The Problem Is Not The Problem

''The problem is not really the problem. Your attitude to a problem is really the problem.”

A bad attitude is like a hole in the boat. You will slowly but surely sink if you don’t fix it. Like a flat tire, you’ll go nowhere with a bad attitude if you don’t change it.

Ok, sounds deep and all that. But how do you apply that in real life? The way I see it, problems are like never ending waves in the ocean. You can’t stop them, so you may as well learn to surf! 

Of course, it doesn’t mean you are gonna be cruising through it all, easy peasy. Anything you are learning to do at the start is always difficult. Like getting up on a surfboard. You won’t get it right away. In fact, you are gonna take huge poundings and fall flat lots of times trying to stand up and stay up. Main thing is You gotta try and try and try again until you get up, get balanced, and finally get the hang of it. You will get strong.

Likewise, when your goals are so strong, Problems like Obstacles, Failures and Loss only act as motivations for us to not give up. When you focus on problems, you’ll have more problems. When you focus on opportunities, you’ll have more possibilities. If you view them as challenges, you won’t see them as problems to run away from or dread. In fact, you’ll be like ‘bring it on!’ Coz oh I found myself a cheerleader! And be all on fire. And face it head on. 

Change isn’t easy. It can be scary. Especially if we feel the change is not better than our current situation. 

But change could be a transition, the silver lining in a dark cloud or a much needed blessing in disguise. For sometimes in the winds of change, we find our true direction. 

What about the changes that don’t seem to make any sense, the ones that have no meaning? When we meet failure or real tragedy in life, we can react in 2 ways - either by losing hope and falling into self destructive habits like drinking away our sorrows, escaping our pain with drugs, filling our emptiness with food or shopping, the list goes on… but WE. CAN'T. GO. ON. We can choose to not deal. So what we resist, persists. Or we can rise to the challenge by finding our inner strength to cope and to hope again. And fly out of the ashes like a fiery Phoenix.  

It’s not the problem that matters. It’s how you deal with it, what you learn from it, how you apply what you now know to your life. That is what matters. That's when the problem is no longer a problem. The problem becomes an opportunity.