You might be feeling wired to hear “Life assignments” not “Life problems”. This is just the way I called it and you will know later why I called it “Assignments”. Continue reading to explore this topic.
When Life gives us an assignment, we have no way to say "No" to these assignments. For examples,
"Dealing with a toxic relationship, a violent family, poverty, or homelessness" "Dealing with our laziness, self-doubt feeling, loneliness, stress and depression" “Dealing with a disability” “Dealing with drug addiction” "Dealing with lay-off and unemployed, an aggressive boss, or jealous colleagues”
Sometimes Life gives us a single assignment but most of the time, Life gives us multiple assignments. Without telling us which one is the priority, who is our team member, and what happens when we get blocked, Life just briefs us nothing about each assignment. This is because Life knows clearly that we are capable of working on any assignments that are assigned. Life doesn't expect any result from us. Life just needs us to report the lessons learned and experiences about doing these assigned tasks. Life wants us to learn from those experiences and make us a better person so we can help ourselves and others.
We are accountable for each assignment. And everyone has different ways and strategies to resolve them. We might start with priority which assignment should start first. Then do the task breakdown for each assignment and prioritize each task. For some tasks, we need to do it by ourselves while some might need help from others. This doesn’t matter because Life doesn't care how we work on each assignment. What Life cares about is how we resolve the assignment in a way that we are satisfied with. Sometimes, we get blocking issues - the state that we can’t find any solutions after many tries. Then Life always showed us the ways to go and provided some support when needed even though Life could not talk to us directly. That’s why every problem that we have always has solutions. Sometimes, Life needs to create a scenario in which we must experience deep loss in order to fix the most important issues.
That’s why I love my Life as Life always makes sure that I have enough tasks to do to keep me learning and growing. But how to deal with when assignments are assigned?
Below are some tips when dealing with the assignments:
1. Mindset shift
Before, when we heard the words “Problems”, we never welcomed them. We think that it is something bad in life. If we have bad images of “Problems” and we cannot change them, try to think that it is an assignment that the teacher assigned to us after the lesson. And we have no choice but to say "Yes" and we must complete it to understand the lesson that is already taught. Thinking like this will help us to have a new perspective on problems. And remember that assignments are not bad because it helps us to understand more about the theory. For example, the theory of "people come and people go to our life". This is a natural theory. And without the assignment of "break up", we do not sense this theory.
2. Acknowledge the assignment
First of all, we need to acknowledge that there is no bad intention that Life gives us the assignments. Life gives those to us to make us experience it, and learn from it. So we could be a better us.
3. Keep calm and understand the assignments
Most of the time, we're in panic and unhappy when we are facing problems. Now after the mindset shift, keep calm and try to understand the assignments. Without calmness, it’s hard to see the whole picture and select which assignment needs to be done first, second, or parallel.
4. Finding solutions
After understanding each assignment and its priority, find the solutions for it. Then do the task breakdown and start doing each task. It does not matter whether you are the one who does it or you are looking for help from others.
5. Trial and error
Most of the time, not the first solution resolves the assignment. If the first one is not working, learn from it and try the new one. Repeat this loop until you are satisfied with the results. There are famous quotes on this from Thomas Edison, an American inventor and entrepreneur who invented the lamp and other devices.
- I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
- There's a way to do it better - Find it.
- Nothing is impossible. We merely don't know how to do it yet.
- Just because something doesn't do what you planned, doesn't mean it's useless.
6. Lesson learns
Learn from each time you tried to solve the assignments. Do a reflection about each experience.
7. Sharing experience and lesson learning
People need inspiration and changes to their mindset about the problems. Share your experience with them. This helps them to change the way they think about problems too. And it also helps you to keep going with the process.
8. Continue with the other assignment
Pick up the next one and continue the process. Trial and error and enjoy it.
I’ve used the word “Assignment” most of the time to replace “Problem”. This is not because I think problems are bad but because most people think that problems are bad. So I want to shift this mindset and use the word “Assignment” instead. In conclusion, life is faced with problems or assignments. If you don’t want them and you have the power to say "No" to it, do it. However, based on reality, we can’t escape from them. So why don’t we use them as a tool to learn and grow?
