Ignore the problem…focus on the solution.

The title of this post is obvi­ous as hell. No shiz, thanks for telling me…but you know what? Obvi­ousity (new word I made up) means nada with­out con­stant rep­e­ti­tion and act­ing in accor­dance with “widely accepted truths”.

Read­ing is good for your brains, spend less than you earn and invest the rest is smart, eat­ing a box of choco­lates ain’t the best for your waist­line — these things are all obvi­ous, but sel­dom prac­ticed by the major­ity of peo­ple. These are some of the rea­sons why first world coun­try trends means we’re becom­ing fat­ter, poorer in sav­ings and stu­pider in general.

Why did I just men­tion all that? Maybe to pla­cate the inevitable “Well that seems obvi­ous, I don’t know why it needs men­tion”. The answer, is because some­times we all need to be reminded of sim­ple truths to reignite good inten­tions we have allowed to atrophy.

First, you need to ignore the bloody problem…

The way we have been con­di­tioned to think in this day and age (through mass media) is that the prob­lem is the be-all end all, it is the point to be focused upon, it is in vogue to bitch and moan and tell every­one how much things suck.

Whoa is me!!! If I com­plain to enough peo­ple, maybe some­one else will join in with me and we can engage in a pity party hug puddle.

Tut tut, pity is the province of those who think the world owes them a liv­ing. The world owes you, me and every­one else, nothing.

What is the out­come? You fuck your­self in the ass, that’s what.

The end result of focus­ing exclu­sively on the prob­lem will be this — you sur­round your­self with equally unhappy indi­vid­u­als, the prob­lem is placed on a pedestal before which you all wor­ship and before long it becomes the all con­sum­ing thing at the fore­front of your mind and you’re not a sin­gle step closer to alle­vi­at­ing it.

It’s poi­so­nous and you need to stop it in it’s tracks the minute you become aware of it.

No if’s or buts, if you want to achieve great things in your life, you need to over­come this mon­u­men­tal yet largely invis­i­ble problem.

Defeat those men­tal naysay­ers. Develop your own per­sonal mind guard.

We moan and bitch because we allow the neg­a­tive part of our brain to take over, it’s like the lit­tle neg­a­tive devil that sits on your shoul­der telling you that you’re no good, or that you’ll never amount to any­thing, etc.

What you need is your own per­sonal mind guard, a pro­tec­tor shrouded in tita­nium armour forged in the blood of a thou­sand Viking men and inscribed with pow­er­ful ancient ass kick­ing San­scrit from the fourth apocalypse.

The fol­low­ing used to be the con­ver­sa­tion I’d have in my head that I’d have with myself, my devil naysayer is called Demon Face and my kick ass pro­tec­tor is called Char­lie Sheen:

Demon Face: Jesus Christ, I can’t draw for shit. I’ve been at this for over 2 hours and all I’ve got to show for it is a half assed mess on the screen, oily hand marks on my Cin­tiq and an ass cal­lus from hell. Why can’t you get your fin­ger out of your puck­ered ass­hole and get some real work done?

Char­lie Sheen: Because you filthy son-of-a-bitch, this is what the ini­tial stages of art­work look like, and if you don’t like it, you can go sit in the cor­ner and suck on your thumb for a while and cry me a river. If you’d rather stay, shut your mouth and stop your sissy ass whin­ing, or I will curb stomp you, then kick you in the balls.

These days, Demon Face don’t utter much, ’cause he’s in the gut­ter, puk­ing up blood while Char­lie wails on him with a bro­ken cham­pagne bottle.

You must pro­tect your psy­che, your drive and your direc­tion because if you don’t, it will be frag­ile and your resolve will shat­ter at the slight­est of provocations.

It can be the dif­fer­ence between a life squan­dered and one that is not.

Ignor­ing the prob­lem is only one half of the equa­tion. Now, you have to think about the solution.

You can’t just empty your mind of prob­lems, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t be not-troubled any more than you can’t be not-hungry…unless you’re dead or delay­ing the inevitable that it will come back to bite you squarely in the ass.

You must fill the new void.

If you do not focus your mind on some­thing more pro­duc­tive, it will nat­u­rally lapse back into neg­a­tive thought pat­terns. Nope, you have to pre-occupy your men­tal gym­nas­tics with how you will tackle the prob­lem, aka The Solu­tion. That is where your focus and ener­gies should be channeled.

So the next time you’re landed with a prob­lem, remem­ber to stop the bitchin’ and start the solvin’.

If you’re keen on see­ing how I typ­i­cally solve prob­lems, check out this prior series of posts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Keep whip­pin’ Demon Face’s ass, and I’ll catch you on the flip side.

D-Man