Urge - Stay away from it

Cognitive workout

We are encouraged to ask for help in difficult times. Times when we’ve tried a number of approaches and those didn’t work out, we are stuck and it’s probably the best time to reach out to someone and ask for support. In my opinion it’s a good tactic, but only when we’re sure we’ve made enough cognitive progress. Cognitive progress means that, you know why it ain’t working out for you. It means that you have given sufficient time to the problem and tried to acquire some knowledge in regards to the problem domain. Eventually, we tend to reach out to people whom we expect to help ourselves. But it’s incongruent to our own belief.

It’s Leaky

Times when we don’t resist the urge of reaching out to someone, we get the solution, good. But the process of reaching out to a conclusion, or let’s say getting a problem’s solution we miss the process, the process which involves those few non-working but essential points we should have known.

All we know is the steps. Aha, what’s the difference? Process, steps, steps process?

Okay, the steps to solve a problem can be a sequence of actions. It’s more of an answer to “how”. But the important thing is to know the process, it’s an answer to “why and then what is”. So when you reach out to someone without any preparation, or let’s say work, you don’t get the whole process. What you get is some steps and that’s why the information is leaky. It leaks out essential gems of the process of problem solving.

Burning the boats

It’s like if you’ve to cross a river, and you have a boat, you tend to use the boat to cross it. Of course, it’s simple, because this thought of owning a boat is stick to your mind. Whenever you have to cross, you use the boat. But what you should do is to build a bridge to get to the other end. Building a bridge takes time, it takes patience, but the result is weigh more impactful. You agree to me, right?

What’s the most important thing to build the bridge? The first and foremost action, you should take is to burn the boat. You have to get rid of this urge of reaching out to someone. You have to be on your own. Yes, of course, it’s hard, it’s going to take time, but the result is worth the efforts. What you gain is permanent. Burning the boat gives you two things. First, you won’t have a second thought of using the boat when your patience runs out. Second, you’ll be sure about the importance of building the bridge.

Sometimes we have to be hard to ourselves, we have to make extra efforts and believe me the cost of efforts are worth the gain of outcome.