Jan-Lukas Else

Thoughts of an IT expert

You Are Responsible for Eliminating Your Problems

Published on in Medium Archive
Short link: https://b.jlel.se/s/1ca
⚠️ This entry is already over one year old. It may no longer be up to date. Opinions may have changed. When I wrote this post, I was only 18 years old!

All it takes is courage

I myself often have to deal with the problem that while I may be bothered by one or two things, I just don’t have the motivation and nerves to change it. I would rather sit out my problem and hope that it will change for the better at some point. But often it never happens.

You could avoid all the headaches, all the hoping and trembling if you had the courage to just stand up and do something about it. For the situation that causes such negative feelings to change, even if it sometimes requires a lot of courage.

Just a small and almost ridiculous example…

…from the European trip I made this summer with a friend:

It seems that we both had different views on how to use the day. I was always more in preferring to see as much as possible in the cities we were in. That’s why I always wanted to get up early and not lie in bed until noon. Instead of watching series until late at night, you had to accept the fact that you go to bed earlier in order to get up earlier in the morning.

But he was more of a guy who wanted things to be more relaxed. It was not so important to him that we could see all the important sights in the 3–5 days we spent in each city. He was a late riser. And he liked to run a series marathon in the evenings.

At the beginning I accepted it, because I didn’t want to have a negative influence on the relationship between us — we had almost a whole month of travel ahead of us, but one day it became too much for me. I decided to do something about it.

Instead of rolling around in my bed and waiting until he finally wakes up, I woke up one day — we were in Lisbon, Portugal — just got up earlier in the morning and went to the city to explore a few more sights. I sent him a message that he should call me when he was awake, because then I would come back to pick him up.

But instead of calling me, he got up and was ready when I came back, at a time when both of us usually hadn’t had breakfast. Through my act — which may seem a bit antisocial, but has certainly achieved its effect — he seems to have realized that it is really important to me that we don’t waste all the time.

From then on, he gave me the right to wake him up in the morning. 😄

Courage has helped me

I think that sometimes it just takes courage to assert yourself, to show that you have certain demands and don’t want to accept everything. Maybe you’re afraid of what could happen if you try to show courage, but most often the negative case doesn’t happen.

If you’re massively bothered by something, don’t just sit it out, but do something about it. The headaches that you would have when the negative case occurs are certainly not as bad as the ones you would have if you tried to endure the circumstances.

And what is better than a little achievement and thus a more pleasant well-being?

Tags:

Jan-Lukas Else
Interactions & Comments