How to Stop Avoiding Problems

The longer you choose to face that difficult thing in the conversation or in the relationship, the worse the relationship gets. It's like either you have an identity of like, I'm going to engage, I'm going to approach this, I'm going to deal and I'm going to deal with it quickly, right? You're solution minded, you're in the game, you're on offense, you're in assertiveness. The more you will feel like you have a handle on life. Your hands are on the steering wheel. Again, approach it earlier. Doesn't mean you need to be an early adopter and everything. You just need to be real about what's happening in your career, your industry or your relationship or your health. You can't avoid it for so long and the longer you avoid it, the worse it gets. Your identity is being shaped on whether or not you avoid or approach. Whether when difficulty, specifically when difficulty strikes, do you avoid or do you approach? This is very similar to playing offense, but slightly different because many people, there's a difficult thing happening in their life, a difficult conversation you have to have with your partner, your spouse, somebody at work, and you're avoiding that conversation. And you're avoiding the conversation because it's difficult and because you like the comforter, you like the comfort, the comfortable life, you like the comfort of the moment or that relationship or how you feel. You don't want to deal with the drama they'll bring up when you bring it up often because again, you don't know how to bring it up. It's just skill set, right? You just haven't learned that practice yet. Everything comes back to skill set, everything coming back to practices. And you just never blame the person or the situation or the challenge or the problem. Always ask, do they have the skill set there yet? Have they learned and honed that and practiced that? And if they haven't, let's work on that and we can solve that. Most marital problems, for example, can be solved by communications training, which sounds so crazy it just happens to be research. True. Just most people never learn how to talk and talk through difficulty. Well, we choose avoidance for the short term comfort. The problem with avoidance is it actually works. You get the short term comfort, but you also, when you choose avoidance, you also choose long term pain. The longer you fail to address it, it gets worse. The longer you fail to address your health, your weight, it gets worse. The longer you choose to face that difficult thing in the conversation or in the relationship, the worse the relationship gets. It's like either you have an Identity of like, I'm going to engage, I'm going to approach this, I'm going to deal and I'm going to deal with it quickly. Right? You're solution minded. You're in the game, you're on offense, you're in assertiveness. The more you will feel like you have a handle on life, your hands on the steering wheel again, otherwise you're feeling victim over and over and over another. And listen, I just want you to understand this because today we're talking about your identity. The more that you avoid and the more that you're on defense, the more your identity moves into victim mode and you feel defeated. Because even if you win on defense, you're never getting into the goal line. Write that one down. Even if you win on defense, you're never getting to the goal line. And so your identity doesn't integrate any wins, there's no touchdowns, you didn't make the play to win. And so what you feel like is defeated, discouraged, shut down. And by the way, I don't make that bad. I just want you to know it's a perception and it's a choice in identity. And I want you to proceed in a different way. I want you to start approaching this stuff of life earlier. Earlier, like early. Like, I am here. Literally the only reason I was like, how did he get this room? How does he do all this? And like, oh, I, I saw in my career everything was shifting towards video and I was like, oh, I'm gonna learn how to do video. I was like, I'm gonna teach myself to do video. Okay, I have no idea how to do that. I've never done anything with a video camera. I've never owned a video camera. I don't know how to upload the video into the computer. I don't know how to edit it. I don't know how to get it online. I'm like, but look, I'm online and this is happening. I'm gonna go forward to it. I'm just gonna go right into it. Did the same. I've been doing the same thing with AI for three years. And I followed and learned from other mentors like Bezos. Saw, like, wow, people are ordering stuff online. It's growing by like 13,000%. I should get here, like, approach it earlier. Doesn't mean you need to be an early adopter and everything. You just need to be real about what's happening in your career, your industry or your relationship or your health. You can't avoid it for so long. And the longer you avoid it, the worse it gets.