How often are our responses to the various situations in life reasonable? Before we allow our current challenge or difficulty to overwhelm us, it would useful to first take a moment to assess the situation carefully.
Are we just reacting to some hypothetical future concern or repeating a pattern of anxiety to which we have become accustomed? Or is there a genuine concern right now that needs to be addressed? If so, what aspect of the problem needs to be addressed immediately and what part of the problem can be resolved through careful planning?
Once we take a moment to determine what the problem is right now, we can see that things are not as bad as we had initially thought. There is a simple way to resolve that short term concern that will become clear to us as soon as we allow the anxiety to dissipate. The remainder of the problem can be taken care of through careful planning which might initially require us to collect more information.
Regardless of the problem we are dealing with, the central solution is always rooted in present moment awareness. Although we might need to plan for the future, and even anticipate future challenges, as we go about our daily lives, that is not the same thing as allowing the mind to persist in hypothetical conjecture about what terrible fate could befall us.
The difference is that that when the mind is in the present moment, our decisions are based primarily on what is actually happening now and then future concerns might flow from there to the extent that they are reasonable. By contrast, if the mind is allowed to dwell consistently in the past or in the future, those arbitrary (almost random) hypothetical scenarios become the basis for our decisions. This kind of information is not a reliable ground upon which to make decisions because it is so heavily dominated by emotions.
Ultimately then, our capacity to resolve problems is linked to our capacity for mindful awareness. That is why it is so valuable to train ourselves in mindfulness. With greater awareness of how things are now, we can spend less of our energy dealing with short term concerns and devote most of our resources to our long-term goal of happiness and satisfaction.