#48: Why Clinging to Old Solutions Keeps You Exhausted
We often mistake exhaustion for failure. But in truth, exhaustion is a signal… not an ending. It’s the body and mind telling us that the plan, routine, or strategy we’ve been holding onto has simply run its course.
Every solution has a lifespan. What once brought clarity and energy eventually loses vitality, leaving us stuck in repetition and drained of presence. Clinging to old solutions doesn’t help us grow. It keeps us exhausted.
In this episode, I explore:
Why every plan eventually exhausts itself
The hidden cycle of Plan → Explain → Complain → Re-Plan
How energy, not the plan itself, is your real currency
Why meeting discomfort directly frees your attention and restores vitality
How to trust the natural rhythm of letting go and beginning again
Instead of fearing exhaustion, you can learn to see it as an invitation to re-plant yourself, shift your perspective, and rise into a new level of growth.
Listen now (or read along below) and discover how to reclaim your energy by releasing what no longer works.
Why Clinging to Old Solutions Keeps You Exhausted
We often think of solutions as fixed, as if the right answer could bring lasting peace to a problem. We look for that one explanation, that one routine, that one strategy that will fix everything. We long for the comfort of finality: This is it. I’ve solved it. I’m done.
But life doesn’t work that way.
The truth is, every solution has a lifespan. It serves us only up to a point. It’s temporary, passing, impermanent. Every plan, no matter how brilliant, eventually exhausts itself. And that’s not a sign of failure. It’s simply the natural rhythm of growth.
The Cycle: Plan, Explain, and Complain
The word plan comes from the Latin planum, meaning a flat, level surface. To plan is to lay things out on even ground, to create a clear field to work from. From that same root, we get explain; to “flatten out” an idea, making it plain and clear. And then there is complain, originally meaning “to flatten completely,” or to beat down in grief.
What begins as clarity eventually becomes exhaustion when it is pressed too far.
This cycle shows us something profound: a plan serves only until it is exhausted. What once was fresh and alive eventually becomes repetition, then frustration, then lament.
The Lifespan of Every Solution
We mistake solutions for absolute answers. But in reality, solutions are not endpoints. They are possibilities that work for a time. When you cling to them as permanent, you eventually meet their edge. They lose vitality.
Imagine you’ve explained an idea over and over. At first, it brings clarity. But eventually, you feel drained. You’re not failing… you’ve simply reached the natural limit of that plan. The solution has run its course.
Every plan has a duration. And when it reaches that duration, it calls for a new plan. Not more of the same, not clinging to what once worked, but a shift in perspective, a re-leveling of the field.
Energy as the Real Currency
The most important resource you carry into every plan is not the plan itself, but your energy… your awareness, your attention, your willingness to meet yourself fully.
When you avoid discomfort, you leak energy into distractions. Those distractions build their own unconscious “mini-plans,” looping in the background, draining you further.
Coping mechanisms, like pouring another glass of wine, aren’t true solutions. They’re exhausted plans dressed up as comfort. They don’t resolve the discomfort; they only postpone it. The real shift comes when you meet the discomfort directly.
Meeting Yourself in Discomfort
The work, then, is not in clinging to solutions but in facing what’s underneath them. Every plan eventually brings you back to yourself. If you avoid that meeting, you’ll keep replaying the same strategy without awareness, wearing yourself down.
But if you meet yourself, your discomfort, your restlessness, your resistance, you reclaim your energy.
And with that reclaimed energy, you can create a new plan: a new perspective, a fresh way of approaching the same practice, the same structure, but with renewed vision.
The Human Advantage
A tree is rooted in one place. It grows only where it is planted. But you. You can uproot yourself. You can replant yourself in new soil, in new environments, in new ways of seeing. That is the gift of human consciousness. The real strength is not in finding the “perfect belief” or “the final solution.” The real strength is in knowing you can uproot, re-plant, and thrive again.
The Ongoing Spiral
So the rhythm becomes clear:
Plan: Lay out the field.
Explain: Work it, clarify, repeat.
Complain: Feel the exhaustion, meet the limit.
Re-plan: Step onto a new level, a fresh field.
This is not a closed loop but a spiral. Every time you re-plan, you rise to a new level. You carry forward your tools, your practices, your routines, but you see them differently. And from that difference, new life emerges.
Closing Thought
The freedom comes when you no longer expect a plan to last forever. When you accept that every solution has a lifespan, you stop clinging. You stop fearing exhaustion. You begin to trust the cycle itself: that every ending is simply the signal to re-plan, to lay out the ground again, and to see with fresh eyes.
You don’t need the answer. You need the courage to keep planning, re-planning, and planting yourself anew.
Reflection for You
Where in your life are you clinging to an old solution, and what new ground might be calling for you to re-plant?
With gratitude,
Veronica
