PROBLEMS ARE LIKE WOODWORM

Many problems in life are like woodworm.

They silently eat away at the foundations without us being aware of them, until one day everything comes crashing down and we don’t know why.

It mainly ties back to the way many of us have been raised to suppress what we really think and feel in any given situation and to sweep our issues under the carpet.

I used to refer to it as an Irish Catholic problem because I was brought up in a traditional Irish Catholic environment, hearing lessons from a young age like “don’t upset your mum” or “don’t say that to your sister, you’ll hurt her feelings”.

Over the years of intimately getting to know people from all walks of life through my coaching, though, I’ve realised you can basically change the nationality and religion in the description of the problem and it still applies.

People raised in an English Protestant or Singaporean Islamic background have often been brought up with similar programming, and I’m sure there are many more examples.

As with everything from our upbringing, it’s nobody’s fault. Everyone is just doing their best and passing down what they were taught by previous generations.

Like shit rolling down a hill that’s thousands of years old.

But what it leads to is us moving through life without saying the things we really want to say, which chips away at our existence without us realising.

It’s what usually leads us to one day looking at our long-term relationship and realising it’s not what we wanted, spending our days in a job we never set out to have, or having friendships or family relationships that don’t fulfil us.

Our inability to face and to say the difficult things prevent us from living the life we want, from truly connecting with others, and feeds the woodworm in the foundations of our life.

The woodworm multiples over the years until suddenly our partner walks in and tells us they’re leaving or we pull the plug ourselves, our boss sacks us or our employee hands in their notice out of the blue, or our kids get suspended from school or brought home by the police when we had no idea they were living a dysfunctional life.

Sadly, as I look around the societies we’ve built, I see the same problem everywhere.

When I look back at what I now call my ‘old life’ I see how much dysfunction and damage was caused by my inability to face the issues I’d been burying for decades, and to communicate those issues properly with the people around me so they could be resolved.

And when I look at my new life and the one that’s ahead of me, I’m thankful I’ve spent the last 8 years doing the necessary work on myself to stop the same issues repeating in the future.

While the work has been challenging and takes time, it’s much better than being destined for another few decades knowing I’m going to repeat the same mistakes over and over again, suffering through life blaming everyone else for my problems.

So where is the woodworm in your life?

Where are you biting your lip every day and holding back from what you really want to say?

In which areas are you suppressing how you really think and feel while telling yourself it’s for the best?

The truth is you already know everything I’ve said. There’s that little voice that whispers to you every day – usually when things quieten and there’s no-one else around – telling you things aren’t right.

Doing its best to direct you to the life you really want to live and the person you really want to be.

The biggest question is will you decide one day to start listening to that voice and make changes, or will you wait until the foundations have been so badly damaged that they crumble under your feet?

It’s never too late to create the life you truly want.

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