Often we are in situations which we cannot escape. A simple example of this would be when you are trapped in bed in the morning, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself, you will not leave the bed. This situation that you have found yourself in can be slightly, or greatly, stressful.

To remedy this stress, we have two pathways:

• Solve the symptom (stress)
• Solve the problem (that you are still in bed)

Let’s play these two scenarios out.

Solving the Symptom

We can solve the symptom of stress in this situation in many ways, like grabbing our phone to scroll Tiktok, simply going back to sleep, by daydreaming, etc.

As we delay the inevitable, the consequences of our actions here get exponentially worse. The consequences of doing this, is that a) you haven’t solved the problem, b) you are increasing the chances that you will be late for work (and could lose your income source), and c) you are messing up your (let’s be honest, likely shaky) sleep cycle.

You’ve quelled the symptom of stress, but it is a paradox: stress will only increase as a whole from doing this. You are trading long term gain for temporary relief.

And, who can blame you for doing this? You feel almost powerless because if you are staying in bed despite the obviously potentially horrifying consequences, you likely are not particularly excited for whatever comes next after you leave your bed. The warm comfort of your bed is something you’re cherishing before you are sucked back into your daily life responsibilities.

Anyway, you see how you’ve ended up in a horrible situation by solving the symptom.

Solving the Problem

You get out of bed, and immediately, the problem is solved. You left the bed, that’s the end of it. No stress induced from the looming consequences of staying in bed another one minute.

You’ve forgotten about the whole ordeal by the time you are getting dressed for work.

The Point

You had a lot of power in this situation, to get out of bed. You were actually able to solve the problem itself, and not just its symptoms.

But I implore you to think of situations you don’t have a lot of power in, where you have no choice but to simply solve the symptoms of; situations where you can’t solve the problem itself, and are therefore dealing with a great amount of stress because of the consequences of solving the symptoms only.

Think of what you would need to solve such problems. This is an open-ended post because I don’t want to get caught up in some contrived example, I want you to think of examples in your own life where this is the case.