When an ostrich is faced with a predator, rather than look a threat straight in the eye, it’ll stick its head in the sand.
Now I can’t say for sure what’s going through its mind but I imagine it’s something like this: “Oh shit. There’s a lion. Shit. There’s no way I’m gonna outrun that sucker. I know what I’ll do. If I stick my head in the sand, I won’t see that I’m about to be breakfast, then maybe it won’t happen. If I don’t see him coming maybe this won’t be a problem after all.”
Sounds quite comical to think of sticking our head in the sand whenever something difficult arises, doesn’t it? It’s actually not too different from what we can do when faced with difficulty.
When we see an issue in front of us or we’re faced by our fears, we can easily choose to bury our heads in the sand and ignore the issue.
This is how we get stuck.
It’s easy to pretend that we’re still in love with our significant other when we no longer feel connected. Rather than talk it out and see if we can understand where we’ve fallen off the road, we can ignore it out of fear of broaching an uncomfortable topic.
It’s easy to pretend that we love our job even when it no longer fulfills us and we cringe at the thought of getting out of bed every morning. Rather than be honest with ourselves, polish up our resume and start looking for something that suits us better, we can continue to drag ourselves to work every day out of fear that we’ll have to put ourselves out there again.
It’s easy to pretend that our friends are still friends, even when we can see that we’ve outgrown each other naturally and feel drained after hanging out or have nothing in common anymore. Rather than be honest and accept that people change and grow apart through no fault of either party, we can continue to show up at every birthday, anniversary and weekend invite even though we’d rather be anywhere but there.
Rather than upset the status quo or question what we know to be truth, we can easily turn our heads or bury them in the sand.
The opposite of this is overthinking things.
We can see that something isn’t right and feel that it’s not in our best interest and analyze it until we’re blue in the face. We gossip about it and dissect it until we work ourselves into a ball of anxiety, fear and tension and what’s the result? Anxiety. Fear. Tension.
Has anything been solved? Nope. Are we any closer to feeling better? Happier? More free? Nope. Nope and nope. If anything, we’ve probably worked the situation into an even bigger problem than it was when we started.
Rather than bury our heads in the sand or make mountains out of molehills, we have the choice to see the situation for what it is and act on what we need to do.
You and the hubby/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend have an awkard morning because of a tense conversation revolving around money the night before. If you were arguing about each other’s spending habits, why not sit down and work out a realistic budget that works for you both. Without having a good chat about how you both see the finances, it’ll never get better and you’ll fight about it again. Guaranteed.
Feel like your coworkers aren’t pulling their weight on the new project you seem to be doing all the work for? Talk to them about the workload. They might not be aware of how much you’ve done or they might not understand the scope of work involved.
It’s easy to ignore our problems but that doesn’t make them go away.
It’s easy to play the victim but by giving up our power, we sabotage our sense of purpose and direction.
There’s power in having open and honest conversations.
Don’t be an ostrich.
Much love, XXX
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