“The solution is in the problem, because the problem is the solution to the real problem.”

Once again October is just round the corner and with it comes Campaigns such as Stoptober which is run by the NHS inviting those wishing to quit their habit to a month of abstinence.

MacMillan are also running their Go Sober Campaign to raise money and awareness by setting their challenge of being a ‘Go Sober Hero’ and asking people to knock the booze on the head for 28 days.

The statement ‘28 day challenge’ alone, implies it’s going to be hard and that failure is a very possible outcome.

I agreed to do the Go Sober challenge last year with my friend and it was an interesting experience, bringing with it some intriguing insights. This year has also allowed me to investigate how it feels from ‘inside the trenches’ by abstaining from the booze for the last 3 months.

It can be really difficult to change a pattern of behaviour and it’s very easy to digress back to our old ways.

To say I had not drunk at all for several months is not totally true as I did have a blip last week where I succumbed to the said ‘social lubricant’ and had a tipple during an evening out.

It’s especially interesting at these times to explore what’s going on and why we return to certain habits at specific times and what, in particular, causes the cracks in those moments to arise.

So many of what we perceive as our vices or addictions, are heavily integrated and interwoven into our lives. Parties, meeting up with friends, dancing, relaxing, dinner dates, and anything in between, almost makes it seem impossible to chastise ourselves from temptation for any length of time.

The fact that these impulsions that we wish to stop doing are so interrelated into these environments that it seems infeasible to sustain from doing them for any length of time and for a good reason – because they make us feel better! They activate the off switch to discomfort in the moment.

For those embarking on any of these challenges, or if you are contemplating a resolution to stop doing a certain behaviour, habit or addictive conduct, something you may find that helps you, is to think of the thing you want to stop as NOT the problem.

Instead think of it as simply the solution to the real problem. That way it can begin to take your focus away from temptation and help your mind become solution focused. After all, what we resist persists!

And because your habit may have spanned years, over time it may have become the solution to many other ‘problems’. What was once initially used for anxiety is now also use to curb boredom, for example.

It’s becoming aware of ‘why’ we do our ‘perceived negative pattern of behaviour,’ that holds the solution to the problem and to making the journey of abstinence that bit easier.

And just so I make myself perfectly clear here. Smoking, drinking and eating are fantastic things in the short term, because they do what they say on the tin.

They make us feel better in the moment and can more often than not, make a crap time better.

And I’ve certainly had some of the best times of my life indulging in some of these vices!

As Clement Freud once said,
‘If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer; it just seems longer.’

However, what I am saying is that if any of these things are affecting your life negatively or becoming detrimental to your health and you really want to stop them but have struggled in the past to do so, then perhaps this change of perspective could help in you in your challenge.

As I walked to work, I stepped over the every familiar Snail crossing the pavement. I usually give them a hand and move them in the direction they are travelling and out of footfalls way, but today I stepped over him and left him take his chances.

As I walked on, I caught myself saying ‘nothing has changed for me by helping them in the past, why do I keep bothering anyway?’

That’s when it dawned on me that the snail shouldn’t pay the price for what was actually someone else’s shortcomings. Just because my thoughts were preoccupied with a grievance with someone from the previous day, I was making the snail pay the price for this persons misdemeanour’s! I compromised my values in a ‘poor me’ moment and made the snail the scape goat.

So next time you find you are shouting at your nearest and dearest, slamming doors or trying to kick the dog for being a dog, ask yourself what’s at the root of this emotional retort. Chances are its nothing to do with the person, animal or thing you are attacking.

Also who’s to say nothing good had happened as a result of my previous ‘snail air lifts’.

It just may not have come in the form I recognised. Who knows, I may have been pencilled in to be run over by a car just before I moved the ‘slippery risk takers!’

It’s not always what we have that matters as much as perhaps what we have been spared from, that we often forget to appreciate.

The sun was out today, so it gave me an opportunity to do the garden, which was starting to look like the owners had vacated the premises several months ago.

Within the garden there is a small section that is boarded off and at one time served as a little vegetable patch that, for a few seasons, gave us some potatoes, carrots, beetroot and a variety of herbs.

Like so many things in life, this became less and less of an attractive proposition as each year’s crop seemed to amount to not much more than one dinners quotas of veg, and so the enthusiasm to do it each year waned ever so slightly.

This has resulted in a baron piece of real estate bordering our lawn.

I say baron, but it is far from baron.

It is instead, a fertile land of breading weeds, who, no sooner have they been plucked from the good earth, do they seem to resurrect themselves as soon as I turn my back. I should call it the ‘Lazarus weed garden’.

Each time I do the garden I weed this patch in order to make the garden look tidy. However today I noticed I asked myself a question that often seems to comes to mind, ‘what’s the point?’

What’s the point of weeding this patch that nothing actually happens in, only to have the weeds grow back tomorrow?

Whilst I pondered this in mid pluck of said ‘Vegetable patch squatter’, I recognised something that interested me.

I realised that it wasn’t the fact that the weeds won’t stop growing in the patch, or that I had to remove them that was bothering me. What was bothering me was that I was putting effort into clearing something that had no purpose other than to be a weed breading farm.

It may have potential to be something great, as it once was, or was believed to have been, when it stood to serve the house hold as a self-sufficient vegetable provider.

However, right now it felt pointless. It was not contributing to something bigger that was worth ‘toiling, stripped to the waist, sweating in the midday sun for’.

The weeds, like problems and challenges will always come up no matter how many of them we face up to or eradicate from our life.

The proverb ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’ can often feel true as we plug one hole only to find a leak sprung somewhere else in our lives.

However what I discovered today was, that despite the weeds, (which will still be popping up long after I’m not around to pluck them,) the thing that will make them worth plucking, is to create a bigger picture for this piece of ground. A purpose if you will.

Without a purpose or a function, regardless of the potential of the land, we lose interest and become indifferent about the outcome. Lethargy creeps in and we ask ourselves what’s the point?

We have to create the point. We have to harvest a passion or a purpose that’s makes the ‘weeds’ in life just part of the process of cultivating a purpose worth clearing the ground for.

In the case of the redundant veggie patch, I need to create a purpose for that patch of ground that makes simply makes removing the weeds a process necessary to allow for something better to emerge or to be built upon.

Chinese philosopher Confucius said “No matter where you go, there you are “and according to the World Wide Web, Thomas Kempis was also meant to have mumbled something to this effect, even before Confucius in 1440, with the words “So, the cross is always ready and waits for you everywhere. You cannot escape it no matter where you run, for wherever you go you are burdened with yourself. Wherever you go, there you are.”

Once again I found myself at work today doing a repetitive task and musing over what I was doing with my life.

The sun was out again today, so during lunch, I went to the park to make sure I made the most of it.

As I sat down at a bench I looked up and realised that right where I was sitting a tree stood between me and the sun.

I mentioned this to the stranger sat next to me, and we agreed that the tree was right in the way of what was probably some of the last experiences of the summer sun.

The tree was just in the wrong place.

Then it dawned on me that it wasn’t the tree that was in the wrong location, it was me who was in the wrong place if I wanted the sun!

The tree was in the right place. Its only place. It had no choice.

For me to get what I wanted I needed to move, not the tree.

A daft story I know and many similar musings pass through my head of a day, but it did make me think about the amount of times in our lives that we invent obstacles to prevent us getting what, or where we want to in life.

Whether it’s the government stopping us, that we don’t have enough money, we are too tall or too short, too old or too young, etc,etc. It sometimes seems as though we are arguing with reality….reality being an adversary that we will always loose against.

Although these are all very real things, by accepting them as part of the game, we can then focus on how we can adjust ourselves in order to avoid these obstacles, or at least not letting them get in our way, rather than just wishing or hoping that they idealistically where not there!
How much is it really our unwillingness to move or to change our behaviours that keep us stuck?

Although many people’s behaviour would indicate that they believe the world should accommodate them, it doesn’t.

Despite what is right or wrong or what is deemed as fair, it is really irrelevant to how life plays out and by learning to observe what our underlying needs are in each situation we can learn to adjust ourselves to the world, not the other way round.

That way when we are faced with challenges and obstacles we do not become victims of them.

Here’s to moving to the next bench where the sun shines!