The Exit Strategy
A key to your way out of a difficult situation..
To equip means to supply someone with the necessary items for a particular purpose. Another definition states to prepare (someone) mentally for a particular situation or task.
I am a fanatic when it comes to the meaning of words, the meaning of life altering circumstances, the meaning of the reason, the meaning for “the why”. I believe nothing happens by chance because that would chalk up all my experiences, the people I’ve met, the situations I’ve found myself in left to “it just so happened”. I don’t believe any of us live a “just so happened” life. It’s all strategy. By whom? That belief is up to you to decide, and we all have a choice of where we want to place that faith.
Have you ever experienced an uncomfortable situation that you seemingly walked right into without knowing how difficult it was actually going to be?
Me too.
You’ve said things like, “If I would have known this was going to be so tough, I would have never……”. If you’re like me you either build a strategy to relieve yourself of the difficulties or wallow in self pity for mere moments, THEN build an exit plan containing an A, B, C, D, E, and F back up plan just in case your main exit strategy doesn’t pull through. The point of our efforts is to avoid dealing with what is uncomfortable any longer than we have to.
We soon realize the inevitable struggles that come naturally with the difficulty we are facing whether that be a devastating break-up, starting a new job only to realize you hate it but still have bills to pay, confrontation with a close friend, a season of life where you’re mentally barely keeping your head above water, etc. We build a resistance to the situation and prolong what could be a more swift meaningful exit. We will do just about anything not to feel the results of our choices; play loud music in silence, avoid mental progression by drowning ourselves in suppression, or even latching on to people, places, or objects that only leave us feeling neglected, shallow, and drain our energy.
We will do anything to find the exit sign.
We will accumulate more pain trying to find the exit sign. We will go back to our past because it is familiar blind to the fact that more pain is coming from going back. We are in a hurry towards relief. We will attach to a new relationship too quickly trying to mend the heartbreak from the one that left us feeling abandoned. We will drink ourselves into a slumber night after night in order to avoid the truth of our feelings (Notice I did not say the truth, rather the truth of our feelings. The two are independent of each other). We fill our bodies with pills and highs to feel some sort of temporary relief from our reality. We will attach ourselves to a cultural popularity to feel significant. We will overshare our fairy tale life on social media to distract ourselves from our reality. We will stay up late watching TV and avoid going to bed in silence so we aren’t haunted by our thoughts in the dark. We will fill the void of feeling “stuck” in our current situation by starting something new that hopefully makes us feel good.
We attach to the exit strategy.
Now for a second, allow your thoughts to drift. What am I running from? What pain has caused me to chase fulfillment in empty areas? What uncomfortable situation am I avoiding with cultural noises? What exit strategy am I subconsciously planning through people, places, and materialistic objects that keep leaving me unfulfilled?
What happens when the internal voices that are planning the exit strategy become too loud? The cultural chatter becomes too loud. The attention given moving from plan B to plan C becomes too loud. The high becomes too loud. The avoidance becomes too loud. The voices, opinions, suggestions, advice and counsel become too loud.
We tend to move on to the next escape plan when the current plan doesn’t feed us what we think we need and rarely will it ever. So what if we decided to do the opposite?
The opposite of movement is stillness. The opposite of planning is spontaneity. The opposite of noise is silence. The opposite of willfully searching could be “to come across” or unearth. The opposite of worry is trust. The opposite of anxiety is to be relaxed. The opposite of an exit strategy could be to stay.
Stillness. Spontaneity. Silence. Unearth. Trust. Relax. Stay.
What if these were the keys to navigating your way out of a difficult situation. The exact opposite of what we are programmed to do. What if the resistance to the uncomfortable situations actually further and prolong the discomfort?
I know it sounds crazy but what if the key to your life challenge is to stay exactly where you are; to sit in the uncomfortable stillness and silence and contemplate what brought you here. In the beginning of this post we mentioned the word “equip”. To revisit that definition, it means to prepare (someone) mentally for a particular situation or task. If you are slightly spiritual or are interested in having a spiritual relationship, our Creator mentions several times that He will never allow more to come ON you than what He has put WITHIN you to handle.
This means you have WITHIN you everything you need to navigate this situation. This is your exit strategy. Maybe the reason why everything you fill the void with leaves you feeling unfulfilled in the long run is because you don’t need to search outside of yourself or leave the uncomfortable situation. Maybe the silence, the spontaneity of each moment, the stillness, the unearthing, the trust, the relaxed state, the “staying” are the keys to moving through this challenge you’re experiencing.
When was the last time you were still? When was the last time you sat in silence so the voice within could speak to you? When our exit strategies become too loud, they overpower the silence and in silence is where we tap into our exit strategy.
Only when we sit with the pain, experience it, understand it, talk to it, allow it to talk to us, can we then move through towards the exit sign. Maybe you’ve been chasing the exit sign, but the chase leaves the mirage of the sign only feeling further and further away. Maybe you can try the alternative. Give yourself the chance to see if it works. You’ve been running for so long. Relax, stay awhile, and be still.
Maybe you’ll see that the outcome will be different.
1 Corinthians 10:13, says, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it”.
