Do you feel like you just don’t think of great solutions in the moment?  

Do you find yourself thinking after the fact, “why didn’t I try ‘xyz’ instead”? 

Choices.  Sounds so simple doesn’t it? Hey you’ve got options man…Choose! Some of us may freeze under the duress of choice. Others may struggle to find choices within a situation and those are the people I am going to be talking with here today. Why? Well, frankly I am one of those people and this is a current learning point in my life right now. 

When we grow up in traumatic situations, we have to make decisions in survival mode. Survival mode decision making is usually quite rudimentary to put it mildly. It isn’t very complex or detailed. It’s – do this or that to survive – narrowing your decision tree into 2 options; the classic black and white thinking. In my world it was: make the choice fast and furious and sweep up the fallout later. Oh, and you better make the right choice in this game that you haven’t been told the rules about or else bad things follow.  Sounds like a winning formula, right? Yikes!

I struggled so much in relationships because it was hard for me to slow down, pause, and recognize the other person’s side in the conflict. My mind and nervous system would be so quickly activated that I didn’t even recognize that I was in survival mode. All I knew was to defend and counter strike. Not very useful when wanting to form healthy, loving, meaningful relationships. 

After a long season (ten years and still counting) of learning to slow down I am now in an era of learning to develop options in scenarios. Holy cow, what a challenge. Feeling activated, pausing, and literally saying aloud, “Okay Justin, here are the things in front of me. I have two quick options in my mind, but what is the third option – down and around the corner – I am not seeing right now?” You see, that last part with the “down and around the corner”, is what helps me begin to shift because I like to solve problems and I am pretty good at it. Learning to see beyond the moment presses me to use all the slow down muscles I have developed over the years which allows my problem solving skills to shine. 

The other subtle thing I have realized is sometimes it’s a ‘fourth’ option that leads me to that ‘third option down and around the corner’. A third option arises and then it blends with another idea and bam, we have our best choice. It is hard to describe in words what this process feels like. It can be quite stress inducing, frustrating, and triggering because remember – if I didn’t answer fast and furious back in the day, bad things happened. Slowing down becomes a time to rewire my responses and thoughts, while also finding that thinking in this new way (I call it the “down around the corner option”) brings joy and excitement because once my mind calms (and this may take a bit) I usually find new ideas arise fairly easily. What a smile it puts on my face. 

So take the slow down challenge if you are a person who has an internal response like me. Look for that third option down and around the corner. You are not bound by old processes and ways of doing things. Go beyond, and if you could use some help figuring it out – reach out. I believe in you.