Pretty much everyone sooner or later experiences a rough patch when everything is going wrong or you feel overwhelmed or pressured or stressed. Sometimes these “patches” are not even of your own doing. Sometimes they are days, weeks or even months long in duration.

The unpleasant present

From my own experience on both the personal and professional fronts, there are periods of time when it is hard to pull myself into the present and confront difficult matters, and I’m not even thinking past that point. Avoiding the problems by reading books or playing computer games, etc. does not resolve matters.

The future is the key

I have found a very workable technique to help me when I get stuck in a difficult period of time. Basically, I stop all activities and find a quiet spot and start planning my future. Sometimes it is the contemplation of a vacation and what I would or will do on that vacation. At other times, it is planning the next 5 years of my business. Another time I will just plan the next weekend and pack it with pleasurable things for me to do.

Create future pleasure

The key is that I force myself to move into the future and put pleasure there and that unsticks me from the unpleasant present time situation. By finding things to live into the future for, I find that I can put the present difficulties into a better perspective and I am then more able to resolve the present problems.

The future is your blank space and you can write anything into it that you want. No one can stop you from imagining except you yourself. Confronting the present situations will become easier when you are working towards an exciting future.