Sooner or later every one of us will be faced with a situation which is challenging or downright unacceptable and unbearable. When faced with such a situation most of us will be angry, upset, anxious or overwhelmed. We will particularly feel that way if we believe that we have little or no ability to control or improve the situation and the outlook.
So, what to do? We can try to ignore the situation and hope it goes away, which rarely works. We could get angry and flail about which usually only makes it worse. We could disappear down the anxiety rabbit hole, hide ourselves away and hope someone notices how distressed we are and comes to save us, also unlikely.
The more we focus on what we can’t control, the more out of control we feel. Those who do well in really challenging situations are those who look to take charge of the only thing on this planet we truly have control over…. ourselves!
Specifically, there are three things we should look to change to enable us to start regaining control in difficult circumstances. We could look to alter our behaviour, our perception regarding the situation in which we find ourselves, or our picture of what we really want.
Of these the easiest to change is our behaviour but as anyone who has made a New Years resolution and failed to stick to it can attest, this is difficult to maintain. The next hardest to change is our perception about the situation. This is hard to alter because we think the way we perceive things is correct therefore the other must be wrong. The hardest of all to change is our picture of what we really want. This is because it represents our ideal view of how things should be, and we value it very highly.
In reality we may need to change more than one, or perhaps even all three, to begin to get control of ourselves in a sticky situation. It makes no sense to keep doing what we were doing when it hasn’t worked in the past. To believe our perception is unfailingly correct is also a road to disaster which closes off any chance of negotiating something which might work. Finally, to hold a picture of a solution believing it is the only possible satisfactory outcome leads to a closing off of the other creative possibilities open to us.