RULE TO BREAK

“If you don’t like it, tough”

How many times do you hear people say that they’re unhappy with their job/university course/relationship/house/car or whatever, but they’re stuck with it? You may well have said it yourself. The problem with this attitude is that it makes you a victim. You have no control over your circumstances and you simply have to put up with whatever fate has thrown at you.

Look, if you take this attitude, it’s hardly surprising if you feel miserable, anxious and trapped. Who wouldn’t? If there’s really nothing you can do to extricate yourself from this thing that’s making you so unhappy, that’s immensely frustrating. But highly unlikely.

Are you so sure there isn’t an alternative? That’s very rarely the case, unless you’re in prison, for example, or caught in the kind of poverty trap that is relatively unusual, at least in the West, and in which case you’re not likely to be reading this book. Actually, there’s almost always an alternative.

You could switch courses. You could jack in the job. You could move house, work on the relationship – or end it – and get rid of the car. If you’re feeling trapped, I recommend you think carefully about your options.

I have a friend whose daughter went to a new school at 16. After a few months, she was really unhappy, and felt trapped on a course she wasn’t enjoying, because she wanted the qualifications at the end of it. The teaching was fine at her school, but she didn’t fit in well socially and wasn’t making any close friends. So she decided to go and look around the college in a nearby town. She found out about transport to get there, and asked about available courses, and how she would swap over.

She discovered that it was possible to change courses. The travel would take longer, but otherwise it would work fine. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that actually she was OK where she was. The teaching was good, the school was close, which was important, and all in all she just didn’t want to risk changing. She decided to stay where she was. She concentrated on existing friendships outside school, and treated her course as a place to work rather than socialize.

So she ended up doing exactly the same as before, but now she was happy doing it. Why? Because she was choosing to stay there, rather than feeling trapped. She was taking control of her life, and it was an active decision to stay put.

That’s why you should consider all your options. You may end up back where you started, but if you stop playing the victim and put yourself in control instead, by actively looking at the alternatives, you should find you’re much more ready to appreciate what you have. Or, of course, you might end up making changes to your life. And that’s fine too. Just don’t moan that you have no choice, that you’re stuck – because that’s almost never the case.