Show Notes
People often feel stuck when facing life’s challenges. That word, “stuck”, comes up a lot in conversations concerning the hardest problems of life.
It’s easy on the outside to just tell someone they need to snap out of it. Easy to say, hard to do. The more intense the problem, the harder it is to become unstuck.
When we attach ourselves to problem-based thoughts they can consume us. It can sound cliché to say that you should just take a break from it and return tomorrow with a fresh set of eyes, but that is exactly what we need to do. Distance produces clarity.
The solution is so much easier to see when you are detached from the problem because your brain isn’t being flooded with emotional and judgmental thoughts about it. The biggest part of the problem, or the problem itself, is often the attachment to it. People can’t escape the problem when they are consumed by it.
By allowing the problem to just be there, without latching on to it, we are giving ourselves the clarity of distance. Scheduled distance will produce new clarity. It can be as simple as telling yourself you will return to this issue tomorrow morning or creating a calendar event that says “relook at XYZ” for a future date.
Physical activity strengthens neural pathways in our brain. Going for a short walk strengthens this process in your brain. There is something magical about physically walking away from problems. Even though you may still have thoughts about them, the physical activity of your legs and feet walking away is strengthening your brain’s ability to stop obsessing about it. Then end result, no matter how big or small, is greater clarity.
Do something different. There is always something different you can do.
The skill of letting problems remain where they are will always yield some level of progress tomorrow. It’s the letting go that creates the progress. The more we let thought come and go, the less attached to our thoughts we become. The more physical activity we include in this process, the stronger our brains become at doing this work. The more distance we create between ourselves and the problem, the more clarity we have to see potential solutions for moving forward tomorrow.