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My Super-Charged Life by Jeff on 4/14/10
Do you want to run away from all your problems?
I certainly have problems that I’d like to avoid. Problems are hurtful, distracting and agitating. Why wouldn’t I want to get as far away from them as possible?
That feeling you get when a big crisis pops up is sickening. It can feel like you went bungee jumping without a rope.
That’s why I recently set out to find the most used strategies for running away from problems. I wanted to uncover some things I could try. Fortunately, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be to find popular tactics. It seems that I’m not alone in wanting to avoid problems.
From my research, I found there are literally millions of people already using these techniques. You might even be one of them. However, I still thought it might be a value to share with you what I’ve learned. I hope I don’t bore you with this stuff. Maybe there is a new strategy here that you can use for better results than what you are experiencing now.
5 Ways to Run Away from All Your Problems
If you want to ditch all your problems, then it does appear that you have a lot of company. As I said before, tons of people have gone before us paving the way. I found this to be great news and very reassuring because we can learn from their experience.
Here are five common strategies I found to run away from our problems:
1. Bury Your Head in the Sand
Probably one of the most common and promising strategies used to avoid problems is just to ignore them. We have an amazing ability to blind ourselves to the issues in our lives. If we don’t see and acknowledge the problems, then they simply don’t exist. It is almost a miracle at how effective this technique can be.
Of course, as with all strategies, this one does have a potential gotcha. Through some painstaking research and expert analysis, I have uncovered one pretty disturbing drawback of this approach that I think must have been hidden for years because so many have missed it.
It seems that those that utilize this approach later experience a day of reckoning. As I said, this is a pretty disturbing concept. What seems to happen is that all the ignored problems pile up and then one day, WHAM! They smack you right between the eyes with a crisis so huge that it is impossible to ignore despite even the best efforts of those very experienced with the strategy.
I found this discovery to be quite upsetting. At first, it seemed this was almost a perfect solution because it could be applied to practically any problem, but this day of reckoning thing really threw me for a loop so I decided to consider some other alternatives.
2. Get a Divorce
It is common knowledge and widely accepted that most problems originate with other people. We certainly aren’t the source of our own problems. That’s just ridiculous!
The closer a person is to you, the more leverage they have to create trouble for you. Therefore, it only stands to reason that your spouse is a big source of problems in your life. A divorce seems like a fast way to lighten up one’s life. After all, they aren’t called the old ball and chain for nothin’.
Again, this is a very popular strategy. Some researchers think that more than half of all marriages end in divorce so a lot of people have embraced divorce as something that works in avoiding problems. On the surface divorce looks like a fine way to quickly discard troublesome issues.
However, I’ve heard reports of divorce creating problems too. Apparently, it is not completely the panacea of good times its cracked up to be. There are rumors that It is loaded with financial issues and that it creates tons of complicated emotional problems especially when children are involved. Please don’t go spreading this information around. I don’t want my informants to know that I’m telling everyone their insider information.
It is really hard to believe that another very promising strategy for avoiding problems turns out to be saddled with cockleburs. Fortunately, there are still more schemes tactics to consider.
3. Live on Credit
I’ve said before that “life takes money”, but unfortunately money problems are plentiful. In addition, they are stressful, difficult and persistent. The good news is that there are plenty of banks with piles of money more than willing to help. They are constantly offering tons of great deals on credit cards. Heck, they even want to pay you to get one of the their cards. How great of a deal is that?
Credit cards are taken just about everywhere nowadays. You can basically live on credit! This can really ease the burden in a financial pinch. Have you been laid off from work? No problem! Just whip out your trusty old credit card and presto, your money problems are solved. Whatever the situation, having a credit card in your pocket seems to ease the burden.
I was sure that no one could possibly spoil this strategy for avoiding problems. It seems so perfect, but then I ran across this article saying credit cards suck. Oh, please say it isn’t so! After I read about interest rate hikes, late fees and cancellations, I decided to do a little more research and found the truth about credit cards. It is truly a sad day!
It is depressing to find out that three really promising strategies for avoiding problems seem so full of pitfalls. I’m starting to wonder if there is any hope.
4. Lose All Hope
Speaking of hope, I’m beginning to think, “Why even try?” Life’s problems seem totally overwhelming and unavoidable at this point. I might as well just give up. Everyone is out to get me anyway. My boss, my spouse, even my kids have it in for me. There just doesn’t seem to be any solutions to these problems. Everywhere I turn I only see more trouble heading my way. It has always been this way for me. I guess I’m just cursed.
I’ve tried, I really have, but it just never works out. I can’t even avoid my problems. I don’t know why I think I can ever possibly get ahead and loose from them. I take one step forward and two steps back no matter how hard I try or what I do. Overall, I just don’t have the energy to deal with it anymore.
I’m going to go with the flow. I’m tired of fighting it. I’ll let the cards fall where they may. I’ll just run my life on autopilot. That promotion I was wanting is out of my reach anyway and even if I got it, I probably wouldn’t like the job. I’m sure it is just full of a lot of new problems I couldn’t avoid anyway. The finances are a little tight, but if it gets too bad I’ll just declare bankruptcy. What the heck!
I know I should want more for myself and my family, but it isn’t worth the hassle. They probably wouldn’t appreciate it anyway. Why go to all the trouble? I think if I just ignore it all, then it won’t bother me so much. This seems like the best approach. Of course, I’ll never get that life I always wanted, but I guess that’s just the hand I’ve been dealt. Oh well!
5. Sabotage Yourself
I began this project really expecting to find ways to avoid all my problems, but it has been a seriously depressing journey. I’m not sure how exactly I got here, but my life really sucks now. The pain caused by all the problems that I can’t seem to avoid is overwhelming.
On top of that, I had a really big problem pop up again just this week that I wish I could have avoided. I went to have a few drinks to enjoy life a little and to try to get my mind off my problems, but when I left the bar later than I intended, some idiot stopped short in front of me and I rear-ended him. Of course, the cop was a butt-head about the whole thing and wrote me a ticket for driving while intoxicated. I can’t believe he was so stupid about such a small deal.
Of course, the cop wasn’t the only one that blew this whole thing out of proportion. When I got home, my wife had a hissy-fit over it. She was so out-of-control telling me how irresponsible I’d been that I left and spent the night in a motel. I think she’s overreacting to an accident. She’s being totally unreasonable and might even use this to rationalize giving up on us. What a night full of crazy problems!
The next morning wasn’t much better. The alarm clock in the crummy motel didn’t go off and I overslept. My boss called me into his office when he saw me coming in an hour late. I tried to explain the situation and that it wasn’t my fault, but he lost his mind before I could finish. He said that this was the last straw. He fired me while going on and on ad nauseam about my poor attitude and performance. It was quite a show really seeing his total lack of self-control.
I’ve had some time to reflect on this and I’ve decided good riddance to all of them. I didn’t need them anyway. The problems they caused me were ruining my life. I’m going back to the bar to try to relax and forget about my troubles for awhile. It seems to be the only place where people understand me.
Running Away from Problems Isn’t Smart (or Effective)
I so wished that I would have thought of this article in time for April Fool’s Day. It really is foolish to think that we can run away from our problems. The only way to a better life is to fully and completely accept personal responsibility for all our outcomes. As an adult, we are responsible for the quality of our lives. We can’t blame anyone else for our troubles and we can’t simply run away from them.
“You have to take the position that you have always had the power to make it different, to get it right, to produce the desire result. For whatever reason – ignorance, lack of awareness, fear, needing to be right, the need to feel safe – you chose not to exercise that power. Who knows why? It doesn’t matter. The past is the past. All that matters now is that from this point forward you choose – that’s right, it’s a choice – you choose to act as if you are 100% responsible for everything that does or doesn’t happen to you.”
~ Jack Canfield, The Success Principles
I’ll admit that life can be hard. It can hand us a crummy mess from time-to-time, but the only way we can effectively fight back is to face life head on. We have to stop running from our problems and start doing something about them.
What are you going to do today to produce a better life?
