Posted by Luke in How do we even know we have a problem? Well this post will show you four ways you can know you have a problem.
1. Look for symptoms.
The first thing you need to do to consider carefully the evidence you have before you. What are the facts? Write a list of everything you think the symptoms are and consider them carefully. What is the evidence telling you? Remember problems belong to people and people form the world around them largely in their heads. Evidence can be created and facts manipulated. Look carefully at these things and see if a conclusion can be drawn… does a problem then become evident?
2. Looking for things that concern us
A clever trick our mind plays on us is that it makes us think that problems are somehow separate to our understanding of them. That is, people will use the language of ‘well I have this problem’ or ‘the problem is I have …’. All the while not realising that what bothers them is in their mind. When you take a good hard look for things that bother you then you will begin to see the areas of life that you think are problematic. If you are from the mathematical tradition you will think I why I just said is rubbish. But consider this, you now have found a problem because I am bothering you!
3. What is effecting us?
Another way you can identify a problem is to look for things that you don’t control that are effecting you. For example, say you are out in the rain getting wet… you are in total control of where you stand but you are not in control of the rain. Problems are exactly the same. However, you can recognise that which comes from the outside and that which falls on you simply by thinking… what are the things I am not controlling that are effecting me in this situation. By doing this you can begin to see bigger picture realities. These bigger picture things are often how other people treat you, how your work operates, how the economy operates and political things. You can’t control those things to suit yourself but you can recognize their influence on you and begin to identify the problems you are seeing.
4. Looking for things that are ‘all in your head’
The final way to identify a problemis the issue of their not being a problem. Now, there are things that effect us in the way the world operates as discussed above but there are times when the problem we have is nothing more than a construction of our psyche. In a recent interchange with a person I work with I noticed that they were greatly upset by something I had said in a group email that was not even intended for them. I ended up having to apologise for something that I didn’t even do wrong. Why was this the case? The person who read what I had wrote took issue as if it was directed at them when it was directed as somebody else. They created the problem. Apart from them thinking it was an issue there really was no issue at all.
These kinds of problems are usually related to underlying issues of the mind and emotions. I ended on this point because it’s a really important one… what you think the problem is… the problem is. If you have a tendency towards technical solutions you will look for technical problems. If you are led by your heart then you will gravitate to heart solutions. Ultimately the rest is up to you but that is another post for another day.
There is a podcast associated with this post which you can download for free here. Thanks for reading.
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