Picture this if you will:
You are a small child, sitting in the backyard, playing with your favorite toy car. This is a pretty cool toy car, with doors that open and close, wing mirrors that are adjustable, types that are made of rubber and bouncy, and it is in your favorite colour. This is, your favorite toy in the whole world, and you cannot imagine a life without it.
You make the toy car do all kinds of cool stuff. All of a sudden, you let it slip out of your little hands by mistake. In the flash of a second, you see your favorite little toy car draw a perfect curve in the air, then land onto the concrete pavement with what seemed to be a loud crash. Your heart stops for a second. You run over to it. Panic starts to envelop your little body as you realise that one of the wing mirrors is lying 3 feet away from the rest of the car.
You pick up both parts and do your best to fix the toy car by jamming the wing mirror back to where it once was. Of course, it doesn’t attach itself. You try jamming it into the car door, hoping it would stay there, but it doesn’t. You push just that little bit harder, and now one of the doors has come off the hinges.
Panic-stricken, you put down the wing mirror and try to put back the car door. But your clumsy little fingers wouldn’t do what you want them to do. Now you’ve broken one of the hinges clean off the car.
Now you are in a blind panic, mixed with anger and fear. “Why is this happening to me?” You think to yourself. “I’m trying so hard to fix this!” Tears start streaming down your face. You jab, and jam, and push, and twist… and now a rubber type has fallen off and rolled into the grass. You throw the whole thing down and start crying. “It’s all ruined! It can’t be fixed any more!” You give up. There’s no use. No one in the entire world can fix the toy car now. You may as well just throw it away.
(Click here to read this Huff Post article “Why Is This Happening To Me?”)
As you make this decision, you start to justify it: “It wasn’t worth much anyway. It was only a stupid toy car, not even a real one! I never even liked it anyway.”
You pick up the pieces in a huff and walk right over to the bin. When you get there you pause for a second, of course, because you really do love the car.
At the moment your father walks over to you, with concern in his eyes. “What’s wrong?” he asks. You begrudgingly tell him that the toy car is completely broken and it must be thrown away now. Your father looks at your tear-streaked face with that loving, knowing, understanding, and also bemused gaze gently takes the broken pieces out of your hands. He disappears into the garage for a couple of minutes and re-emerges with your toy car, fixed, almost as good as new.
Now imagine this toy car represents your life.
You’ve made a mistake along the journey. You refused to ask for help and tried your best to fix it yourself. You made a bigger mess of it than it needed to be, and now it seems there is no way out. But don’t give up just yet! You may not have the solution to your problem, but someone else might! Ask for help. Reach out. Look for a solution. Sometimes it’s as simple as talking it out with someone. Sometimes it helps to just look at the problem from a different angle, a different perspective.
There is no shame in asking for help. No one has all the answers! But together, we can work it out! (Click here to read “Do You Love Yourself?“)
If you are feeling stuck, or frustrated, and you are just about to give up, think about giving it a last try. Help is out there. All you need to do is ask, and then let go of your problem, so that the person you’ve asked can help you. Listen. Observe. And keep an open mind.
Your father cannot fix the toy car if you refuse to tell him what happened.
Your father cannot fix the toy car if you refuse to let it go.
Your father cannot fix the toy car if you keep on saying it’s completely broken and no one can ever fix it and you reject his advice as BS or “too good to be true”!
Learn from kids. Ask for help, and release your clutch on the problem. There is always a way. (Click here to read “Asking For Help Is A Sign Of Strength, Not Weakness“)
Click here to get Dr. Brene Brown’s book The Power of Vulnerability
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