There is No Problem. There is Only Information.
Most of us spend our lives at the bottom of a giant heap of problems.
Weighed down like this, you are barely here in the Now i.e. the present moment. Instead, you’re wrapped up in all your stories about the awful problems you face and your mind races trying to find solutions.
You are in a ‘Problem’ when you are trapped by being identified with a story that something that is happening to you or the world is wrong, bad or evil. These are judgements about yourself, others or the world.
Being identified means that your sense of self is bound up with the story. You believe that there is a you who has something for you to lose because of the ‘Problem’. You believe that the story is real when actually it is simply one of your survival strategy Box’s creations to protect you from the world.
Actually, the only real problem is your Box’s addiction to having problems.
Your problems are not real. They are not actually here in the present moment. They are constructed by your mind.
What is real are the feelings coursing through your veins about what is going on.
Unfortunately, your judgements keep you out of touch with the reality of your feelings. Far easier to blame and shame yourself and others than to be in touch with what is really going on right now. Instead, you numb yourself to oblivion with your Gremlin’s personal cocktail of reality avoidance ‘treats’. You eat too much, you drink, you watch porn. All to keep yourself from feeling about what’s really going on.
And what are your feelings really? They are information in flow.
They are not a fixed idea about how the world is. They are not a judgement of it. They are energy flowing through you wanting to be expressed into the world.
They want to change something around you.
Are you going to get off the high horse of all your ‘Problems’ and let your feelings transform you and the world?
Say you have the ‘Problem’ that someone was mean to you yesterday. Solidified into that storyworld, nothing is going to change. But underneath that story is a rage that you were treated this way. Inside that rage is the information that how you were treated was not okay for you. The magic thing is that the rage also has the energy to express that information in the world. Next time you see the person, the rage comes up and you set a boundary: “I’m not okay with how you talked to me last time”. No need for a problem here.
This article’s challenge for you is to change your relationship to Problems. You can do it! At the moment you probably have it wired that ‘Problems are Bad’. Instead why not wire ‘Problems are Information’. Just a simple self-surgery and you’re done!
Here are some experiments you can try.
- Notice when you create a ‘Problem’. Every time you notice, write down what the problem was in your Beep! Book. Explore what the judgement was protecting you from. Say ‘STOP, I will not create problems’. Then immediately go into the feelings about what is going on. Find someone to share them with.
- Notice ‘Problems’ in others. Internally shout ‘Gotcha’ when you notice someone else caught in a ‘Problem’. This is your chance to guide them towards the feelings underneath and be their judgement prison escape companion!
- Decide to live a Problem Free Life. It is in your power to live a problem free life. You can choose to do it right now. Will you? If the answer is No, then what is stopping you? What’s your payoff for being so addicted to having problems?
Join me and Julia Neumann at our What is Life Without a Problem WorkTalk next Thursday at 7–8:30pm GMT.
