Have you ever been to an escape room before? I love them! Basically, you and a team of your friends (or strangers) are trapped in a room and you have a set amount of time to use the clues inside of that room to figure out a way to get out of it. Essentially, everything builds on top of each other. If you figure out the first clue or puzzle then that will lead you to the second, and so on and so forth, until you’re able to make it out. And the best part is that there are rooms out there for everyone. If you’ve never done one before then you can try out an easy one, but if you’re a pro then you might want to do one of the difficult ones. And even if you don’t end up making it out of the room before the clock expires, you still have a pretty good time, especially if you choose a room with a theme that you like. There are some out there where you’re in a wizarding world, or circus, or even a pirate’s lair! If you’re particularly daring then you’ll go to one of the scary ones. When you pick one of those, it adds another layer to the experience. Many times there are actors in the room with you who add a creepy element to it, and the rooms are always decorated like something straight out of a horror film. That’s why this kind is my absolute favorite to go to.

When I went this most recent time, the group of people that I went with stuck around for a little bit after we made it out of the room (with fifteen minutes to spare!). As we were standing around talking about our experience, I mentioned how the actor in the room was pretty freaky. When we first got into the room, she just sat in the corner. She was so still that we weren’t sure if she was just a dummy, but then after we were in there for about a minute, she moved and scared us all. Afterwards, I said that I wasn’t expecting that to happen at all. That’s when one of the other girls in the group mentioned how it’s a mental game. We were all psyching ourselves out, and that’s what made it that much scarier. We didn’t know if she was real or not, and the uncertainty of it made it more frightening and kept us from moving on in the game with the speed that we should have been moving. If we had just gone in there and started tackling the puzzles then we could have gotten out of there even faster.

Even though my teammate was talking about the escape room, what she said can definitely be applied to everyday life. The hardest part of anything we do is getting over the mental block. A lot of times, our mind is our greatest enemy. It can tell us that we can’t do something, when we actually can. All we have to do is find a way to silence the voices of doubt that scream in our head so that we can find a way to hear the voices that tell us that we can. And they’re definitely there. We just tend to focus on the negative ones because we think that they make life easier. We know that if we listen to the negative voices that we won’t have to work hard to achieve whatever it is that we’re trying to accomplish. We can just stop now before it gets too difficult and that way we’ll be protecting ourselves from the pain. But just because you’re avoiding pain in one area doesn’t mean that you can avoid it in all areas. You may not have to put forth the painstaking effort that would be required to accomplish that goal, but you’ll have to suffer the pain that happens when you decide to give up. Most of us don’t feel proud of ourselves when we throw in the towel before we’ve even given it a try. In fact, that pain is usually worse than the pain that you will experience from the difficulties that are associated with accomplishing that goal. That’s why it’s so important for you to find a way to listen to the positive voices.

Positive thinker, life is a mental game, but there’s always a way to figure out how to win. The first step is silencing the negative voices. Then once you’ve done that, you just have to keep on pushing forward and working hard until you get what you want. It will be difficult, but you’ll be happier for it when you get there!