"When the going gets tough, the tough get going" is a phrase that I have both heard and said many times throughout my life. Most of the time I think that this phrase just shows that when things get hard, you just have to get to work even harder. You have to look at your problems and just start somewhere, rather than just giving up. When it gets hard, you have to be strong enough just to get to work and endure it.
Now, whenever I have said this statement, I didn't even give it a second thought. I've always been the type of person who just gets to work, who starts somewhere and hopes that along the way the problem works itself out. Part of me is really glad that I hold this value, it has definitely helped me out with school, but another part of me has recently begun to wonder about this sentiment.
I've found that many times when I am in this "tough get going" mindset, I am quick to jump the gun and just try to find the easiest solution to the problem. I quickly get excited about the fact that I am able to solve the problem, so much so that I sometimes overwhelm the people around me and even myself. I do not give myself adequate time just to sit and calm myself down, to then be able to approach the problem in a more calm mindset.
Recently, I have been trying to still live up to this saying, to just try to get down to the root of the problem and work on it rather than rolling over, but with a caveat. Before I decide for the tough to get going, I take a couple of moments to sit and just think about my problems. I allow myself to feel stressed or sad or angry so that I can consider those feelings, but then I allow myself to just calm down a bit. I am not going to lie, this process usually takes a lot longer than what I expected, but I guess it is just cause I let my emotions overrule me sometimes.
I think that this change is good because I think our society has normalized this idea that we just need to start working to be able to fix our problems. While I do not deny that this is beneficial, sometimes when we don't let ourselves truly understand our emotions we end up working on something that isn't the true source of our problems. We need to understand that our emotions are there for a reason, and are not just something that we need to fix immediately.
So next time the going gets tough, the tough get a moment to freak out and then calm down, and only then do the tough get going...
