Why do I get so confused when trying to find solutions to my problems. I feel like I should be able to figure things out, but everything just seems so complicated.
What should I do?
It’s incredibly easy and surprisingly normal to feel overwhelmed with everything. Trust me that even people who don’t look overwhelmed are likely feeling overwhelmed. Feeling like you can’t find the answers, feeling like everything’s so complicated and difficult, this is heavy. I know that I at times have almost literally felt like I was walking in mud or even quicksand, practically unable to move at times, even physically, because of feeling this way.
Life can be challenging, no doubt about that.
But be careful about the stories you tell yourself about how hard life is. Ask yourself if it really is as hard as you think it is, or if you are somehow used to seeing things through a very thick, lens of complexity. Sometimes it helps to try taking off that lens to see if things seem clearer.
Much like the optometrist shows you a variety of lenses, asking which one is clearer, A or B. Once you pick one, B, then they move to that one and another one, B or C. And so on and so forth until you find the lens that clears your vision.
You can actually do this with your life. You can try on different lenses until you find the one that clarifies your vision of the problem.
Because the simple, but painful, truth is that where you expect to find complexity, you will likely find it. Not to say that your problems aren’t real, because I believe that they are. Only that the available solutions are often less complex than you might imagine.
I remember learning this as a teenager in my high school geometry class. As you might remember, geometry involved doing a lot of proofs. Because I thought these were complex questions, my proofs would be many steps longer than they needed to be. Where I used fifteen steps to prove something, my teacher would tell me it could have been done in three simple steps. While still getting it right, I was making it far more difficult than it needed to be. I needed to remove the lens of complexity before I could start seeing just how simple many of these solutions were.
Look for the simple answer first. (You might be surprised how often you find it.)
Sure, sometimes the solution will end up being complex. Of course. But even then, looking for the simple answer first is helpful. You will iterate your way into the complexity.
Imagine that you are asked to become a juggler who can juggle nine lemons at a time. So you pick up nine lemons and start trying to learn to juggle them. And you would fail. Learning to juggle requires that you start small, sometimes even with a single lemon, working your way up over a period of time.
So start with the equivalent of the single lemon when you’re trying to solve a problem. Start simple.
So why do people tend to gravitate toward complexity? For many reasons.
Sometimes people look for complexity in order to feel smarter or more important.
Sometimes people create complexity as a way of trying to avoid something.
And sometimes people look for complexity so they can feel justified in having the problem to begin with.
Complication as trying to prove your worth
If you have bought into the notion that your value is tied up with your intelligence, you might be trying at all times to look smart, even if only to yourself. And what better way to look smart than to make something incredibly complex, sometimes even so complex that others might not be able to understand your solution? Especially when you witness other people introducing complexity, you will be more likely to follow suit, trying to make things more complex just so you look as smart as you think they look.
Imagine that you are on a panel of experts and the moderator is going to ask the same question of each of you. You happen to be answering last on the first question. The first person to answer, wanting to impress, spins a long and complex narrative, full of jargon and other big words. Not wanting to be outdone or made to look dumb, the next panelist also answers the question in a roundabout way, using a lot of complex words and pontifications. By the time the question gets to you, you are afraid to keep it simple, for fear of looking less intelligent than the others. Therefore you also offer an overly-complex answer, when really the answer could be so simple.
Resist the urge to complicate things, whether this is in your work life or your home life, simply because you think you will look smarter.
I offer that complication does not equal intelligence. Rather, elegant simplicity allows true intelligence to shine through.
When asked the question: What brings you here to sit on this panel arguing for human rights?
You could answer that question like this, trying to look smart:
Thank you for the question. I think it’s important to situate my presence on this panel within a broader, intersectional, and historically contingent framework that acknowledges the evolving discourse around rights-based paradigms. From a praxis-oriented standpoint, my participation is less about individual advocacy per se and more about engaging in a multi-stakeholder dialogue that interrogates systemic inequities, amplifies marginalized epistemologies, and co-constructs actionable pathways toward equity-centered outcomes. In that sense, being here is a function of both positionality and responsibility, as well as a commitment to leveraging this platform to catalyze sustainable, justice-aligned impact across sociopolitical ecosystems.
Or you could answer that question like this, confident in your intelligence with nothing to prove:
I’m here because human rights matter, and I believe it’s important to speak up for people who are being treated unfairly.
Simplicity is easier, more understandable and profoundly intelligent. So start there.
Trust in the simplicity.
Complication as avoidance
Sometimes you might find yourself making things more complicated as a way of subconsciously giving yourself an excuse to not take action.
This could be for any number of reasons. Most often you won’t know why you are doing whatever it is that you are doing, at least not consciously. But when you get honest with yourself, are you perhaps not knowing how to do something or how to get started, so you hide behind excuses of complexity? Are you afraid of something related to taking that action? Or maybe you just really don’t want to do whatever it is.
Let’s say that you tell yourself that you should call your father or your daughter or your friend or your boss or [fill in the blank with anybody in the world here] to set up a time to get together with them. But you find yourself repeatedly forgetting to do it, or when you do think of it, your brain comes up with many excuses for why it’s too hard to do. What is arguably a pretty simple thing becomes overwhelming in your head. You tell yourself that you can’t just call them because you don’t know how to best get in touch with them. You wonder if they changed their phone number or maybe they don’t like receiving phone calls and you should text. But how will you know? Or maybe you worry that they recently switched jobs and you don’t know their new hours – you wouldn’t want to risk disturbing them! And what day would you suggest anyway? The list of reasons that it’s too hard just seems to go on and on.
But what is really going on? If you are able to be completely honest, even if only with yourself, you might find that you simply don’t want to reach out to this person for any number of reasons. Maybe you don’t particularly enjoy their company, even though you feel like you should. Or maybe you do enjoy their company, but you are afraid they’ll refuse to talk to you or you’re afraid that you will get together and then have nothing to talk about.
In this case, the truth, when faced honestly, is what is really preventing you from taking action. You are inventing the complexity, complicating the task to justify the procrastination. Imagine if this was someone you were super excited to see – you would just call them! You wouldn’t find reasons to procrastinate doing so. We do what we want to do.
So when you find yourself procrastinating, building something up in your head as too complex, consider the alternative that there is an as-of-yet unacknowledged truth and then simply acknowledge the truth. You might then choose to shift the action, or you might not.
We will find a way to do the things that we most want to do. So start with simple honesty.
Complication as legitimizing the problem
Sometimes you might find yourself actually hoping that the solution to a problem is very complicated. Why would you ever want that, you might ask? Well, if you’ve been avoiding solving a problem for months, years, even decades, having a complex solution might justify the avoidance of having done it earlier.
I found this to be the case when I finally conquered my decades-long phobia of dogs. I had lived with this crippling fear for 26 years. And it wasn’t just your basic run-of-the-mill fear, but a life-changing, social-life-ruining fear. If there was a dog around (or really any animal), I would immediately transform into a driveling fool, running and screaming like a toddler. Trust me that this isn’t something that people find attractive.
So one day, after years of this misery, I decided I was tired of it. I had read books about getting over my fear. I had researched it. I had talked to experts. For years I had done all of these things, but to no avail.
On this day when I decided I was tired of being afraid, I kept it simple and just decided to sit in the same room as a dog instead of running. No complex textbooks or methods. Just sitting. And that fear was gone in just about 10 minutes. In less time than it would take me to make myself a sandwich, my decades-long fear was gone. The problem was solved. And I found myself….frustrated, disappointed, angry. And happy, yes, happy too. But the solution had been so simple, too simple.
I found myself wishing that it had been harder, more complex. Because it was so simple, I found myself getting lost in the regret of not having done it earlier. Had the solution been harder, I wouldn’t have had the instinct to beat myself up so much for having waited so long.
And this effect compounds as you get older. As the amount of time increases that you’ve been putting up with something, procrastinating taking an action or making a change in any way, the regret increases. This often results in you wanting the solution to be more complex to justify all that waiting.
In a nutshell
So, back to your question. You say that everything seems so complicated. Take a look again now. Consider what’s actually at the root of your feeling like everything is really complicated.
Might you be over-complicating things so that you can feel better about yourself? It’s ok to keep things simple.
Are you throwing roadblocks into the mix because you’re avoiding something or afraid of something? Be as honest as you can be with yourself.
Or might you be seeing things as complex to avoid the regret of not having done something sooner?
The answer always starts with simplicity – a simple acknowledgment of the truth, a simple step. You are fully capable of handling the challenges you’re facing. Keep it simple.
