I’ve noticed over the past few years that when people have problems they list them one after another mentally and in conversation they often present them all at once. It makes the problems seem entirely insurmountable as this wall of problems contains so many issues that it would be impossible to even attempt to resolve them. I call it “problem stacking”.
Some people seem to do it as a defence from having to actually analyse and resolve their problems, likely because they’re afraid of having to fix the issues themselves or afraid that they won’t know how to fix them. That fear is so overwhelming for some that they find it easier to have this mental list of insurmountable issues to spew out if someone, for example, suggests a better path for them that they could take if they dealt with some of the problems.
While my old response was to see these people in a negative light and write them off, in recent times better instincts have prevailed and I’ve been trying to help people deal with their problem stacks, though generally selfishly so that I don’t have to listen to them complain about shit that I know they can obviously resolve.
Here’s a few things I’ve learnt:
- You cannot deal with a whole stack of problems at once, you have to look at each problem individually
- Most problems are not that hard to deal with on their own – be brave and take them on one by one!
- A lot of problems are just symptoms of other problems – prioritise fixing the root cause and the symptoms will abate
- Some things cannot be fixed so the golden rule must be “if you can change it, why worry? If you can’t change it, why worry?”
What you’re going to find when you confront your own stack of problems is that a lot of them are pretty fucking easy to deal with once you take them out of the stack and start to figure out what the issue is and the most effective path to a resolution. Most things generally are not that hard to solve. “Life admin” tasks like this are boring as hell but if you can fix some of these problems then that mental burden you’ve been carrying will lighten, and you’ll become a far better person for it.
You’ll also see, though very rarely, that some problems can’t be fixed but you can change how you feel about them and accept the situation, remove them from your problem stack, and move on. It’s up to you to figure out which problems can’t be fixed but trust me, nearly all of them can be. There’s a 50 Cent song, “Gotta Make It To Heaven”, where he recites the Lord’s Prayer. Now I’m not religious and frankly the only reason I know any semblance of a prayer is because it appears on one of the greatest rap albums of all time but these words are pretty relevant here so I’ll leave you with them:
“Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”
Sumb Luck 