It is without a doubt that life sometimes is imperfect. We can take this further by saying that many times people are sad, hurt and lose hope. Some even end up putting pineapple on pizza and committing a cardinal sin.

There is no way around the pain, facing away from it only allows it to fester and affect beyond the current state of affairs. Heading into the pain is scary and painful though so let us devise strategies to make the pain more palatable.

Strategy one

Turning things around

Change “We are surrounded, there is no escape” into “We have plenty of ammo and a target rich environment”

Change (He’s got me in a head lock with both hands to) into (Both his hands are engaged and now I will tickle the back of his knee with my pen)

Strategy two

Take a piece of paper, a pen and a few minutes and write down a list of the worst things in your life. Consider your health, your goals, the comparison between the promise of youth and where you are now and the investments you failed to make in different fields.

Ponder the list and write down another list. Improve on those fields and goals even if it is in a tiny almost imperceptible way. The speed is less important than the momentum and the continuous heading. Doing something about where you are takes the weight off the stale water of staying in place or rotting on the inside from lack of action. All action comes from making choices and this is the secret ingredient.

Strategy three

The two things we bring to each problem we have is ourselves and considering the problem as a problem. One key usually opens one lock so in order to open more doors and see the openings as well as the locks we can run a play in our heads to unlock the actual situation from ourselves. Be someone else. Ask yourselves what would Jean Claude Van Damme do or what would Nicola Tesla do in the situation or even how would they perceive the situation itself.

What we see in our darkest moments is due to the light in the scene.