Episode 66: Stop Solving Low Quality Problems

If you've been feeling worn down and burned out, you might be wasting your energy trying to solve low quality problems. In this episode, I'm sharing how to spot these problems, and redefine how you're thinking about them, so you can put your brain to work solving problems that will build strength, wisdom, and resilience.

Apply now for my 1:1 coaching program, Renew Your Mind, and start personalized sessions in January. Could be the best gift you give yourself this year. 

Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 66, Stop Solving Low-Quality Problems.

I'm Emily Ricks, and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before.If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

We're going to talk about problems today. And so I have some questions for you.

What do you think about problems? Like, do you think of them as good or bad? Do you think of them as helpful or awful? Do you think of problems as fun to solve or dreadful to have to face? When it comes to problems, are you a hero or more of a victim? Heroes solve problems. If you think of the main character in a movie, especially like superhero movies, right? Spider-Man and Superman and Captain America, a hero sees a problem as an obstacle to overcome. And then they face the problem and they find the strength and the courage and the resources to overcome that problem.

Victims on the other hand, complain about problems. The victim sees a problem as something awful, and then they use their energy to try to prevent having to face the problem or figure out a way to avoid it. And they claim helplessness and powerlessness.

Oh, I can't do this. It's too big. It's too hard.

I'm too small. This is terrible. This is awful.

So that's just something interesting to think about. I want you to know you have a choice in any problem that you face of whether you want to approach it as a hero or as a victim. So to explain this in a little bit more detail, let's do a quick review of the CT FAR model, which is one of the primary tools that I use as a coach.

So there's five lines. And the first line is circumstance. So circumstances are neutral.

They're not good or bad. It's just what is presented to us in our lives. And the next line is thoughts.

So we have thoughts about our circumstances and nothing is good or bad or hard or easy or fun or boring until we have a thought about it. Okay. So circumstances are neutral.

Thoughts are optional. We get to decide ultimately what we want to think. And then whatever we think and believe that creates our feelings.

So that's the next line of the model F feelings. And then what we feel drives our actions or our interactions, what we do, what we don't do is driven by the feelings, the emotions that we have. And those are created by our thoughts, which we have about our circumstances.

Okay. So circumstance thought, feeling action, and then result the things that we think, which create our feelings, which drive our actions, ultimately produce the results that we get in our lives. So I want to show you, if you choose to approach a problem as a victim, the general model that you're going to build with that.

And also the model that you build, if you choose to approach your problem as a hero. So in a victim model, your circumstances, you got a problem, whatever that problem is. And your thought is going to be something like, this is awful.

Or like I mentioned, like this is too hard. I can't do this. This is unfair.

Those kinds of thoughts that's approaching it from a victim standpoint. And when you think that kind of a thought, the emotion that will create is a feeling of helplessness and powerlessness. Okay.

Circumstance problem thought, this is awful. This is too hard. I can't do it feeling helpless, powerless.

Then on the action line, when you are feeling those emotions, then you are most likely going to avoid the problem. You're going to hide from the problem. You're going to retreat from the problem.

You might give up after very little effort, trying to solve it. That's going to be what type of actions you have on your action line. And then the result of a model like that is you don't solve the problem, right? The action produces your results.

So if you're avoiding hiding and retreating, the result that you create is you don't solve the problem. You don't grow like a hero does who overcomes the problem and faces it, and then develops new skills and strategies. So in this model where you're helpless, powerless, avoiding, hiding, retreating, you don't solve the problem.

You don't grow. You don't change and evolve into a new person with new skills. You don't gain experience or strength or capacity or confidence.

So that is the result that you create when you approach a problem as a victim. On the other hand, if you approach it as a hero, the circumstances, the same, you have a problem, whatever that problem is on the circumstance line on the thought line, you're going to have a thought like, okay, here we go. Let's do this.

And when you're thinking a thought like that, the emotion that that will create inside of your body is empowered, maybe excited, maybe creative, maybe curious, completely different emotional energy. And from those emotions, the actions that you would take would be looking for solutions. You're going to summon inner strength.

You'll ask for help. You're going to get assistance from other people. And you're going to cue the theme music, right? Like, okay, here we go.

I have this big problem, but let's turn on the theme music because I am going to face this. And I'm going to ultimately overcome. And like in a good movie plot, it's going to be challenging.

There's going to be conflict, but I'm going to come off on top, totally different mindset. But do you see how the circumstances, the same, the problem, but because of a different thought and because of a different mindset, you create a different emotion of being empowered, looking for solutions, getting help. And the result that you create in this model is that you're going to solve the problem and you're going to gain experience and strength and capacity and confidence.

And you're going to evolve and grow as a person. So that is a significant choice that you get to make. Do you want to be a victim or do you want to be a hero? And you can decide that by the way you choose to think about your problems.

Your thoughts will create your feelings, which will drive your actions and your actions will produce your results. So here's what I choose to believe about problems. Problems are awesome.

You need to solve problems to become the person that you are meant to become. And thankfully your brain is wired to solve problems. Problems are the curriculum that you get in order to become more creative, more capable, more confident, more resourceful, more patient, more clever, more resilient.

So let's talk about low quality problems versus high quality problems. Victims spend their lives focusing on low quality problems, either trying to avoid problems completely and hiding from them or focusing their energy on trying to solve problems that will bring a low quality result on developing strength and capacity and confidence. That's how we know it's a low quality problem.

You look at the yield, what kind of a result does solving this problem bring into my life? And that's how you can tell if it's a low quality or a high quality problem. Heroes focus on solving high quality problems and they face them head on, which yields high quality results like building skills and increasing capacity and learning to solve bigger and bigger problems. So let's think about what is your biggest problem in your life right now? What is the biggest issue you're currently dealing with? And then I want you to consider, do you think it's a high quality problem or a low quality problem? Are you thinking about it like a victim in a way that leaves you feeling powerless and overwhelmed, or are you approaching it like a hero in a way that leaves you feeling motivated to face it and solve it and overcome it? If you have a low quality problem, you can either just decide it isn't a problem and you don't need to solve it at all, or you can redefine how you're thinking about the problem and turn it into a high quality problem for you to solve.

This is really, really valuable, important work to do inside of your own mind. It's life changing. So I want to give you three examples of how this can work.

Okay. Example number one, the problem is you have a person in your life. That's doing things.

You don't want them to do. It could be a family member. It could be a child.

It could be a friend. Somebody in your life is doing things that you don't want them to do. That's a problem, right? So a lot of times people will approach this problem as how can I get this person to stop doing that? How can I get this person to change? And what I want to offer to you is that that is a low quality problem.

First of all, it's impossible to do. You're not going to be successful at solving it because you aren't that powerful to be able to change another person. And so if you use your energy to try to change someone else, you're going to end up frustrated and exhausted and resentful.

And so that's a low quality problem. It's going to yield low quality results. So one option that you have is you can just decide, no, this isn't actually a problem.

I don't need to solve the other person's behavior. And you can also shift how you're thinking about it and turn it into a high quality problem, which is how can I learn to set healthy boundaries for what I will and won't do? How can I create the emotions I want in my life? Even when someone else is making choices that I don't agree with, that's a high quality problem. Or how can I influence this person with love and kindness and share what I believe with them and be a guide and support on their journey? That's a high quality problem.

If you go about trying to solve that, you're going to be turning to God for help. You're going to be learning all sorts of tools. You're going to be talking to other people who might be able to help you another high quality problem.

You could solve. If you have a person in your life, who's doing things that you don't want them to do, rather than trying to solve the low quality problem of getting them to change, you could say, you know what, how can I learn to love this person without conditions? That is a high quality problem. You will grow.

You will learn. You will develop new skills that focusing on that problem will yield you a high result in the growth that you'll be able to experience. Do you see how this works? Here's a second example.

Your problem is you have lots and lots of things on your to-do list and only 24 hours in a day and seven days in a week. Can you relate to this one? So a lot of times people have this problem and the question that they ask is how am I going to get everything on my to-do list done? And what I want to offer to you is that that is a low quality problem to try to solve. It will totally wear you out.

And most likely you're not going to be successful at getting done every single thing on your list, because it's an argument with reality. You have more stuff on there than you're ever going to have the time or the energy to do. So if your problem is how do I get everything on my to-do list done? If that's how you're approaching it, then you're going to have thoughts like I need to get everything done.

I don't have enough time. I don't have enough energy. There's too much to do.

And now you've developed a victim mindset. So here's what you can do. Let's think about it in a different way.

Let's redefine what the actual problem is. It's not how am I going to get every single thing on my to-do list done? Because that's not, you're not going to. Here's a higher quality problem that you could put your brain to work to solve.

How am I going to determine what things I won't do on this list? What resources might be able to help me pare down this list and focus on actually doing the things that really truly matter. Do you see how that is a higher quality problem? Because it's going to yield much higher quality results. If you're asking questions like how can I trust God in this struggle of having limited time and energy and so many things that I need and want to do, how can I rely on him to guide me to my best? Yes.

Instead of me running around trying to get it all done, that's a higher quality problem to solve. And in the pursuit of that, you are going to get new ideas and new impressions, and you're going to develop new skills and new abilities. Okay.

Here's a third example. Let's say your problem is a feeling of anxiety. You don't want to feel it.

You don't like to feel it. You experience it a lot and you don't want to. A lot of times when people are up against anxiety, they put their brain to work trying to solve this problem.

How can I make sure I don't feel this? How can I get away from this feeling of chronic anxiety? And what I want to offer to you is that's actually a low quality problem to try to be solving. If you put all of your resources there and you tell your brain, this is the problem. We need to not feel this.

Ultimately, that's going to yield low quality results for you in terms of becoming, because if you're trying to avoid that emotion, then you are going to limit your ability to develop skills and resilience and capacity. What you can do instead is shift how you're thinking about the problem. Tell your brain, no, no, no.

We're not trying to avoid the feeling of anxiety. That's just an emotion. It's just a chemical vibration in my body.

I meant to feel all the emotions in this life. If you want a higher quality problem to solve, you can ask a question like, how can I get better at feeling anxiety and not running from it? How can I get better at accepting anxiety as part of my life so that I can lean into living and develop resilience and capacity to be able to do things that feel a little bit overwhelming and scary to me now, but that won't as I grow and develop. Do you see how that works? Now you have a high quality problem.

If you are focusing, instead of trying to avoid feeling a negative emotion, and you're focusing instead on getting better at feeling that emotion, all sorts of new ideas and resources are going to start coming into your life. And you will end up with a high quality result of developing wisdom and skills and resilience and capacity. Okay.

So those are just some thoughts about problems. I want to encourage you to notice whether you're approaching your problem as a victim or whether you're approaching it as a hero. And you'll find that through solving problems, you will grow in wisdom and in capacity in an ability in ways you never even thought were possible.

Your problems are a gift. They are your curriculum. They are the tool that will help you become the person you are meant to be.

All right, my friend, go out and collect some high quality problems that stretch you, shape you and make you stronger. See if you can start dropping the, how can I avoid this mindset and try on and okay, here we go. I'm ready to become someone new by facing this.

See if you can find one low quality problem this week that you've been trying to solve and decide to either release it or redefine it. I'm currently accepting applications for my one-on-one coaching program that starts in January. It's called Renew Your Mind.

And if you're ready to dive deeper into really applying to your own life, what you're learning here on the podcast, you'll love this 12 week experience with me. Learn more at emilyrickscoaching.com/apply. Act now, get things queued up before Christmas, and then relax and we'll start sessions in January.