Don't take yourself so seriously if that creates anxiety and stress. If everyone around you expects you to be serious about it and that makes you feel uncomfortable in general, take that message from your brain seriously. It can become an everyday torture that takes you down to terrible places. People have praised and deride my solutions. Life goes on either way. I don't solve problems because I want to please people. I solve problems because I want to understand the causes and effects of everything. EVERYTHING! ;)
``So one way to solve X is precisely to not make a big deal of it, and remove the anxiety component.``
Weight gain? Cancer? School shootings? Climate Change? Air Pollution?
Worrying all about that bad stuff is counter-productive and causes stress which makes it worse...
With this genius method they all can be solved by removing the 'anxiety component'(also known as reality), therefore making the problem go away..eventually, you just need to stop caring about the problem!
Not going to solve any problems by getting stressed at them. Have to approach them with a level head and detachment or you end up with emotional outcomes.
> If the situation or problem is such that it can be remedied, then there is no need to worry about it. In other words, if there is a solution or a way out of the difficulty, you do not need to be overwhelmed by it. The appropriate action is to seek its solution. Then it is clearly more sensible to spend your energy focussing on the solution rather than worrying about the problem. Alternatively, if there is no solution, no possibility of resolution, then there is also no point in being worried about it, because you cannot do anything about it anyway.
This is all well and good, but what if you don't know there is a solution. Only "worrying"/thinking about it will you know if you can find one. And then the solution itself might be difficult to reach or people disagree with your solution etc leading to stress.
I used to get stressed listening. Now I just re-frame the problem to solve as "making the other person feel better" -- this way I don't feel the urge to offer solutions.
As engineers and problem solvers, we should know how to define the problem properly.
It can also go the other way and something I often have to consciously work against:
You can't always try to make everything better that you become aware of. You can't fix everything. Not everything is your problem to solve. In fact, some (important) people may not like it if you try to solve said problem.
I very much have to make myself stay out of solving everything and just let others take care of it. Especially since I very much don't like other people I see that encounter the slightest problem and they just throw up their hands screaming "I don't know what to do so I'll just stand here and do nothing while someone else solves it". So it's quite the balancing act. Those people need to do more "my fault, I'll solve it" and I need to do more "not my business, let them solve it but secretly keep an eye on it to ensure that it does get done in the end coz it's actually important".
What is the rational behind your first sentence? Solving problems is progress, and that is anything but bleak.
> Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems.
I don't think you're reading what the parent comment is actually saying. Finding purpose, not burning out, etc are all categorically problems and the common goal is to solve them. Don't get buried in emotion due to _having_ the problems.
It's quite simple, you take a clear eyed look at the problems in the world and you say, "I don't need to accept this, this can and should be fixed." You'll no doubt encounter people saying silly stuff like you cited, because some people operate on the basis of "the most cynical take is the correct one;" you ignore these people and continue to focus on the problems at hand. Similar to how, if you want to start a business, there are likely people in your life who will shoot down every idea that you have; you stop asking those people for advice.
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