Over the last few days I have had the privilege of visiting with several men who presented with complex situations in their lives:

• Sam is in the midst of an extended legal/court/attorney situation where there are problems with his wanting to have joint custody with children and a fair settlement with his former wife regarding their joint property in addition to her reportedly violating several court orders regarding money and custody. Oh yes, he weighs 300-plus pounds and would like to lose weight. He admits to having no friends
• Jim is a professional person and good at his profession but quite dissatisfied with his current position and seeking to change positions. Additionally, he is in a long-term, largely unsatisfactory marriage with someone who has not contributed anything to the family income but has used thousands of dollars of their joint account to fund several failed businesses. Jim also faces some challenges with contacts with his two adult children and his grandchildren
• Ben is quite overwhelmed in life, so he tells me leading to a “breakdown” that he had over the weekend. He just “can’t get all done that needs to be done” and he falls into despair, depression, anxiety, and occasional anger as he attempts to migrate through these challenging waters. He is in graduate school, a couple classes being very demanding. He is working about half time. He has a wife and house. And he works a bit with the family business. Additionally, he will be taking a drug test soon due to his profession and has given up his daily dosage of pot to pass the test, which increases his anxiety.
• Mack has been dissatisfied with his job for some time, mostly because his subordinates and co-workers are not as efficient and can’t seem to take his directions. He has had some trouble with his girlfriend. As a result he has been anxious and irritable
• Paul is a professional person who has found himself in a position of making a lot of money but not being satisfied with the work, which used to be quite rewarding. Additionally, he has been in an unsatisfactory marriage for many years. He admits to having no friends.
• Peter, a pastor, has found himself in his retirement under a huge burden of debt, much of due to his lifelong tendency to say “yes” to his wife on buying and traveling. He wants to be in the pulpit again but at his age, this seems impossible. He has great trouble with his computer in order to get some kind of exact accounting of their indebtedness and payment schedule.
• 40 years ago I was in a dilemma of having financial, professional, and interpersonal challenges in the midst of some very important things that I needed to for my kids.

 

I have seen many people with similar dilemmas during my years of practice, almost all of them men because I just see men in my practice. In all of these cases these men have felt overwhelmed in some way and unable to progress through the complexities of their lives. I have often found that it is valuable for me to help these men do “first things first.” But what does that mean? Does it mean having a list to go through every day following the necessary things? Does it mean giving up on one or more of these challenges? Does it mean complaining more?  Does it mean that the best way to cope with these challenges is to engage in some kind of addiction? None of above. It means doing the right thing. Whatever that means. Maybe I can help these men find ways to do the right thing by doing “first things first.” This means discovering what is most important to do and finding a way to do it.

 

What is most important?

This is the first and most important question to answer, but discovering what is most important is not always easy to do. It is not easy to do because there is always a good deal of emotion related to the many things that a person feels the need to do. Sometimes, people have fallen into necessities and opportunities without thinking clearly, and as a result have bitten off more than they can chew. More often, things just happen, sometimes from oneself, sometimes from someone else, and sometimes from circumstances themselves. We all felt the pressure of Covid restrictions and associated fear for three years running, and no one was immune to Covid and the fears associated with this disease.

 

Making a tally of what needs to be done is the first task. This might be as simple as writing down the things that require attention or numbering them in your mind. The difficulty of this procedure is that if you “hold them in your mind,” you will likely fall into some kind of anxiety or anger that is not helpful. Better, is for you to write these things down, leave the list alone for a while and then look at it occasionally for a few days. Writing a list may relieve your mind a bit. When you fall back into feeling overwhelmed and worried, you can say to yourself something like, “I’ll find the right thing to do and then do it? In the meantime, you need to muse about how important each of these things is. You might discover that something big isn’t really important while something small seems to be much more important. You might discover that something that looks like it will take a lot of time might be really important or not really important, whereas something that might take you minutes is important or not so important. You don’t decide these things. You discover them. If you approach this process of looking at what is important, you will discover that something needs to be done today and something else doesn’t really need to be done at all. Furthermore, you might discover that what really needs to be done is something that you really don’t want to do. That can present a challenge because this process is discovering the right thing for you to do is difficult

 

Doing the right thing

How do you decide what the “right thing” is? You don’t “decide.” You “discover”. What in the world does this mean? It means what I just said:”

• You think of all the things you need to do
• You write them down
• You leave the list alone for a couple days
• You then look at it occasionally
• You note how you feel when you look at each item
• You discover that one or two things stare you in the face, like saying, “I need to do this,” perhaps, “I need to do this whether I want to do it or not.”
• You grieve. Really?

 

Yes, really. You grieve. Deb and I wrote a whole book on grieving, The Positive Power of Sadness, in which we discussed the centrality of grieving. We talked about “big sads,” i.e. things that were terribly sad and “small sads,” things that were difficult but not terrible. So, when you discover (not decide, remember) what you need to do, you will need to grieve what you don’t do. Or, when you do something that you have discovered to be really important, you will see that you can’t do something that you might really want to do but isn’t as important to be done, at least at this moment of time in your life. This grieving, i.e. just feeling sad, is essential if you are to proceed with doing the right thing. There is a tendency, especially for people of a certain personality type or temperament, to “re-think” what should be done, but this is usually a delay tactic that your brain conjures up to prevent you from grieving. Your brain would much rather that you be somewhat happy doing nothing than doing something that you don’t want to do that really needs to be done. This is a place a lot of worriers find themselves: stuck in hopes and dreams but not in reality. Hopes and dreams are wonderful, and I am all for them, but there comes a time when you have to discover what the right thing to do is.

 

You will not be successful in getting advice from friends on what you should do. You might have people in your life that think you’re lazy or work too much or don’t work enough. They also have their own values, and hence things that are important to you might not be important to you. So, if you seek counsel from friends, make sure you say that you just want to talk, that you don’t want their advice.

 

Then you do something. And, as has been said by many fine and wise people, you will be right or you will be wrong. More likely, you will be mostly right and slightly wrong. You assess what you have done and it will soon be obvious: I did the right thing, the wrong thing, or a bit of both.

 

So what happened to the guys I talked about?

• Sam has discovered that he needs to fight the good fight for joint custody of his children. All else, including his weight, smoking, and drinking need to be tackled at another time. He simply has too much stress with the kids/custody thing to put any effort in correcting his diet and habits.
• Jim quit his job, found a different position making a lot less money, and moved out of town. He just emailed me, and I was glad to hear from him because when I last saw him almost a year ago, he was pretty stuck. I hope he can now face his marriage and find comfort in what he discovers there.
• Ben has decided that he has to focus on finishing his degree, which primarily means that he has to put the time into doing this very difficult course even though he would much rather do something else. He told me he has only a month to go before the course is over and he will be putting all his effort into doing it. His marriage, his drinking, his pot, and all the rest will have to rest.
• Mack has found a way to accept that he is smarter than the people he works with but does not have a feeling of superiority. He has found a way to look at his work knowing that he probably will eventually need to have his own business (he has some experience), but now is not the time. His girlfriend is now in therapy and they are better for all the changes they have made
• Paul is a guy I’ve just seen for a month or two. The last time he came in to see me, he said that he was feeling a bit better, that he has begun to have a sense of who he is and how he can mature emotionally. His job, money, and marriage have not changed, but his perspective has.
• Peter remains pretty stuck in his situation. He yet focuses on his medical conditions and those of his wife, frankly because it is easier to do than focus on himself and what he needs to do. He did say recently that he had a new way of looking at his marriage, i.e. to look at what his wife felt rather than what he thought. I hope for more maturity.
• When I focused on my kids, i.e. finding a way to have joint custody, I felt better, and the other matters of my life slowly and consistently improved. But that is a short answer. We need a cup of coffee and a conversation to hear more.