what_are_problems

Do you love your problems?

It would be helpful, really 🙂

Problems are … difficulties, possibilities, opportunities

A problem is a perceived gap between the actual state and a desired state. This may present itself as either a difficulty you face in life, or a question, puzzle or dilemma to be answered or solved (including homework tasks or math or engineering questions).

I love the definition above because it touches the core of what a problem is. It says about perception and the gap. A problem is therefore in the eye of the beholder. It is personal. Hence, problem solving is personal too and requires an action to close the gap.
 
We will focus here the first type of the problems.

Life difficulties

Some problems are natural and easy challenges in fact. They are the next step on your development path. These are usually small variations of the obstacles that you successfully overcome in the past. They require a stretch but within your possibilities.

Some problems are real difficulties that you have not yet learned to handle well. They may lie far outside your comfort zone and/or require either a personal change or a change of circumstances (family, home or work). Solving these types of problems is a key to life mastery indeed.

Some problems strike hard. These are usually the sudden and unexpected blows or turns in life. They can become a sudden illness, death, reallocation or loss. They may evoke fear, panic or terror. Your heart may feel squashed and you may feel contracted. You are terrified, overwhelmed and lost.

Ultimately you will go through the dark hours and let the emotions flow freely. In doing so, you are down to your true power and perseverance. Only when the emotions are released, you can approach the problems at hand.

Some problems (read: areas of growth) are your good “friends”. They have been with you for years but you avoided to take the responsibility for a change to happen. Your challenge is to become ready first. Ready, to arrive at a breakthrough moment in which you cannot handle the problems any more.

This is usually a moment of Self-realization in which you discover that the path you are on is not the one you would like to follow or when the when the consequences of the given behavior (say, from the lack of change) are more profound than the value of this behavior.

Such an inspiration may go about small things.

It can be an email from a friend telling you how much he appreciated your sound advice that makes you decide to quit your job and start a consulting business.

It can be a time when kids are particularly cheeky when you simply feel it’s enough for you to be a stay-at-home mum.

It can be a brief look into a mirror to realize how bad your posture is in order to subscribe to the regime of posture correcting exercises (BTW: the Egoscue’s health trough motion ones are super good indeed).

Whatever.

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The real difficulty problems are the ones to tackle. 

Why?

Because if you know how to solve them, all other types of problems will ultimately arrive at this phase and can be tackled as well.

The problems aka real difficulties

These problems are caused by perceptions from your Conscious Self dwelling outside your Operational point of Action (or Power). If you perceive a problem, it means you are living with a situation without holding an intention or possibility of taking the action in the Now to tackle it.

The real difficulty problems arise because you

  1. don’t sufficiently understand the issues
  2. don’t accept the facts and/or the change to happen
  3. don’t take the right decision
  4. don’t take the right actions

When a problem occurs, resistance usually hits with a full blow.

Why?

Because you are confused, overwhelmed, insecure or simply afraid at the presence of Unknown. Ultimately, one of the three scenarios is usually there:

1) You don’t understand the issues and don’t know what to do (or how to do it). You are often paralyzed by uncertainty and afraid of the unknown. As a result, you avoid taking action.

2) You don’t know what to do but you keep taking arbitrary actions for the sake of feeling that we are doing something to maintain the illusion of progress (instead of being still).

3) You know what to do but you don’t like the actions involved (the lack of decision) and are afraid of the consequences of these actions (the lack of will to proceed).

Whatever the scenario, you can move past your doubts or inaction. You need to use strategic problem solving approaches. As these form a necessary skill of any intelligent person, learning them will only bring you benefits. Anybody can master the related process, I believe.

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Love your problems

Do you love your problems? This would be helpful, indeed.

In the end your problems, are yours. This means they are a part of who you are and whom you are becoming. When you accept to love your problems, they are not enemies neither alien creatures anymore. They will start to work in your favor, and, as a result,  you will focus on the solutions with breeze.

There are two great approaches to solve your personal problems. And what is best, they are highly effective, once you know how to use the techniques well.

I will write about them in the next post 😉

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Photo courtesy Fe Langdon, available under Creative Commons on Flickr.

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