks for reading.
Kindly Note : All ideas and materials presented herein are for informational and educational purposes only, and is not intended for commercial or trading purposes. Neither does it mean to misguide anyone. Kindly make informed decisions on your own risk. Neither livettcelearn.blogspot.in website nor any of its owner shall be liable for any errors or delays in the content or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.
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