How to Get Off the Struggle Bus
Life can feel like a constant struggle. There is always a problem to solve, something that’s not working out the way you had hoped, or some scary choice you have to make. Welcome to the struggle bus!
The struggle bus is a place we’re all familiar with. We end up there every time we feel like we have to fight with the outside world to get what we want. Every time we engage in arguing with the outside world to change itself, particularly trying to change things that are out of our control, we board the struggle bus. Padded seats for the win!
How do we get off the struggle bus?
Life is always going to be filled with problems. There is always something happening because that’s what life is on this Earthly plain. Learning how to get okay in that space can be challenging. But there are ways around the getting on the struggle bus and I’d like to share the one that I’ve learned with you.
Mindset, Perception, and Beliefs
The key to most problems in life is not in the outside world. It is not in fixing the problems. The key is in your head. It is in your mindset, perceptions, and beliefs. How we think about what’s happening is far more important than what’s actually happening.
Two people can sit beside each other and watch the same movie at the same time and have two completely different perceptions of it.
Why?
Previous experience. pain, and religion or lack of it play a big role in our perceptions, beliefs, and mindsets. How we see the movies we watch or the problems we face has a lot to do with what’s already happened in our lives, how we were raised, and what we believe to be true.
Positivity Doesn’t Fix It
I know in the new age spiritual space we hear a lot about positivity. But when we’re working with beliefs, believing the opposite isn’t always that helpful. If I believe stealing is wrong, trying to convince myself that it’s okay might be a bit of a stretch.
To shift this we have to question where the belief came from? Why do I believe stealing is wrong?
What we’ll find, generally, is that the belief that it’s wrong is a judgment that we were taught or believe for ourselves. The idea that anything is wrong is a judgment call. Judgment is a human thing.
Experience and even action are neutral. They are neither good nor bad. So what if, instead of trying to make ourselves believe that the things we see as bad are actually good, we simply drop the judgment? What if we move to neutrality as the answer to positivity?
Neutrality For the Win
Neutrality allows us to drop the belief without needing to fix the outside world to do it. We don’t have to make bad things good, we just have to make them neutral by removing our judgment of them.
The idea behind dropping our judgment of things as bad is that:
It stops the fight with the experience. It lets us get off the struggle bus because we can accept that we don’t have control. It’s nothing we can change.
It gives us a choice. I’m confronted with this problem that I can do nothing about. Now what? How do I move on?
I can’t stop people from stealing. It’s going to happen. So what can I do? If I can’t fix the outside world, then what’s my choice?
Most of the time the choice is going to be to leave it alone. We have to let it be there. Becoming neutral to it is essentially how we learn to leave it alone and let it be there anyway.
It doesn’t mean we don’t care! We’re not removing compassion from the equation. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. It just means that I can’t do anything about it right now, so I’m going to leave it alone so I don’t end up on the struggle bus. When I find a way to deal with it, I’ll come back to it. Unless or until I have a solution, it’s not going to keep my focus. It’s not going to upset me. I’m going to allow it to be neutral by releasing my judgment of it.
Here are some steps to help you get to neutrality:
Identify the struggle – What’s the perception, belief, or mindset that’s making things challenging?
Question it – Is it true? Is it just a judgment I have about the experience? Is it something I can fix?
Drop the Judgment – What if I just allow it to be there as a neutral thing that just is?
Make a Choice – Can I work around it? Can I keep going anyway?
Beliefs Stop Us
We allow our beliefs to stop us all the time. It puts us on the struggle bus unnecessarily. There are many places in my life, especially in my work as a writer, where I’ve struggled because I had beliefs around how it was supposed to look or what was supposed to happen.
The minute I finally worked out those beliefs and gave them up, I was able to relax and keep going. I had to make my external experience neutral. I had to stop caring about what it looked like outside of me. Neutrality gave me the gift of being able to remain non-judgmental about how my work was doing in the outside world.
When your belief takes away your choice, particularly when you want to do something, then you have to change the belief. Often that just means dropping it and becoming neutral. It’s what will allow you to move forward, even when you think you’re not supposed to or you can’t.
By dropping those beliefs and allowing yourself to move forward, you will automatically feel better. Ultimately, the world shifts around you because you stuck with it. You decided what you wanted, you made a choice, and if you keep going long enough and you stay off the struggle bus, you will get what you want.
I’m doing this no matter what!
That is powerful. That is where your power lies. You get out of your own way by dropping the beliefs that stop you. Often dropping the beliefs is about removing judgment and simply allowing things to be as they are while you keep going anyway.
Be An Activist
Stop paying attention to the things you don’t like and can do nothing about when they frustrate you.
Posting about stealing on social media isn’t going to change anything.
You’re only frustrating yourself.
It’s not a constructive way to deal with a social problem like stealing.
If you want to make something a cause – go be an activist. Create a constructive strategy that you can use to work toward the solution you think we need to put in place.
If you’re not willing to do that, drop it if it’s upsetting you and you’re not getting anywhere. You’re probably not going to fix the problem by simply venting your frustrations to your friends on social media. It’s probably just upsetting you, especially when they argue back. There’s nothing wrong with venting, just manage your expectations, because it’s probably not going to fix much.
We seem to have this thing right now where people believe that they have to “speak up” to change things but their definition of speaking up is complaining about it to their friends on social media. I hate to break it to you, but that’s probably why you’re frustrated – it doesn’t change anything and people just argue with you.
Can you create a cause on social media?
Absolutely! Create a cause on social media. Get a massive following. Make a platform out of it! You will get media attention that way. Just stop frustrating yourself by arguing with your Facebook friends and followers trying to convince them of the things you think need to change.
You will never convince anybody to change anything ever.
So why do I write this then?
It’s a cause. I’ve created a cause out of showing people how to deal with the perceptions, beliefs, and mindsets that keep them stuck. I also argued with the strategy and I used to fight with people on social media too. I needed to find a way to make it a cause that I was comfortable with that didn’t include arguing with people on social media.
I can’t convince you of anything either, but what I can do is give you some tools to help you deal with your own thinking and that’s what I’m trying to do. Neutrality is one of those tools.
Conclusion
Neutrality is what gives you the lateral movement to work around problems by making new choices. When we drop the judgment of things we free ourselves to keep going. That’s an amazing gift.
It’s not about being positive. It’s not about fighting with problems you can’t solve. Life doesn’t have to be a struggle and you don’t have to ride the struggle bus.
You just have to decide to let it be there and focus on moving in the direction you want to go anyway.
Love to all.
Della