# Chapter 199

Cascading problems seem to nip at your heels. This is a little known phenomena that when trouble starts, it gets a head of steam and more and more trouble follows. Its not really that you have more problems than you had before, its that you are aware of more problems than you were aware of before. The processes you use to resolve one problem reveal four more. This is a normal experience I think for most people and most businesses. It can really knock you off your stride and wreck your productivity and your peace. Things aren’t objectively worse today than they were yesterday, you just are aware of more problems than you were yesterday. And once known, then you have to own them. And owning them is stress filled and uncomfortable.

Again objectively you are no worse off than yesterday, you are no sicker, no poorer, no slower, no closer to any disaster. What you are, is aware. You have new mental demons to wrestle with than you knew you did yesterday. What you have to decide now, and for all the minutes following this discovery, is what action are you going to take and how much of your attention are you going to give these cascading problems? I think many of you might be like me in that you just want to ignore the new problems entirely, but find them to be very insistent. This is the challenge that you will have to resolve, how intrusive will you allow these new cascading problems to intertwine themselves into your daily thoughts and routines, and how to resolve them at the same time with the energy you are willing to allow them?