How To Navigate Life's Challenges

If my life is at all representative of someone in their twenties, then I imagine I am not alone in increasingly facing difficult circumstances and decisions.

Of course, what is difficult to some is easy to others - but we are all living our lives, so while perspective is important, it doesn’t replace the fact that we are the one’s experiencing our experiences.

Whether we’ve had hard or easy lives, difficulty comes to face all of us. Hard decisions, challenging circumstances. Doubts, fears, shame, worry, and anxiety.

One beautiful way to look at our progression through hard times is:

“Living doesn't get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.” - Steve Maraboli

In my own life, I have unintentionally come up with a framework for how to both make difficult decisions, and execute on them once they are made. This method is one that can serve anybody open to implementing it:

1) Best Above All - When faced with several choices, the way to discern the right selection is by identifying the one that is best. Best for my goals, dreams, ambitions, plans, and human development. Not which option is the most comfortable and familiar - but what is objectively best.

2) Ability - If I am to make that decision, and choose the best option, I have to be able to execute. Ability in this context takes the form of health, money, and skills… although those are all somewhat flexible. People have done remarkable things lacking what they would have believed was was necessary to begin. If taking a trip was the choice at hand, ability could take several forms - I either have the money to take the trip, or I have the ability to go and make the money to then take the trip. Regardless, something is required to execute.

3) Best vs. Worst Case Scenario - I know the best option, and I know that I have the ability - how does this all play out one way or another? This could be defined as the risk assessment. The best case scenario has implicitly already been considered, because it guides the best decision as the decision to be made. What is the absolute worst case scenario if everything goes wrong? Can I survive it? Will it leave me irreparably damaged? If it’s something I can come back from, hard as that might be, it’s worth doing - because the best case, is possible too.

4) Sensible Plan - Step by step, what am I going to do. Map it out, write it out, think it out, talk it out, walk it out. Form a plan. It may fail, there’s no guarantee it won’t. But work to form the best plan possible.

5) Stop Thinking, Start Doing - It’s time to get going. A choice was identified, ability was confirmed, best and worst case scenario were assessed, and a plan made. No more thinking - action only. Of course, thoughts will come, but that is why I go through these steps. I can now think back to my process and know it’s as sound as it could possibly be.

Nothing except new information should change the course once selected. Emotions are GOING to come, and in some cases with fury - but we must make decisions and plans with reason and logic, not emotion. Emotions are a piece, they are not the conductor. Learning to process them is the key - not letting them rule us.

One more quote to fire you up:

“Whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect— between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.” Hunter S. Thompson, Letters of Note

If you follow me on Instagram (@jacobtempler), then you’ll know that I have informed the masses of the fact I am hosting a group trip. You already knew that, but included in the link below is the full itinerary breakdown… with the ability to apply for a slot.

Enjoy.

Sincerely,

Jacob

P.S. My neighbor nearly died when he flipped his boat this past weekend… life is fragile, be grateful and good.