It’s surprisingly easy to be generous and find solutions to our friend’s problems.
Much easier than it is to do it for ourselves. Why?
There are two useful reasons, I think.
FIRST, because we’re unaware of all the real and imaginary boundaries our friends have set up. If it were easy to solve the problem, they probably would have. But they’re making it hard because they have decided that there are people or systems that aren’t worth challenging. Loosening the constraints always makes a problem easier to solve.
And SECOND, because resistance is real. Solving the problem means moving ahead, confronting new, even scarier problems. It might be easier to simply stay where we are, marinating in our stuck.
When we care enough to solve our own problem, we’ll loosen the unloosenable constraints and embrace the new challenges to come.