How long would it take you to solve this maze?

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Try it and time yourself!

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Then read on to find out why it matters.

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(start at the top and get to the center)

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Click on maze to open in pop-up. Scroll down to see the solution.

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What strategy did you use to begin?

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What strategy did you use at a dead-end?

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This maze is important because it represents one of many conflicts in an adult's life that can be extremely complicated!

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Now, consider this maze:

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Much Easier!!

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There are not nearly as many distractions in solving this maze. It is likely that your same approach used for the first maze worked here.

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In fact, you might have actually felt good about solving this maze after working on the first one.

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Ok, great! But...

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What happens when minor distractions are introduced to the maze and the solution is not so straight-forward? Try this one!

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Did you solve it? 

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Did you reach any dead-ends?

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If you did, would you be able to describe that feeling of reaching each consecutive dead-end?

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What happens if the amount of dead-ends increases and the maze takes longer to solve?

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. . . .

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Don't actually solve this one but definitely glance through and see how it makes you feel . . .

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WHY might you NOT want to attempt this maze?

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  • unnecessary frustration

  • the reward not worth the effort

  • tired of solving mazes by now

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Whatever our reasons are for not attempting to solve a maze will resemble (to some extent) our reasons for not resolving different kinds of conflicts. 

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We must constantly remind ourselves of why we might be avoiding an obstacle. It just might be something as simple as a maze - and what does anybody get out of being frustrated at a maze? Remove the maze and remove the frustration, right? Unfortunately, our strategies for managing our own emotional responses to obstacles may likely resemble our responses to other kinds of conflicts.

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Remove the conflict, remove the frustration?

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While some obstacles may need to be avoided in order to address more rewarding obstacles, it is important to remind ourselves to be self-aware of which obstacles we are avoiding and why. 

TLDR:

Learn to self-regulate your emotional response to simple obstacles and train your ability to self-regulate to develop emotional self-control toward more complex obstacles/conflicts.

Solution to first maze:

All mazes created with MazeGenerator.net

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