Stop Running Headfirst into Problems

Whatever else happens, stay busy. (I always lean on this wise advice, from the seventeenth-century English scholar Robert Burton, on how to survive melancholy: “Be not solitary, be not idle.”) Find something to do—anything, even a different sort of creative work altogether—just to take your mind off your anxiety and pressure. Once, when I was strug

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You can treat a lot of “I am” problems this way, reframing them as simpler “I do” problems. Most traits we want to change have one or two simple actions at their core. Instead of “ stop being messy ,” clean. Instead of “ stop being so shy ,” meet people.

Finding the core action can release all of that diverted, shackled mental energy; once you find ... See more

“I have come to see the profound value of taking in the whole landscape of life and not rejecting or denying what we are given. I have also learned that our waywardness, difficulties, and 'crises' might not be terminal obstacles. They can actually be gateways to wider, richer internal and external landscapes. If we willingly investigate our difficu... See more

We’re made so uneasy by the experience of allowing reality to unfold at its own speed that when we’re faced with a problem, it feels better to race toward a resolution—any resolution, really, so long as we can tell ourselves we’re “dealing with” the situation, thereby maintaining the feeling of being in control. So we snap at our partners, rather t... See more