All of your problems can be solved in just two ways!

Before you scoff and leave, hear me out

I know problems come in all shapes and sizes with complexity and context that make such a statement laughable. But I'm telling you that life gets a lot easier if you boil things down into simple and digestible wisdom. For me at least, this avoids me feeling overwhelmed and more empowered to stare my problems straight in the face and say "Meh, it's not that deep". The goal is to have a mental framework that's easy for you to grasp in emotionally turbulent storms of life when you need to not feel like you are drowning in unsolvable problems. Anyways enough caveating, let's get into it.

External solutions

I'm starting with the one that is the default for many people, where you deal with a problem by making changes in the world. You don't like your job? Get a new one, or maybe you speak to your manager about your concerns. You have annoying neighbours? Move, or maybe you confront them about their behaviour. You don't like your body? Go to the gym, change diet, or maybe wear clothes that fit your shape better. I could go on, but the point is to each of these examples there are a multitude of solutions that entail doing something externally. Maybe the next level in the branch is escaping the problem or fixing it. And within fixing it further branches appear. Even I'm getting confused trying to explain this. Which is why we want to think top level. External solutions!

The benefits of this approach is you have the possibility of getting tangible results that could permanently remove the problem from your life. You have symptoms? Take some medicine and now you feel as good as new. You're hungry? Go to your fridge/shopping/Deliveroo and eat. You smell? Take a shower and now you smell like lavender and roses. Sounds so simple right? But as you most definitely know, not all problems are so easily solvable. Once upon a time even these problems weren't so trivial. Symptoms didn't have a treatment, so you had to try all kinds of things to try and get relief - from leeches to urine to even cocaine. Back then to solve the problem of hunger meant risking your life to hunt or to correctly pick non-poisonous berries. They also had to use public baths once a month and surrounded by strangers to solve the smell problem. If you're reading this you probably have the luxury of not dealing with these problems as external solutions have already been found by our fellow humans.

External solutions to our modern day problems can be riddled with uncertainty and take a lot of time to materialise. You might face rejection after rejection while interviewing, your neighbour might not change their behaviour, and gym can leave you feeling sore with none of the promised aesthetics even after months of hard work. How to stay motivated and persistent on this delayed gratification journey will probably be another blog post of its own. But the point is that this approach is valid but not as guaranteed as media and society would lead us to believe. Hard work doesn't always pay off. Does that mean we shouldn't do it? No, because it still increases the odds in our favour and the smarter you are about it the more probability points you stack in your favour. But in the meantime we need to couple this with something else to keep us going.

Internal solutions

This approach I think is one that is often overlooked despite it being a lot more in your locus of control and the possibility to have a lot sooner results. Is it easier to find a new job or feel better about the job you have? Is it easier to move away from your neighbours or to just ignore them. Is it easier to get a 6-pack or to learn to love the body you have. I can already feel the pushback on this avenue. "How dare you suggest for me to put up with my toxic manager and neighbours!", "Look another person excusing people to stay fat and unhealthy".

A good example of this tension of ideologies is the fitness vs body positivity communities. Both are trying to achieve the same thing, feeling good in your own skin. The latter does this by changing their body, the former by changing their perspective on their body. The issue is we think these are mutually exclusive, and I think the optimum solution is in the middle. Relying solely on internal solutions do not fix the root issue and requires constant mental upkeep as the problem lingers like a bad smell. Why can't I learn to love my job while finding a new one? It's really hard to indefinitely stay positive while broke and unemployed. Eventually you need that job. Why can't Lizzo love her body whilst losing weight?

Hybrid solutions

So my proposition is a lot of problems we should be taking a two pronged approach. Whilst we externally try and solve our problems, we should in the background be building our internal resilience, positivity and gratitude. That way we get the best of both worlds: the near term uplift of internal solutions and eventually the long term permanence of external solutions.