#73: A taste for problems
French poet Christian Bobin once wrote;
I was peeling a red apple from the garden when I suddenly understood that life would only ever give me a series of wonderfully insoluble problems. With that thought, an ocean of profound peace entered my heart.
I love the expression “an ocean of profound peace entered my heart” because once you accept that life is nothing else but a series of problems you stop the cycle of self-pity (why me?) and get into the mode of sloving them.
I have trouble accepting the term “insoluble problems.” The the problems by definition are waiting to be solved. The Oxford Dictionary defines the problems as “a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.”
It is true that life is a constant stream of problems, but the truth is without problems life would nothing more than a boring blob. Think of the days when nothing exciting was happening in your life, you got bored. You want to do something different, something exhilrating. You want a challenge. Problems provide you with that challenge.
Oliver Burkeman in his excellent latest book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, advice to develop a taste for having problems.
The beauty of a problem is that they have opportunities hidden in them. You won’t see them if you haven’t developed that taste for them. The sooner you welcome uncertainty and not-knowing as normal ways of being, the better off you’ll be.
Even the so called ‘insoluble problems’ can be solved, given the time. They may not require a solution at all, as Steve Maraboli so succinctly puts it in the quote below.
On a personal note, I have set myself another challenge - to grow my Substack newsletter subscription count from 146 to 1000 by the end of this year.
Not that my life was getting boring or I intend to entre in a championship for problem solver but to reduce my workload. My rational is if I am able to get 1000 subscribers, I will be able to concentrate on one platform and not spread myself too thin.
For a long time, I didn’t do anything to grow my mailing list. I assumed it would grow by itself over time. But I was wrong. Nothing grows until you put effort into it—neither your writing nor your audience.
For the past three years, I have concentrated on getting better at writing. This year I am focused on growing my subscribers numbers.
The force behind it is my theme for this year. Each year I set a theme for myself.
In 2019 my theme was FOCUS.
In 2020, my theme was CREATE.
In 2021, my theme was GROWTH.
Everything I do must align with the theme of GROWTH. I want to grow as a writer, and I want to grow my readership and my business.
The inspiration to get 1000 subscriber came from another Substack writer Ali Abouelatta. I wrote about it in the following article.
How To Get Your First 1000 Subscribers
Ali Abouelatta’s newsletter First 1000 is worth cheking.
Besides, I am a firm believer that you should do something crazy now and then so that you can write about it.
That’s all from me this week.
Neera Mahajan
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