You find yourself trapped between a rock and a hard place. A ginormous padlock keeps the only visible door and exit locked and the key is nowhere to be found. The places you have available to search are your past, your present, and beyond the door, you can see your future. How do you navigate a maze that is a collection of every encounter you’ve ever had, struggles you’re now going through, and the unknown consequences of every choice you’re making now?
Let me just say that I am by no means an expert in the “how-to’s” of obtaining successes in life. I want to share my experience with everyone in the hopes that I might resonate with some and help those who might be struggling like me. Now, the first thing I do when I’m having a hard time is to take a step back. When I’m focused on one specific problem I tend to get tunnel vision and the rest of the world tends to fade into the background. I see this a lot with friends and family who might be having a hard time dealing with an existential crisis. When I am hyper-focused on something I end up asking myself “Why can’t I fix this?”, “What’s wrong with me?”, or “Why am I so bad at this?”.
The first time I got like that and one of my friends noticed the most helpful thing that anyone has ever taught me was the zoom out and look at the big picture of my life. When I do I realize that the biggest obstacle that I have ever faced before in my life, the single most important obstacle that matters at that moment becomes small and insignificant when placed into the backdrop of my world as a whole. I don’t forget that it’s there, but when I move away I am able to take a deep breath, piece together bits of information that I never saw before, and come up with a solution that might have eluded me had I not taken that step back.
The next thing I do after I’ve had a chance to look at the entire puzzle that is my life is to reorganize the pieces. I don’t know how many of you out there enjoy puzzles, but if you are anything like my mother and I the first place we start is to complete the edges. Find all the little pieces that have a straight edge and put those pieces into place first. Effectively I outline my life, what were, what are, and what will be the big moments of my life. I then ask myself what did I learn, what can I learn, and what do I need to learn from/for these moments.
Once I’ve started to answer some of these questions I find that a lot of problems I might be facing right now I’ve already solved in one way or another, and that allows me to face similar problems that might arise in the future. Doors that were initially beyond my ability are now unlocked and opened. New rooms and new opportunities are opened up to me thanks to my newly found insight. But, my path to finishing the escape room doesn’t stop there.
One last thing I do when I feel like I’ve got all the answers after I’ve taken all these steps and have gotten my life in some semblance of order is to remind myself that this will happen again. Another problem down the road is going to stump me, and I am going to dive headfirst into the deep end trying to pull the plug to a filling pool of self-doubt and a splash of existential crisis. I know myself and I know that I will get tunnel vision again. But, the next time it does happen I’ve already reminded myself it would. I know the steps it takes to climb back out of the hole I dug for myself.
This might seem like a never-ending battle, but every time I fight I am reminded that I am still here and I still have strength in me. The padlock with a twenty digit code isn’t as daunting as it looks and that the rooms I might get stuck in aren’t always empty. The answers I’ve found, the friends I’ve made and the family that is always there to support me are my clues and my keys to opening the doors and solving the riddles that bar my path, and if I can do it then I hope that I can help you do it too.
