On Saturday night, Lauren and I ordered a Thai takeaway.

As I hit the order button, Deliveroo showed the crispy squid, pad thai and massaman curry would take 20 minutes to arrive. 

Very quick, I thought.

But when I glanced at the app 5 minutes later, after I’d ordered, the delivery time had shot up to 45 minutes!

I wasn’t a happy bunny.  And nor was Lauren.

Now, you might nod your head in sympathy or you might tut-tut at our impatience.

But either way I’m sure you’ll agree this is a fairly typical First World Problem.  The kind of problem that some people would classify as a triviality or even a non-problem.

Another perfect example of this?

What I call Inner Dilemmas.

These aren’t “physical” first world problems like finding nothing to wear even though you have a wardrobe full of clothes, needing to use your tin opener when a can of baked beans doesn’t have a ring pull or getting stroppy because your iPhone is only connecting to 3G rather than 4G or 5G.

Inner Dilemmas are more subtle.

For instance:

Feeling as if you’re not fulfilling your potential.

Or feeling a separation between where you are in life and where you want to be, feeling as if you’re being carried through life rather than creating your own life or knowing you have a great life on paper but still feeling like something’s missing.

These are dilemmas so far removed from the physical world that you might feel guilty even having them, let alone sharing them.

Not just because you think your Mum or Dad, friend or partner may not understand what you’re talking about.

But because they might even shame or guilt-trip you by claiming your dilemma isn’t really a problem and that you should just be grateful for what you’ve got.

This is why people don’t talk about these sorts of dilemmas.

And yet these dilemmas are still very real, acute and deeply-felt. 

I know them intimately myself.

I know they’re the sort of dilemmas that slowly eat away at you and which are tempting to ignore but which then spring back up with twice the force.

I also know they’re the sorts of dilemmas which feel unsolvable.

But the good news is that Inner Dilemmas can be solved.

And the even better news is that you don’t need to rely on your Deliveroo driver or iPhone in order to solve them. 

You can solve them yourself.

In fact, there’s no other way to solve them.  They can only be solved by you.

That’s not to say other people can’t point you in the right direction.

I see this more clearly than I ever have now I’m coming out the other side of these sorts of dilemmas myself.

Which, I think, is a big benefit.  After all, I’m not pretending I’m some sort of enlightened jedi master who lived with these dilemmas so long ago that I can’t relate to them or they don’t even look like dilemmas anymore.

These Inner Dilemmas still feel fresh as a daisy to me. 

As do the solutions.

Solutions I can and will point you towards, if that’s what you’d like.

If so, I have an offer for you today.

If you’re facing your own Inner Dilemmas and you’d like to move past them, I’m offering you a free, one hour Zoom call.

The call is a chance for you to explore and discover new perspectives on your Inner Dilemmas.

During our hour together I might ask you an occasional question.

If I have your permission, and I hear a direction worth pointing out to you, I might do that too.

But there won’t be any pressure or pitching.  The call will be 100% for you.

If you’re interested, the first step is to hit reply and say “interested”.

That’s all for today.

 - Tom