“Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.” – Unknown
What if I tell you that I have seen you every time you tried to hide. Every time you thought of running away or actually did run away because you were too unsure you can face your problems. What if I tell you that I was there when you couldn’t stand to fight for what you have always wanted because you thought it was bigger than what you could take. What if I tell you that I knew how you let your problems outgrow you when you decided to avoid them.
I’ll tell you what I’d say. I would say that I was there, I’ve seen this, I’ve known that and I’ve been there myself. But I also know that it’s fine. I can’t blame you and you don’t have to harshly blame yourself either. It’s fine, I know no one told you how to deal with things. No one held your hand and helped you get up. No one told you that you can try again. No one told you that you can make it and certainly you didn’t tell yourself you can. No one told you that you are stronger than you think.
I can’t blame you because you never blame someone who couldn’t find it in him, a power to believe in himself. What I know is that not everyone is born with that sort of belief. Some of us have to realize they have to work for it. I don’t blame you and you shouldn’t blame yourself either because you weren’t handed a catalog for this life and it’s okay to make mistakes before you could write that catalog yourself.
But here’s what I have learned and what I want to tell you. It’s time for you to change.
You see, your past might have held years where you have avoided your mistakes or your problems but that has to change.
Maybe you used to look away.
To change your job when you have problems with it.
To drop out of college because studying was too hard so you thought maybe it’s not “your thing”.
To dump your partner when the relationship seems too hard for you to work it out when actually you didn’t even try to work it out at all.
But here’s the thing, you can’t live your life like this. I tried to once in my life. Tried to give up on my dreams, to look away when the stumbles were getting more day by day and the result was, I failed. From an experience, I could tell you that at some point this will have to stop and the earlier the better, so you have to stop that now.
Look, it’s okay to be afraid. If you think that we all like responsibilities that much then you’re completely wrong. We all envy the days when we were kids having our minds carefree and happy but that’s exactly what it is. We ain’t kids anymore. We are grownups. On days it’s really hard to face this fact but on most days you just live through it because what we all know best is that – we can’t live our lives hiding. If we do then it’s not really living at all.
How to Face and Solve Problems in Your Life
Step 1
On the days where you find it so unbelievably hard to realize you must face your problems, remember this quote by Murakami:” “You have to look. That’s another one of our rules. Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes.”
Step 2
Know this. To reach the top you have to first leave the bottom in which you’re living. You do that when you decide to start looking up and realize where you really are.
Step 3
Put in mind that whatever piece of advice I give you or anybody else tries to give you is probably not because we think we are better or superior, it’s rather because we have made the same mistakes ourselves. It makes it easier to accept the advice when you understand that we are only trying to help you learn the easy way without having to lose much like we did and if it’s already hard if you’ve made a mistake already, we want you to fix it before time gets even harder for you.
Step 4
You are not the only one who thought that escaping must be the best answer to all our troubles. At some point we all did and you know what, at some point, we’re all going to do it again. Because we’re humans who make mistakes and feel fear and anxiety and feel that they’re weak more than anything on so many days!
But that is what you should know. You are not weak, not at all, escaping is and I’m sure you will agree with me that there’ll be no problems solved if you don’t try to solve them in the first place, right?
Step 5
You have to start facing your problems. Not by thinking that you’ll delete them all but by knowing that facing them is a victory of its own. You can be afraid, but courage, my dear, never meant not feeling afraid – it meant that you can be afraid; decide to continue your path anyways.
Will those problems knock you down? Will you fall? Maybe. But you can always get back up again.
Step 6
All I want you to do is to learn how strong you can be and how much you can survive. To start believing that you can survive. This is something you won’t learn until you try. I want you to think for a while. All by yourself. To start planning things. To start working more. To throw the past behind you but keep its lessons and start looking towards the future. To be bold enough to admit that you were wrong at times because only after you admit your problems than you can solve them.
All I want you to do is to talk sense into that head of yours, my friend, and show it that to really live, to really know that your life is going to be something, you must be sure that it’ll throw bricks at you but only when you decide to fight back that you really win it!