You don’t have to be in the desert for sastrugi to happen; life is full of hard sastrugi, and it happens all the time.  Sastrugi traumatizes people in the workplace and in their personal life.  They go through periods when they feel as if they are being severely hammered by the sastrugi of life.  After taking this punishment, they withdraw, and instead of saying yes to life, they say no.  They don’t want to experience any more hard sastrugi.

They go home, sit in their easy chair, watch television, read the newspaper, and watch life pass by.  The sastrugi of life traumatized them, and they don’t want to get hurt anymore.  They don’t understand that sastrugi is simply one of the challenges of life, and a challenge is only a challenge until you learn how to deal with it.  There are ways of dealing with sastrugi without getting hurt, and once you learn how to deal with it, sastrugi no longer is a problem.

Soft sastrugi is also like life.  In the sand valleys at the base of the dunes, you encounter areas of sastrugi as soft as shallow quicksand.  Soft sastrugi stops you dead in your tracks; your vehicle sinks until the chassis touches the sand when soft sastrugi happens.

Sastrugi is tricky.  When you come to a patch of it, you never know if it will be soft or hard.  The only way you can tell is to drive through it.  If you think it’s soft, you put your foot on the accelerator in order to blast your way through at high speed.  If you think it’s hard, you put your foot on the brakes and slow down so your car won’t shake apart as your tires bounce on the crests of the hard sastrugi.

Many times I have slowed down when I thought I was coming to a patch of hard sastrugi.  Unfortunately, I entered a sea of soft sand at a slow speed, and I quickly learned the error of my ways as my car sunk down to the chassis.  I was sincerely and monumentally stuck in deep sand.  Soft sastrugi happens.

Being deeply mired in soft sastrugi is only an embarrassment unless you decide to stay stuck for the rest of your life.  If you stay stuck, the rest of your life won’t be long because you will die of thirst in the desert.  Smart people don’t stay stuck, and they don’t sit around waiting to die.  They get out of their car and reduce the air pressure in their tires to fifteen pounds per square inch.  They use shovels to dig the sand out from under the car where it touches the chassis and axle.  Next, they put metal sand ladders under the tires.  Then, the driver puts the car in low gear and drives out of the sastrugi with everyone pushing.  In ten minutes, you are free from your sandy prison and on your way.  Only a fool would die of thirst trapped in soft sastrugi.

Life has a great deal of soft sastrugi.  Many times it stops you in your tracks as you become mired down in difficulty.  At that point, you have a choice.  You can throw in the towel and surrender staying perpetually mired in the problems of life.  You can sit there feeling sorry for yourself, thinking up dozens of reasons why you will never overcome your difficulties.  The other choice is to deal with your problems and get going again.

Everyone occasionally becomes stuck soft sastrugi.  It’s not your fault when you bog down, but staying stuck is your fault.  When you bog down with problems, it’s not the time to surrender.  Instead, you take immediate action; you get out the shovels and sand ladders, you lower the air pressure in your tires, you get your friends to start pushing, and you start driving.  Soon, the soft sastrugi is in your rear view mirror.  Although soft sastrugi happens, you don’t need to be permanently immobilized by it.

You are going to experience a great deal of hard and soft sastrugi in your life.
When sastrugi happens, you can be traumatized by it, or you can get stuck in it, but the smartest thing to do is drive around it.

Careful drivers keep a sharp lookout for sastrugi. You can usually see it in the distance and avoid it.  Ninety-five percent of the time, a good driver sees sastrugi ahead of time and drives around it.  Five percent of the time, even the best driver will be traumatized by hard sastrugi or immobilized by soft sastrugi.  The only way to completely avoid sastrugi is to stop driving.

Ninety-five percent of the problems that you have in life can be avoided by keeping a sharp lookout, but five percent of your problems are unavoidable.  Don’t become terminally traumatized or immobilized by the sastrugi of life.  Be prepared to ride out the hard sastrugi and dig out of the soft sastrugi, because the only way to reach your dreams is to keep on driving.

Excerpt from :

Zero Tolerance To Negative Thinking : Good-by Depression - Hello Positive Mind

David J Abbott M.D.