Deal- resolve, heal, transcend, understand, manage, take care of.
It- trauma, ego, suffering, unwanted behaviors, and reactions.
This article offers a perspective on healing, growth, and transformation. Adopting the ‘deal with it’ disposition is a useful tool, as it has you directly confront issues now. This is as opposed to the common tendency to make concessions to our suffering, allowing it to linger unnecessarily.
What does it mean to ‘deal with it’ in this culture?
Dictionary.com says:
“Appearing in popular memes in the 2010s, the phrase deal with it is a bold, self-assured declaration ordering someone to put up with something they may object to or make do with a challenging but ultimately manageable situation.”
There is a negative connotative flavor of telling someone to ‘deal with it’. Almost offensive, advising someone to ‘just deal with it’ is rarely the best choice socially. It has the effect of underplaying the difficulty and complexity of one’s issues. Because of this cultural connotation, the practice of ‘dealing with it’ has become less popular. Procrastination, storytelling, and self-indulgent suffering seem to be… common.
What if a direct approach to Awakening, insight, transformation, and healing was exactly what you needed to get past your current struggle? What if your careful, ‘compassionate’, slowly progressing healing process unnecessarily restrictive?
Another, less inflammatory set of definitions comes from merriamwebster.com:
- To be about (something): to have (something) as a subject
- To make business agreements with (someone)
- To do something about (a person or thing that causes a problem or difficult situation)
- To accept or try to accept (something that is true and cannot be changed)
A direct, almost masculine, determined, and strong disposition towards your suffering, trauma, behavioral issues, heartbreak, depression, anxiety, etc. can be very useful on your path to freedom and power.
It is not the only tool, and should by no means be applied indiscriminately. It is to be used when appropriate for you. Knowing when to ‘deal with it’ and when to allow a slower process to unfold is a skill you can hone through practice.
I’m assuming that your intent is to get free from unnecessary suffering and enjoy life as deeply and fully as possible. As such, any and every approach to attaining this should be considered.
There are many ways to be, and being dynamic (able to adopt various, often contradictory dispositions in different situations) means being able to relate effectively to a diverse range of experiences. I am offering you this perspective because it has lost its value in our culture as more and more feeble dispositions are embodied.
How do we ‘deal with it’?
There are several core principles that allow for effective dealings. Here are a few. The rest are for you to find through trial and error. I recommend you do!
- Feeling– Authentically feeling whatever is true for you is the primary means for dealing with anything personal. Open your feeling body to whatever is true. Be willing to feel. Once you’re in contact with what is true for you, it is possible to change.
- Love– A compassionate disposition towards self and its complex suffering provides the openness needed for a clear mind and unrestricted movement of information. More love means more capacity to deal with.
- Do it Now– Dealing with it implies the intent to take care of yourself immediately. For you to resolve whatever issue at this moment, you must intend to do so. Leave nothing to the future accomplish whatever.
- Intend to eliminate entirely– Allow for the possibility of a complete letting go, healing, or transformation. Realize your ability to ‘deal with it’ and intend to do so all the way.
- Make no concessions to story, narrative, or ego– This is actually the heart of the issue I’m trying to address. Due to features inherent in human nature, we attach to our suffering as an aspect of self. This means a lifetime of unnecessary suffering. Resist the urge to listen to your stories, as they serve only to perpetuate the very processes that lead to your suffering.
- Toughness– Be willing to experience whatever is true and present for you regardless of its impact on your comfort.
- Intelligence– Allow the intelligence inherent in you to do what needs to be done. The capacity for healing, letting go, and transformation is inherent in you. Let it do the work for you.
- Honesty– Being real with yourself is a prerequisite to change. If you remain embedded in a fantasy your ability to effect reality is limited severely. Get in contact with the truth of your experience.
Training and Practice
Dealing with it is a skill. This skill can and should be cultivated. The better you get the less likely you are to procrastinate, hide, and distort the truth. Here are a few practices you can use to train the disposition as a whole.
- Meditation– Meditating gives you new levels of control over your mind. Your mind is what gets in the way of proper self-care, so making it your bitch is a good idea.
- Coldwater exposure– The reason we tend not to deal with it is because it is easier to neglect ourselves in favor of comfort. Confronting yourself is often difficult. Getting used to doing difficult things is useful in so many ways.
- Exercise– Each time you do a hard workout you are effectively dealing with it.
- Fasting– Getting control over your most powerful drives allows you to overcome the drives that keep you from dealing with it.
- Psychedelics– certain substances can put you into an experience that must be dealt with. When your entire experience is transformed quickly, as occurs with psychedelics, there is deep dealing with it that tends to occur.
- Dealing with it– Practice dealing with it by dealing with it! This is by far the most effective way to improve. Dealing with it is not THE way. It is one way. Ultimately dealing with it is an expression of self-love. Love is THE way.
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