Sensitive Subject Alert! Can an attempt to escape be harmful?
Paul White's nationally distributed syndicated column, “Unleashing the power of the word...YET!” is published in 22 publications across seven states. This includes the following newspapers and digital publications: Midland Daily News (MI), SFGate (CA), Seattle PI (WA), Connecticut Post (CT), Laredo Morning Times (TX), Huron Daily Tribune (MI), The Telegraph (IL), and more. In this week's article, Paul shares tips on embracing a simple but profound three-letter word (yet) and how to become a Professional Hope Provider to others.
What are YOU trying to ESCAPE from?
That’s a powerful question.
Your honest answer to it can provide you with the information you need to develop a plan to exit whatever it is you’re attempting to escape from and enter a consistently better life. Having said that, most of us need help with developing a plan.
As we grow up, few of us are exposed to plans that consistently work. Yet all of us are exposed to a wide variety of plans that may work temporarily but don’t provide a solution for a permanent escape.
At this point you might be thinking that having something you need to escape from is a bad thing — Wrong.
Escaping is a valuable life-tool when it allows us an exit from personal problems and challenges or anything that’s harming us, holding us back, or weighing heavy on our mind.
Escape Rooms are really popular right now. While designed to be experienced in a group setting, they can provide useful thought processes that we can utilize as an individual for our personal use. Here are some of their benefits. Escape rooms emphasize the importance of teamwork and collaboration. This suggests that when we are tackling a personal issue, one tool we can utilize is involving others that have successfully solved a similar problem to our own.
An escape room experience can enhance problem-solving skills. Participants are presented with various challenges and obstacles that require critical thinking, creativity, and the ability to think outside the box. It encourages individuals to approach problems from different angles and develop innovative solutions. WOW! This is a solid approach that ALL of us can utilize for a permanent escape from problems and challenges. But have you ever utilized this approach for the things challenging your joy and happiness in life? I’m guessing no.
Here’s more: An escape room teaches time management. Because of a limited amount of time to escape, participants must prioritize tasks, manage their time effectively, and make quick decisions. That just sounds too hard, doesn’t it? Which leads most of us to kick our personal challenges down the road to another day. The problem with that is we never escape what we want to escape.
Escape may take perseverance and resilience and along the way we may encounter setbacks. That’s why permanent escape typically requires determination, persistence, a positive mindset, and not giving up. Most people use the last two sentences as an automatic excuse to not even try. This drives me nuts. All I can think of is that: YOUR LIFE IS SO VALUABLE, HOW CAN YOU NOT EVEN TRY?
Many people don’t believe in themselves because they think no one else believes in them. If that’s all that is holding YOU back, please allow me to be a person in this world that DOES believe in you. Your life matters, not just to yourself, but in some small way to ALL of us. Andy Andrews proves this so effectively in his book “The Butterfly Effect.”
Sensitive Subject Alert! Can an attempt to escape be harmful? If the attempt only provides temporary escape and not permanent escape, then YES. This is where drugs and alcohol come into play. Michigan legalized marijuana. I’m not going to debate the voters' decision, but this made me very sad. Why? Because everyone pursuing its use for non-medical reasons is looking for a temporary escape from who they are and where their life is at. Stevie Wonder said it best in his song “You Will Know” with the lyric: Finds the high but comes down feeling lower.
Alcohol? You can quote me as saying I don’t have any problems with responsible alcohol consumption. You can also quote me as saying that I am totally against excessive alcohol consumption which is most often used as a temporary escape. Look, I know I’m tossing out opinions on sensitive subjects. Why? Because I’ve witnessed drugs and alcohol destroy the lives of SO MANY PEOPLE I CARE ABOUT that used them to temporarily escape over and over. And the bottom line is that if you’re still reading this, I care about, and believe, in YOU!
Drugs, and overindulgence of alcohol, can’t improve the beautiful person you already are.
Back to the positive approach. If you’re attempting to escape from excessive debt, from a toxic relationship, from any kind of addiction, from hurting yourself, from being a bully, from treating others poorly, from a lack of belief in yourself, and more, seek some form of help. Help can include helping yourself by utilizing critical thinking, creativity, and the ability to think outside the box. Your incredible brain currently possesses all of those skills.
You can teach yourself to approach problems from different angles and develop innovative solutions…if you choose to. If you feel that’s too much, then reach out to others that have previously been in a similar situation they successfully escaped from. If that’s too much then utilize the power of the internet where you can find hope, encouragement, compassion, and solutions from people willing to help (be sure to safely filter search results). If none of that works, seek professional help before giving up.
Lastly, once you successfully escape, please make it a priority in your life to share your success with others facing a similar situation they want to escape from. It’ll make the world we all live in a better place. GiddyUp!
In addition to being a nationally syndicated columnist, Paul White is an author, motivational and inspirational speaker, entrepreneur, podcaster, and life coach located in Midland, Michigan. His new book, “The Answer Discovery – How to Change the World by Helping Others…and Ourselves,” is available to purchase today. If you’re interested in getting in touch with Paul, please submit an inquiry via our Contact Page.