Problem solving...

Do you ever have thoughts that pop into your head that you don’t want to think about? Thoughts you would never share with anyone, not necessarily cruel or hurtful, just things you don’t want to think about. You’re aware that you’re having the thought, and you’re aware that you don’t want to have the thought, so you think to yourself “I don’t want to think about this any more”, so you don’t think about it any more.

My worst moment in recent history was when I was trying to fall asleep and every thought that popped into my head was one of those thoughts. Every time I’d manage to “not think about this any more”, another awful thought would just pop up in it’s place, like a demon whose head grows back every time you cut if off. And I tried to solve the problem by thinking of good things (these are a few of my favourite things), but a mind can play dirty tricks on itself and all of those happy thoughts were then warped into unhappy thoughts that I didn’t want to have about the happy thought.

The mind is a marvelous thing

I was lucky that day and had a very good friend with me who held on tight and although was not able to chase away those demons, he was strong and was there as I faced each one, until I couldn’t face them anymore and still he held on. He told me that I was probably causing half of the problem myself, making it worse for myself, and although he was right, the information was not able to fix the problem…probably because I didn’t want to fix the problem.

Half the problems we have are problems that we ourselves have helped to create. I might learn something new from every new problem I face, but I’ll never really learn the important lesson until I stop creating problems, or making current situations worse.

What reason would a person have to create a problem, or to make an existing situation worse? Do we get joy from this? No, we get joy and pleasure from fixing the issue, resolving the problem. So the harder the problem is, the better we feel about ourselves when, not only do we come out the other side, but we also helped to break through the problem ourselves, the more difficult becomes the more rewarding. We all know ourselves well enough to know how much we can handle, what we can solve. Sometimes we need to test ourselves…and see how much further we can go. Troubles arise when our eyes are too big for our stomachs and we bite off more than we can chew. We set ourselves up and then we flounder and sometimes fail.

Some people never even try, for fear of failure; you can’t miss any of the shots that you never take. Some people bite off more than they can chew on purpose. Maybe they enjoy failure, or they are stuck in a pattern of failure and don’t know the rewards of fixing something that’s broken.

However, I believe that most people, like myself, do a mixture of all of these. We’re afraid to fail sometimes, so we don’t even bother to try, we expect to fail, and we make a situation so bad that it’s not worth trying. Sometimes we set ourselves up expecting to fail, knowing we need to be pushed…we need to know the stove is hot and that unless it is an extreme situation, we won’t learn the lesson. Or we need a great reward, and we set up a huge catastrophe that we know we can fix and we’re the ones to save the day.

But the most perfect moments come, when a problem arises and we have done nothing to cause, hinder or make the situation worse. We then got involved and from the get-go improved things, and we don’t make it worse and we took the chance, until we ourselves solved the problem.
But all the other moments…all the other problems…everything we’ve caused and dealt with, these have all helped us to be able to deal with the perfect moments and make them those moments. And, after failure, success is that much sweeter.

My afternoon of pain and upset was caused by me and my own mind. But there was a lesson that I was teaching myself. The lesson took awhile to learn, and I haven't learnt all of it yet, but although at the end I felt that I failed...I have won and am continuing to win.