Storms can be overwhelming.
Financial challenges can be incapacitating, emotional turmoil can be stressful, psychological, mental or health scars are terribly disturbing.
But there is one thing you need to know about storms, they get more ravenous when we overly focus on them.
When we start complaining, nagging about our challenges, or enlisting for pity, we give our challenges more power and they get bigger to the point that we become hopeless. This is the major problem.
Hopelessness sucks every fibre of strength, courage, creativity and courage to face our problems. It destroys our will to fight.
No problem gets solved by endlessly talking, fidgeting or worrying about it. Challenges are overcome when we engage the situation, one solution at a time. Challenges are inevitable. It is common to all but they gather moss and momentum when we turn them around in a pan and saute them every single time.
You've turned your problems around enough. You've been obsessed with it enough. It's time to look at the other side. Challenges diminish in its power when we take a glance at the solution. When we change perspective and do everything but whine.
If you send out one more job application, research more alternative solutions to your problems, discuss with a therapist, learn a skill, start a business, discuss with a friend who could help etc you would have removed yourself from the hole a little bit or light a candle of hope in your heart.
Don't allow the storm to bury you. Don't surrender to it. There's no solution in looking at what is already causing you pain so why are you fixated on it? Stop tossing it around or wallowing in it.
The more you continue to think about your joblessness, your health conditions, your lack of a partner, or failure, your worry will scale and your anxiety will mount. You will sink to the pit of hopelessness. It is better to be moving from one solution to another, testing your hypothesis and idea than zooming in on the different angles and dimensions of your challenges. If you do this, you will weave a mass of impossibility around yourself that no motivation or positivity could penetrate. You will sink so low that no one will be able to rescue you.
I am not suggesting that your challenges will disappear when you stop talking about them, but I'm saying, discussing it when you need to be looking for solutions will not help the situation. Remember the famous Peter on the sea story. He couldn’t believe himself when Jesus beckoned on him to come over the sea. But he did at that moment. I imagine how suddenly all the facts he knew about his density and the water density disappeared from his consciousness. He could have remembered the Archimedes principle and how impossible it would be for him to float on water. How he lost sight of his environment and walked in the direction of the instruction. Problems get better when we lose sight of them to focus on the solution. Unfortunately he couldn’t keep up. He came back to his logical senses and engaged the facts to the point that he became terrified. He saw the boisterous wind and storm.
Looking at problems sinks us, it aggravates the problem but looking at the solution improves and advances our mobility.
Today, no matter how overwhelming your current situation is, write them them down on a pad and research the solutions you will explore to solve them and explore those solutions. Don’t spend a minute more whining, worrying, and expanding your problems. Do not look, or listen to your storm, rather listen to voice that calls you away from it. You will win!
Have a winning week and breakthrough from within.
© Abiola Iyiola, 2025
