What is motivating you from moment to moment and what is your relationship to problems?
We are constantly motivated to protect ourselves while trying to have love and adventure in our lives. Through this journey, we are all subjected to intense emotions within ourselves and from others. We all have to deal with a rapidly changing environment where what worked today is completely redundant tomorrow. This is challenging! There are so many reasons why we are all having to deal with things breaking on us and no longer working.
When a day is made up of a string of automated choices, you rightfully can question who is making the decisions if we are just reacting without full consideration of what is going on. Especially when that automated thinking is coming from the subconscious wiring from our past. The moment and future is changing so consistently and significantly, what we believe right now needs constant updating!
Therefore, we need to be on guard for how we are slowly or quickly in some cases, becoming outdated in how perception and approach to our challenges. Although, we are in a dilemma because if we feel threatened by a world we are struggling to predict, our instinct is to close off because it is too threatening.
Yet, we must remain open to the information and receive it with an equal amount of openness to challenge our assumptions. It is tricky, because if you are emotionally closed off, your body said to the brain, attack and defend our position. Hence, it the position is misinformed, then we are compromised and responding in that way is counter-productive.
Overall, what motivates us to under-protect ourselves is the desperation to escape boredom, prove we are worthy, capable and successful. When we are over being stuck and see people achieving and it feels we are being left behind, we push hard and fast without being informed enough – and the crash happens.
What motivates us to overprotect ourselves is the desperate need to avoid the pain, the letdowns, the setbacks and the failures. We have been around the block too many times and we are done with getting misunderstood, exploited, hurt or embarrassed.
That state of mind, where the levels of under protection and over protection, are relevant to the specific contexts we’re in. What do we do to arrive at that balanced sweet spot?
We have to find our answers by being grounded in the details of what is going on while believing in ideas and better ways of achieving more for less effort. Many people feel they are being negative if they sit with the problems around an idea. This is not true as long as we know that we are just in the initial phase of solving the problem; the process!
Albert Einstein has been known to point out he didn’t believe he was being a genius by solving complex problems. He just believed he sat with problems much longer than the average person. If you see problems as the means to creating solutions, you no longer are triggered into feeling overwhelmed and defeated. Problems are normal and solving them is normal and rewarding.
Then, when you know every part of the problem in spectacular detail, it’s exhilarating and highly satisfying to innovate the solutions. Solutions appear very quickly for those that understand their problems to this level of detail. The only condition is to have unwavering belief that there is always a way through the problems and obstacles.
Lastly, we solve problems to enjoy the solutions. If we hook our identity into being a problem solver, then solutions won’t be as meaningful. Suddenly, the absence of drama, creates anxiety. The absence of problems creates boredom. If we can expand our purpose to enjoy thriving and come from that state of being, then problems will have a healthy role in that journey rather than be demonised for the nuances they are or worshipped for the opportunity to prove we are succeeding.
