Erica Staab

I had spent the better part of a month trying to figure out a solution for a problem I was having, it was full of complexities and I had gotten tangled in it’s web.  If I do this then I might offend someone, if I say this then those others might not understand, if I do this then which do I do first? And the list went on and on… until finally it was so woven together it looked as though there was no light and no way that everyone could get what they wanted and I could find the peace I was seeking.

I finally got so sick of it I just gave up, and I let it go and let my subconscious start working.  I went on a walk and after a conversation with a friend, which had sparked something another friend had said earlier and suddenly in one sentence, there was my solution.

All of this agonizing, all of this obsessiveness and yet I was just one sentence away from a solution.  I was the one telling myself stories, I was the one that was making it so much more complicated than it ever needed to be.  And it reminded me of when I first went to go work out at the gym, I was so afraid that everyone would look at me and think “What is that girl doing here?  She doesn’t know how to work this machine.”  And then a few weeks into working out I realized that most of the time people barely even notice you are there.  Most of the time they were so into their own workouts, their own pain, their own story, their own fears that they were barely looking at me.

And all too often I forget that I am my biggest hurdle.

All too often I find the solution is just one well-crafted sentence away if I am willing to make room for a new way of thinking.