lbb

Indeed. It's a learned skill to set aside problems that you can't currently address, and to pick them up again when you can address them. Aikido doesn't particularly help with developing this skill, but it seems like many people only become aware of just how much baggage they're carrying around when they take up a practice like aikido that demands a here-and-now focus. As such, aikido training may promote an awareness that there is a problem to be solved -- it won't solve the problem, but perhaps it'll motivate you to seek out one of the many ways that the problem can be solved.

Of course, it's also important to understand what "setting aside problems" means. It doesn't mean that they become unimportant, although if you can set them aside for a time and clear your head, you may decide that they're not quite as big a deal as you had thought. It doesn't cause them to be magically fixed, although again, if you can get the clarity of mind from setting them aside, you may find that more solutions occur to you. All it really means is that you acknowledge that you're not going to solve them now, so you're putting them on hold for a time.

Pema Chodron has a great deal of wisdom to share on the subject of dealing with life's pains and irritations and maintaining one's equilibrium (which, it turns out, really isn't a matter of maintaining one's equilibrium, but that's the subject of a much longer discussion). Here's an excerpt from one of her talks which is funny as hell and also really to the point, about controlling how things aggravate you.

"I am going to get rid of anything, including mosquitos, that bothers me anywhere in the world, and then I will be a very happy, content person."