How do I stop a problem from growing bigger and bigger in my mind?

Rabbi Landau teaches that “the more you stare at the problem, the bigger it gets.” When you obsess over what’s wrong, your brain goes into survival mode and the thoughts start spinning: “Why me? What if it gets worse? Who is to blame?” That loop doesn’t solve the problem. “It magnifies it.”

But the moment you ask, “What’s possible?” you activate a different part of your soul: “Not the victim, but the builder.”

He points to Dovid HaMelech: “Why are you downcast, my soul? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him.” Dovid HaMelech doesn’t deny the darkness, he explains, but he brings it into a future light with one word: yet. “That one word, yet, flips the whole story. Don’t live in the problem, live in the yet. That’s where the praise is waiting.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

The more you stare at a problem, the bigger it gets.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

Survival mode asks: Why me? What if it gets worse? Who is to blame? Those questions feed the problem.

Underlying need or longing

Asking “what’s possible?” wakes up the builder in a person instead of the victim.

Deepest human truth

How can you hope when the pain is real?

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that the verse does not say “someday I will thank Him” but “I will yet thank Him,” meaning: “Already now, I am living inside what is yet to be.”

More questions from this teaching

• What does “Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him” mean?