When I planted my summer garden in May, I was more of a sunflower lover. I have finally solved the problem of our soil holes. My bedroom window looks out over the garden and right now the sunflower is a good five feet tall and forming buds. When I wake up in the morning, they are the first thing I look for.
In addition, in the middle of my view is a porta-pot of construction workers.
Many mornings I look up there expecting to see a sunflower and instead see an electrician out pulling a fly.
This is our life experience. As soon as we solve one problem, another one blocks our way happiness.
Before I continue, consider this:
- What are the sunflowers in your life right now?
- What is a porta-potty?
Problems are like ground birds and construction workers – they will come back and you don’t decide when. So what should we do when they do? Here are five things to consider based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and thousands of hours of listening to people’s problems (plus thousands of hours of complaining about me).
1. There is value in every problem.
If it doesn’t matter to you in a deeper way, it wasn’t a problem. Try taking a minute to talk about your problem (yes, set a timer), then ask yourself: What does this show that I care about it?
Now you have something more useful than complaining. You have a guide.
2. Your challenge somehow works for you.
Vicious circles, vicious cycles, negative reinforcement, avoidance of experience, secondary gain—whatever psychological term you want to use—some problems stick around because they solve other problems. How is your problem working for you? After all, that construction worker is fixing up my house – and that fight you have with your husband on Sunday night? It might just serve you in a roundabout way.
What is your fight helping to prevent or what are you gaining from it?
Once you understand what challenges work for you, you have more freedom to choose a different path.
3. Maybe you need to adjust your focus.
Sometimes your problems come back because you’re a problem-seeking system – you’re just looking for the wrong things. Attention it’s like a spotlight. You can narrow it down to something tiny, or you can widen the lens and let it illuminate the entire image. At ACT, we call these processes flexible perspective and flexible attention. When you can move your attention around—out and in, right and left, narrow and wide—how you see your problem is likely to change. Often it transitions to something more balanced or compassionate.
4. Our mind likes to create and solve problems.
The brain seeks stimulation, control, and objectification. And if there is no problem, it can create one. Life throws us challenges, of course. But is the late arrival of the plane a problem? Don’t you want to do nothing more than ever? Does this really matter to you? teenager is it far? Don’t you miss them when they’re gone? Sometimes the wrong thing is that your mind is looking for the wrong thing.
5. Some problems can be solved. Some cannot.
The word “acceptance” is there in the ACT for a reason. Often the path to commitment and change is acceptance. Acceptance means allowing what is here to be a part of your experience so that you can stop spending all your energy arguing with reality. This means that there is room for a full experience: aggressive and gratitudebeauty and discomfort, sunflowers and porta pottys.
And sometimes, when you accept, move towards it and allow the very thing you do fear or hate, you’re back at the beginning.
There is value in every problem.
As Pema Chodron writes, “things come together and they fall apart.” Then they get back together. Then they disperse again.
- There is value in every problem.
- Your problem somehow works for you.
- Maybe you need to adjust your focus.
- Some problems cannot be solved.
Practice during the week
Choose an issue that takes a lot of your energy
So ask:
What is the value behind this problem?
How does this challenge work for me?
Can I see it differently?
What story do I add?
Can I make room for it?
Your job is to become more skilled with the problems you have so that they can become the gates of your values so that you can continue to take care of your little garden patch.
