Episode 18 (Final) - The Only 3 Ways to Handle Any Problem (and the Mistakes Keeping You Stuck)
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[00:00:00] So.
hello beautiful people and welcome back to another episode of the Starlit Success podcast. I am your host as always, Jessica Gaines. Today is kind of interesting because I was planning on recording this episode and then my husband and I were watching an episode of I forget the name of it. , One of those house flipping shows with Tarek, I think his name is Tarek Musa and his new wife Heather
so it's funny, my husband actually asked like, is this a new episode or is this an old episode? 'cause he can't tell the wives apart. and Tarek and his wife Heather are in the car and they get a phone call from their like senior contractor or whoever's in charge of the job. And he is like, Hey, Tarek, I need you to come to the job site. I need you to come to the house. And Tarek immediately is like, is there a problem? And the contractor's like, I just need you to come to the house.
Like, can you come to [00:01:00] the house? And Tarek is like, yeah, like, can you tell me more? And the contractor just like, wouldn't tell him. So they hang up the phone and Tarek and his wife instantly start talking about. What they think the issue is, and they both think it's a problem.
Something's wrong, something's not working, something's broken. and you can just see their stress starting to build while they're in the car. And they're walking up to the house and you hear them each saying like, you know, Tarek saying,
what do you think the problem is? And then Heather's responding like, I don't know. What do you think it is? . Even though the contractor didn't really confirm whether or not it was a problem, just the way he kind of framed it up and the fact that like they needed to drop everything and come to the house, they just anticipated the worst.
So they get there and the contractor is standing there with an envelope, and Heather says, is it money? And the contractor just kind of has a smirk on his face and he is like, is that your guess, so then Tarek's like, is it building permits? And finally the [00:02:00] contractor pulls open the envelope and hands it to them and it's $4,000. So he was clearing out a room or something and there was like an old dresser and there was this envelope full of money beneath the drawer in the dresser itself.
It was interesting to me because when the contractor initially called 'them, he didn't say what it was. He didn't say it was a problem. He didn't say it was anything good. He just said, I need you to come here. And their mind just automatically went to the worst case scenario.
And it's funny to me because it's like when it was a problem, they're just kind of circling through what it could mean and,
you could see like this worry creeping in and when it was revealed that it was actually money, you could see the relief just kind of like wash over their faces. But just that moment from the potential problem to knowing that there was no problem at all and it was actually something really awesome, that mental anguish that they kind of went through, just in those few minutes.
And it got me [00:03:00] thinking like. What do you typically think of when someone presents you with a problem or you notice a problem or you hear the word problem? you instantly tense and you think about everything that is gonna cost you. Your time, your energy, probably some money.
your focus, it's something in the way of whatever you want, right? And that could be just, I just want to relax, or I just want an easy day. And this problem is throwing a wrench in it. It's just interrupting that.
And it could be something as minor as like getting an unexpected bill oh God. We dealt with this one year with a cable company. .
We got some promo deal and our bill was decent for a while. And then our bill just like kept going up, every month it was like crazy high. And then my husband Eddie would call and he would end up sitting on the phone with them for like an hour every month.
It was just like this, this feeling of anger, wash over you because it's like, oh my God, I have to deal with [00:04:00] this again.
I feel like we've all been there, right? You've either gotten like an unexpected bill or you've gotten a bill that was way high or just way more than it should have been
and the time and the energy that it takes to get those problems resolved sometimes is just like overwhelming.
We just paid the cancellation fee., We didn't even care, to be done with wasting our time and energy every single month it was worth it to just pay the cancellation fee and be done with it.
The time that you're faced with a problem to the time that you find the solution is like where all of that stress lives, and you just think of all of the things that you could be doing with this time that you're probably already short on.
Something I've learned throughout this whole personal development journey is that our brains are wired to conserve energy. And that makes a lot of sense because if you think about it, that is the reason that we often run on autopilot. , there's that statistic that 90% of our days are being run on autopilot. we develop habits. and some are good, some are bad, but it's your brain's way of just [00:05:00] operating at the most efficient level
so when we're faced with a problem that disrupts our routine.
it's that threat to the efficiency that your brain is trying to run on.
I believe this is one of the reasons why some people just lose their freaking mind over the dumbest things, right? I'm sure you all know a person that is one of those people that Their food comes out wrong and they throw a fit, or there's a traffic jam, or someone cuts 'em off on the road and they just like lose their fricking mind.
Like they're not just mad, they're like mad, mad. Right? And I'm not saying this is the only reason why they're like that. I'm sure there's other factors, but the fact that our brain is wired for efficiency and then we're dealing with these problems and that's just throwing us off, it's like, ugh.
It just creates that stress and that anger. And some people just don't have as much self-control of themselves as others, but it's natural to want to just have an easy life. You know? We just naturally want to relax and [00:06:00] enjoy ourselves and not have to deal with all of the shit life, hands off, sometimes.
But a lot of the stress and anguish that comes with a problem isn't from the problem itself. It's, it's that story. It's that meaning that you're creating in your mind. It's coming from how your mind is interpreting it.
it's the overthinking, it's the denial, it's the resistance, it's the, you know, why is this happening loop? it's all of that just kind of like replaying over and over that's creating all of this drama around your problem.
And if you look at it from the perspective of if you were handed the same problem. And then along with the problem, you were handed a solution. It wouldn't feel so much like a problem , as maybe just like information or data, But if you refer back to the law of polarity, you can't have one without the other.
Right? If there's a problem, there has to be a solution. So look at it from that perspective, Stop [00:07:00] focusing so much on the problem and start looking at like, how can I get out of the problem? now you just have to take the next step.
So today we're gonna talk about common mistakes that we make when we face problems,
how those mistakes keep us stuck in the problem, and then we'll uncover the only three ways to handle any problem in life. And it's not some like super complicated framework or process. It's really just three ways.
And I feel like Tony Robbins really says it best, and it's the biggest problem that we face in life is thinking that we shouldn't have any problems. And I don't know if he says it exactly like that, but that's, that's the gist of it. you think in life or you might think that you shouldn't have any problems.
And that's just not reality.
We would love to just, coast through life and have everything just be gravy and easy breezy all the time. But we know that's not how life is.
The majority of us deal with problems on a regular basis, and especially if you work [00:08:00] a nine to five or if you work period. if you have a family or if you have kids you deal with problems on the daily,
something at work went wrong or your kid got in trouble at school or they didn't do what you asked them to do. or you got in an argument with your boss or your boss gave you something to do that you really can't stand or you don't wanna do it, or you don't agree with his approach or her approach.
Right. We just, we deal with like these little problems all the time.
But as I mentioned, it's not necessarily the problem that is the issue. It's the meaning that you're attaching to it.
So if we look at it from the lens of your problem, what you're attaching the word problem to, or the meaning that you're giving this problem, that problem could actually be someone else's dream. So let's say you're complaining about your job, whatever element of your job that you can't stand,
there's someone out there that's unemployed that wished they had a job to complain about, or let's say your kids didn't do the chores or your kid got in [00:09:00] trouble at school, There are couples that are infertile maybe that couple would do anything to have the problem of dealing with a kid misbehaving at school.
It's the perspective that you have on the problem, and it's just, it's the lens that you're seeing the problem through. it's almost like you're putting on doom goggles. We've heard of beer goggles, right? But if you're putting on these doom goggles and you're seeing these problems as like the worst case scenario and giving it like the worst possible meaning, instead of trying to look at it from another angle.
So that's mistake number one is just the story, the meaning that you're attaching to that problem. The second one is is dwelling on it? I see this so often and this is probably the one that irritates my soul so much when you replay a problem, when you overthink it, when you catastrophize, when you just make this problem seem so much bigger than what it is and you just live in the problem, all you're [00:10:00] doing is you're just amplifying it.
You're like feeding it. The problem is like the fire and you're just pouring gas on it.
When you're so focused on a problem, your brain can't even actively construct any creative solutions. It blocks creativity and problem solving,
A lot of the times, you, my, myself, like, we're all guilty of this, right? But we're not even aware that we're doing it. we feel like we're just expressing ourselves and you know, complaining or thinking about it or talking about it, and it's like, you're really not helping the situation.
You're just making it worse.
And sometimes we can act like we don't have any control over the problem,
when you act like you don't have any control over a problem and you're just kind of like this bystander or you're just this person watching it happen. You end up turning yourself into a victim. If you act like you're powerless and you're just focusing on the problem and you're acting like you don't have any control over it, then you're just gonna be like, this poor pitiful me and woe is me and oh no, there's nothing I can do.
Or if you wanna sit there and [00:11:00] like blame someone for the problem, If there's someone responsible for the problem itself, even if you know who caused it, oftentimes, I'm sure it's not someone that did it intentionally. So what is the point in sitting there and pointing fingers? I see this a lot in work environments.
if something doesn't go right, they always wanna look for like, who did it? Who made the mistake? Does that even matter? Like, yeah, we'll learn from it and maybe we can teach them, but it really does no good in pointing fingers.
If they feel blamed or attacked. People are gonna be a lot less willing to be accountable and admit their mistakes in the future. So what is the goal of blaming people anyway? I never really understood that.
But as long as you're like in this loop of dwelling on the problem, focusing on the problem, replaying it, catastrophizing, blaming, Albert Einstein has this quote, you cannot solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created [00:12:00] the problem.
If you stay in that same loop of dwelling on the problem, then you're never gonna be able to come up with a solution.
And my favorite saying is, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Like, if we're not actively looking for a way to fix this, then we're part of the fricking problem. And I can't stand when people love to live in the problem because it literally does nobody any good. okay, so that was number two, dwelling on the problem. Number three is trying to control what you can't control. Sometimes you just can't, , you can't control everything. You can't control other people. You can't control their actions. . You can't control timing. Yes, maybe you have an influence in it, but maybe to a certain extent you can't control how it's gonna turn out. Maybe you can give your input, give some guidance, you know, provide some more information.
But there are situations that that's as much as you can do, and that's as far as you can take it, and you have to be okay with that.
My husband Eddie always says this, control what you can [00:13:00] control. Like anytime our kids or myself, even anytime we come to him to vent about a problem, that's always one of the main things he comes back with is control what you can control. Because if you sit there and you focus on the things that you can't control, you're just gonna drive yourself crazy and you're gonna be stressed out.
If you have teenagers or teenage drivers, you know the difference between influence and control, right? when we were teaching my, 17-year-old how to drive, this is the scariest feeling in the world, Because you literally don't have any control. You don't have your own steering wheel, you don't have your own brakes. You're just in the passenger seat. Yes, you can influence the way they drive.
You can talk to them, you can guide them, but that's like all you can do. That's it.
When they make a mistake, that feeling of not being able to take over is like, it's, it's very stressful. Just take it for me. There were a couple times [00:14:00] where I lost my mind and needed to take a break from helping teach him how to drive because it just, it wasn't healthy for either one of us, but I realized it's because I was trying to control, and I, and I couldn't.
Eddie, is just so much better at controlling what he can control. I was just like, you know, I think you're gonna have to take this over for the next two weeks because I just can't handle it. , It's not as easy for me to relinquish control as it is for Eddie.
And when you try to control something that you can't, it just makes things worse. It just makes things escalate. Then I'm more frustrated, Javen's more frustrated. It's just, it's an unhealthy situation and, um, I don't recommend it.
the more energy you spend on trying to control things that you can't, the less energy you have for controlling the things that you can.
So that was number three. Trying to control things that you can't.
And this last one. Is a little bit different because it's not, um, it's not necessarily like an active response to a problem, but I [00:15:00] suppose it's still a response, but it's ignoring a problem, just procrastinating on a solution or just hoping the problem goes away. Now, I'm not gonna lie, there are times where I've been guilty of this.
I mean, I've been guilty of all these, and this is why I talk about all this stuff, is because I know firsthand what all of these feel like. But if you ever had a problem and you're like, oh my God, I just don't, I don't have it in me. I don't wanna deal with it right now. I just hope it goes away. And if you're lucky, sometimes it will, but oftentimes it doesn't.
if you ignore a problem, most of the time it's just gonna get uglier. It's just gonna get worse. It's kind of like a weed, right? So we have, our patio has like this nice, like landscaping around it with rocks and like, perennials, like the hostas that come up. And we're at the point now where whatever weed barrier they put in, when they did the landscaping, that sucker doesn't work anymore.
So we get weeds like late, late spring, early summer,
And the first time I see the weeds coming up, you know, they're kind of small. There's [00:16:00] not that many, and maybe I'm busy doing other things. You know, maybe I've got a bunch of stuff going on that day or that weekend, and I think about, oh, I should go out there and pull them and spray something.
But because they aren't that big, I'm like, eh, I gotta go do my other stuff. And I go do my other stuff. Well, by the next time I think about it or see them, it's like completely out of control. . where they're just like everywhere.
And some of them are so big that I can't even just pull it. I have to go get Eddie to pull it because it's like taken root, And it's like, damn, if I would've just went out there when I first saw them and just pulled those small little weeds and just sprayed something down, I wouldn't have to deal with this now.
Now it's gonna take me hours. Now it's even hotter out. Maybe we're further into the summer now it's like I'm kicking myself because I wish I would've just dealt with a problem when it was nice and small.
And that's how avoidance looks It might feel good in the moment, like, oh, not that big of a deal. I'll deal with it [00:17:00] later. But most of the time the problem just grows legs.
And then sometimes it's like the mental labor of you kind of knowing that there's this problem, it's in the back of your head, you know, it's something that you should deal with, but you're not dealing with. It's that stress of like, it's kind of like that monkey on your back, right? You know, it's there.
It's not really hurting you too much, but you just know you gotta deal with it at some point and it just adds like this extra layer of stress to your life because it's just kind of like lurking. It's just kind of like lingering there.
There's a quote that I love , about this. , I honestly don't know who said this, but it says the most exhausting place to live is knowing something isn't working and not doing anything about it.
If you have a small problem, just face it, head on. While it's nice and small, deal with it. Don't procrastinate. Even if, even if it's not a small problem, just don't procrastinate. 'cause whatever the problem is, even if it's a big problem and you're trying to procrastinate or hold it off, it's just gonna grow roots, , it's gonna get even uglier and bigger.
So [00:18:00] you're better off to just deal with it.
Those are like the four biggest mistakes that I have seen, that I have done myself. And it's, the meaning that you're giving the problem, it's dwelling on the problem. it's trying to control what you can't, and then it's just ignoring it all together.
Procrastinating, all of these mistakes that we make when dealing with problems, all of them create some kind of internal conflict.
It brings up like just all of these ugly feelings, all of the feelings that we don't wanna have.
The stress, the frustration, the anger, the dread, the fear. It's just, it's emotionally draining,
the more attention that you're giving the problem and not the solution, the heavier it feels and then the heavier it feels, that leads to overwhelm. And then when you're overwhelmed, becomes difficult to think clearly or make decisions.
Your mind feels cluttered or scattered, right? It's harder to focus
and then sometimes when you feel like that, you stop moving forward
and then when you stop moving forward, you stop looking [00:19:00] for a solution or working on a solution. And it just makes the problem seem even bigger than what it really is.
And then I know a lot of us like to complain about our problems.
But what you're actually doing is you're just kind of like reinforcing it in your head.
So it's one thing to like vent about this one-off scenario, but if you have like a consistent problem that you're not dealing with and you're giving all of this meaning to it, you're dwelling on it, you're complaining about it, again, you're making it bigger, you're just letting it consume you. And you're not doing anyone any favors by doing that.
And you just have to be careful with how you talk and how you express things because your subconscious mind is always listening your mind is always going to look for proof to support whatever beliefs you have. When you say things out loud, when you repeat things, when you complain about things over and over
those repetitive thoughts then create those beliefs and your beliefs will determine how your outside world will reflect back to you. So whatever it is that you're believing, your mind is always [00:20:00] looking for evidence to support that.
So if you're constantly complaining about all the things that you don't want, you're subconsciously attracting more things that you don't want.
It's like this vicious cycle, and then you don't even realize that you're giving away your power.
And what happens when you make these mistakes? Have any of those methods helped you? Has it made the problem better? Has it made the problem go away? I'm guessing probably not.
Most of the time when we face problems in those ways, nothing about the problem itself changes. it's really just creating more of that internal conflict within ourselves in the way that we're responding to it. Oftentimes it makes it so much worse.
Like, if it's not helping us, why do we keep doing it?
So I did this myself, of course, because that's, I like to talk about things that I've experienced firsthand and I've made all of these mistakes. And I'm gonna tell you a story about, the software company that I worked, the one that I really loved and that ended up getting sold.
So my, at the time I didn't have an [00:21:00] office. I was in a cube, but my cubicle was right outside the owner's office. And he wasn't in all the time, just once in a blue moon. when he was in, I could hear him on the phone. So his door was open, my cube was literally like right outside his office. And I would hear like little.
Little snippets of his conversation about selling the company. Now, mind you, I had been there for a very long time at this point. I think I was there for maybe like eight years or so. My kids were pretty young at the time. I loved my job. So when I would hear him talk about selling the company, it just instantly created all of this fear and all of this anxiety.
What did I do? I gave it so much meaning it was like, oh my God, what am I gonna do? What happens if he sells the company? What's gonna happen to me? Are we still gonna have our jobs? How am I gonna support my family? Like these stories that I just [00:22:00] replayed in my head over and over, like the company hadn't sold yet.
It was just in these discussions and I just automatically catastrophize, like automatically went to the worst possible scenario. And I would go into my boss's office, I remember at the time, and I would be like, John, and he's like, what? I'm like, , I hear Mike on the phone, he's talking about selling the company and he is like, yeah.
, He is getting to the age where. He doesn't want to run this company anymore. Like it's, it's his time and you just have to be okay with that. And I'm like, but what are we gonna do? And John's like, Jess, it's okay. Like, you'll be okay. You'll figure it out. And he was always trying to like calm me down and soothe me.
But I kept reattaching this story of fear and the unknown and automatically just thinking the worst possible scenario. like, my family was just gonna be homeless and hungry on the side of the road if this company sold.
, And the funny thing is, is I had [00:23:00] zero control over it. And in this situation I had zero influence. I couldn't even influence it. I had nothing. , I should have at the time, just looked at it from a different perspective, but I didn't, I made the mistake of giving it the, the story and the meaning of all of the negativity, all of the negative thoughts that were running through my head.
I was literally breaking all of the rules. Like I went through every single one of those mistakes except for the whole ignoring it part. 'cause I really, I didn't ignore the problem at all. I focused on it. So it was the meaning I gave it, it was me dwelling on it. It was trying to control what I couldn't, it just made it so much worse.
And then the worst part about it these discussions went on for, gosh, probably years. ,
and then fast forward to when it was actually sold. So this was during COVID, everyone's at home and I ended up having the meeting and finding out that I was able to keep my job, but like half of the company was laid off. So in some [00:24:00] ways, what I feared was gonna happen did happen. a lot of people were laid off.
I didn't lose my job at the time, but I lost a lot of other things. I lost a lot of really cool coworkers. I lost the culture that we had Was just like a completely different dynamic working for this new company.
And in hindsight me worrying about it and me dwelling on it didn't change the outcome at all.
But the part that I didn't expect is by this happening, by this company being sold. And having gone through all of this and what felt like such a huge problem at the time,
it put me on a completely different path that eventually led me here. So if I look back at that, in the moment I felt like it was a problem, but now looking back, , in some ways I'm glad that that happened. If I were to be handed that problem at that time and say, , here's your problem.
But five years from now, here's where that problem is gonna [00:25:00] lead you. Does it really feel like a problem anymore? And it wouldn't if I knew what the future was gonna hold for me.
Bottom line, like it all ended up working out in the end, and I just wasted a lot of time and energy, and I just created a lot of mental suffering that was unnecessary.
So look at it this way. Sometimes the problem that you're fighting is actually the doorway to the life that you're meant to build
It also made me realize sometimes having a nine to five isn't always the safest route.
But the way I like to look at problems now, having worked on myself quite a bit, is problems are actually what makes life interesting. And I look at it from the lens of like a video game. You know, when you play a video game or any kind of game, really, there's challenges, right? You're not gonna just play a video game and not have to complete any kind of challenge.
Like you just go through the levels and you collect your coins and you just run through the whole thing. And you don't have to [00:26:00] defeat anyone or overcome anything. how boring would that be? Would you even wanna play that game?
If you also look at it like problems are your biggest opportunity for growth.
if you look at your life, I bet you most of like your major, major shifts came from some kind of problem because oftentimes we don't, we don't change when we're comfortable, , We need to have some kind of a problem to wake us up. And I feel like problems show us a lot. Like they show us what we value.
What needs to change,
maybe where we've outgrown something,
and ultimately just what we don't want in our lives
or what we don't want in our lives anymore.
And if you would just break it all the way down, like you really only have three options when dealing with a problem. And that is, you can either change it, you can leave, or you can just accept it.
We're gonna go into how you do those things in a minute. But when you look at it from this way, when you only have these three options. You start to feel like [00:27:00] you actually have a say in the way things play out,
You stop seeing yourself as helpless.
And you realize you're someone who's able to figure it out instead of just like panicking when something goes wrong.
And when you put in the steps to learn how to face 'them in these three different ways,
you realize you're capable of a lot more than what you thought.
And this is another favorite quote of mine, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change, and that I think is from Dr. Wayne Dyer. Really good author of a lot of really good books, wanna look 'em up?, So the problem might be the same, but it doesn't really feel the same anymore.
It's like maybe it felt overwhelming at first, but now you feel like you can handle it.
You let go of this mental fight over your problem. And you stop draining yourself over things that you just have no control over.
Okay? So the first option is you can change it, right? Ask yourself, what control, what power do you have over the situation? Can you change [00:28:00] it entirely? If you can't change it entirely, do you have some kind of influence over it? ask yourself, what can I do to help resolve this?
Or at least if you can't completely resolve it, like, what can I do to make the situation a little bit better?
what part of this is actually within my control?
And if it's not, let's say you don't have any control, you don't have any kind of influence over this problem,
what if you just changed the way you responded to it or you just changed your perspective?
So my situation, for example, like. When I was going through my whole like career identity crisis and feeling like I had no purpose and I just had gone through three different jobs and I wasn't really happy at any of them, I changed the way I looked at it. I stopped looking at it like, Ugh, this is happening to me again.
Like, why am I here? Why do I keep feeling like this? And then I changed it to the view of what is this trying to [00:29:00] show me? Maybe there's some meaning here. Maybe there is something that I need to start paying attention to. And I just changed my whole perspective around it and it didn't feel like a problem anymore.
It started to feel like an opportunity.
So it's like, could you look at this problem or this challenge as like a learning opportunity or a chance to grow?
And if the problem just feels overwhelming, just start with something really small. what is just like one little step that you could take in the right direction of moving towards a solution.
And if you look at it like this, whatever, you're not changing, you're choosing. So if you're literally doing nothing about the situation to change it, then you're saying, I'm okay with where I am,
then don't complain about it. 'cause I'm sure I nobody gonna wanna hear it.
If the situation realistically can't be changed,
there's nothing you can do about it. The next option is to leave. you can leave.
And I, I did this. , The two jobs I had before this one, I wasn't happy, you know, and there wasn't really [00:30:00] much I could do to change the situation. So I left, the job that I had when my oldest was a baby, and I was just like, I tried to change it. I did everything I could to try to change the situation.
I tried to change my schedule. I tried to change my department. I tried to change everything and like nothing was working. So what did I do? I left. you have power over your problems or over these challenges. You just have to notice what you need to do. As Eddie likes to say, don't even entertain it.
You know, some things just don't even entertain. Maybe it's leaving an argument. Maybe it's leaving your department,
Maybe it's leaving in another way. Right? Sometimes it's just like creating distance. Maybe you're not like rage quitting. I'm not saying just like rage quit and you're just done, but like maybe you strategically plan your exit, or maybe it's not leaving completely, but maybe you just start to distance yourself.
, Maybe it's a, a friendship that is just. Becoming [00:31:00] toxic or you're realizing that you're not as aligned with this person. I had a friend like this years ago, and I just realized like all of our conversations were taking directions that I wasn't really comfortable with, and I just noticed that we weren't really seeing eye to eye on a lot of things, and rather than create like a bunch of drama, I just slowly distanced myself it's not like I had any like ill will towards this person anymore.
It was just like we're kind of growing apart and that's okay, and friendships evolve and things change over time. You don't have to just completely, just drop someone, but maybe you just create a little bit of space.
And if you can't change something, you can't influence something, you can't leave the situation. Really, your only other option is to just accept it. Just accept it.
Not in like a defeated way, not in a like, oh, they won and I lost, but in like a peaceful way, like a surrendering, you're stopping that internal fight within you.
And I think about the, if you've ever [00:32:00] heard of the Serenity prayer,
It's really common with, um, like addiction recovery programs. And I hope I don't butcher it, but it goes something like this. God. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
So it's kind of like this, um, I look at it as like a surrender prayer. It's like, show me, guide me what I can change what I can't, and to know what the difference is. You know? And it's like when you surrender. You stop putting all of this energy into the resistance of it, ,
sometimes acceptance just means like learning how to live with it or you're just letting go of the mental battle around it.
because if you're choosing not to change it or if you can't, or if you're choosing not to leave or if you can't, the only healthy option that you have left is to just make the best of it.
Continuing to resist it is only just gonna feed that negativity.
The truth is problems are always just gonna [00:33:00] be a part of life. But but suffering over them doesn't have to be.
So if this episode helped you shift the way you view problems, maybe share it with someone that you think it could help.
Did you recognize yourself in any of these mistakes? Like I said, I've made all of them. After going through all of this, did you see like, oh gee, I do this all the time.
Like this is probably an area that I could work on. Let me know. I'd love to hear it. I'm super curious about your experiences because. I've gone through a lot of this on my own, and it's just interesting to kind of compare notes . So if you're not already following me on Instagram, you can follow me at Starlit success or YouTube at Starlit success and leave a comment.
Like I said, share this episode, tag me.
And if you haven't rated the show yet, I would really love your review. that'll actually help get it into more of the hands of the people that need it the most. So
thank you for spending your time and your energy with me today, and I hope to see you in the next episode.
[00:34:00] Sunshine.
