Untying the Devil-Deep Sea Bind

There are times in our life when we are caught in a real bind. We feel that we are caught between the Devil and the Deep Sea or in effect a position of extreme difficulty, the alternative to which seems to be another position of even worse consequences. In these situations we really tie ourselves into knots and it appears that we have been effectively checkmated by fate.

A typical situation could be when your boss at office makes you life a living hell every day. While you sweat in office and you are in a mental turmoil it appears that there are no alternatives to your situation. The alternative of quitting your job appears scary and you really are worried whether you will land a job in the first place. There may be many other such situations at home or in personal relationships where the present situation and the other possible alternative appear extremely painful.
What does one do in these situations? Typically when we find ourselves caught between the devil-deep sea or caught between the frying pan-fire situation what we need to do is to stop tormenting our mind on the seeming impossibility of situation. We need to allocate some time during the day or week when we can look at our situation in a more composed manner.

We first need to look at the pros and cons of our current situation vis-à-vis the alternative position. If our boss is torturing us on a daily basis first we need to look at whether we can remedy the situation. Can we do things differently that will make our current situation any better. If so then we need to accept that our current issues are of our own making and we should put our whole hearted effort in solving all the issues in the current state of affairs. While at first sight it may appear that the only alternative to your current position is to quit, in reality there may be openings for your skills in other departments of your organization.
However if we reached a point of no-return in our current position then we need to look at the alternative for e.g. quitting or getting another job. This may seem to be a daunting and scary prospect. Typically our imagination will tend to run riot where we will imagine that we are jobless for many months. However if we address this in a level headed manner we may find that the situation may not be really as frightening as it seems. If we connect with our friends and actively look at the job market we may actually land a much better job.

Hence there will be situations in which we will be in bind for which there will appear to be no escape route. However if we cease to be overly emotional about the situation and analyze it in a rational way we may find different possibilities do exist. So rather than getting stuck in blinkered-thinking where it appears that there are only two possibilities to your current state in life if we put our mind to it we may actually land up in much more creative possibilities.