What a noisy hamster can teach you about escaping

I’ve been looking after my sister’s hamster for the last week. While being a zippy little thing and quite cute, she also has a problem. All she's been focused on is escaping.

And I mean that’s all she wants to do. I’ve had hamsters before, and yeah, they’ve all chewed the bars and driven me mad in the middle of the night in their squeaky wheels in what looks like an effort to get the heck out of there as fast as they can. But nothing like this little thing.

And she’s so nearly there! She knows where to pull the bars to get the door open, she’s just missing it by one bar!

In between wanting to open the cage and let her out myself because the noise is so infuriating, I started thinking.

We all want to escape at times

Whether it’s a job you don’t like, a need for a holiday now! or simply needing to get out and get some space to breathe.

And sometimes, like the hamster, we just miss an opportunity, or we’re not poking in the right place.

Sometimes we get so close and it just doesn’t work out.

Here’s my thinking - if you want to escape bad enough, you probably could. I mean, the ways you could go about it might not be a choice that you'd choose to make, but there are probably options.

But sometimes, like the furry thing, we spend so much time trying to change things in a way that just doesn’t work. 

We can see it’s not working, but if we try hard enough, it’s going to work out, dammit. Right?

No.

At some point we need to change strategy.

Sometimes we need to change our tactics. Sometimes we need to take a risk and trust things will work out.

Exercise

So, if you’re struggling with needing to escape right now, get out a pen and paper and do a spider diagram of everything you can think of to change the situation/get out of the situation.

Include the ridiculous, include the downright impossible, because these might just hold or hint to the solution you’ve been looking for.

Include everything, and once you’ve got a wide range of options, only cross off what is physically impossible (including things you wish you could do, but can’t do right now because it would jeopardise your health, say for example taking on more hours when you’re at your limit).

Once you’ve done that, properly think on all of the ideas you have left. Do it with a friend, do it with a family member. Don’t cross off anything until you’re 120% sure it won’t work.

See what comes up for you, and you might just find that escape plan you’ve been looking for. 

I'd love to hear how you get on in the comments!