What Would Life Feel Like If Nothing Was A Problem?

Please note: This may contain explicit language. What makes us suffer? What catapults us from a perfectly fine moment of contentment or happiness or satisfaction into sadness, anger, frustration...suffering? Join Tiffany as this episode explores just that, the moments of friction between how life is and how we want it to be and invites the curiosity: "what would this moment feel like if I didn't see it as a problem?"

Transcript

Wake the Fuck Up,

The podcast that mingles mindfulness,

Buddhism,

Brain science,

Evolutionary biology,

And real authentic human experience.

Welcome to Wake the Fuck Up.

Hello and welcome to this episode of Wake the Fuck Up.

My name is Tiffany Andre Smires and I am your host.

And I'm so happy you chose to be here with me today.

Today's episode is all about our problem mindset.

Maybe we'll call it a problem label.

And I wanted to talk about this because I think this is something that I experience all the time as an unconscious label that my mind puts on certain experiences that show up.

You know,

You can imagine moving through your day and everything feels good and then something happens and all of a sudden I'm in fix it mode or get rid of it mode or oh my god I just need to take a couple breaths so I can make myself feel better about this.

And I think underlying this need to change whatever's happening in the moment is the idea that whatever is happening is a problem.

Right?

And I think we have the capacity in a really raw and kind of profound way to change the experience just by softening the mindset that what's happening is not okay.

So I think this is kind of a conundrum.

The idea that we want our life in any given moment to be different than it is inherently means we're viewing it as a problem.

Right?

If we need it to change in order for us to be okay,

Then that means we are in the state of not liking what's happening,

Of rejecting it in some way,

And inside of that rejection is what I'm suggesting is this mentality of problemhood.

And so it can be a conundrum or a bit confusing to play with the idea of dropping the problem mindset as a way to change our experience of the experience.

I think we're getting a little bit textural here.

And I want to offer,

This is something that I think my grandmother is really responsible for helping me understand is when we're striving or seeking for something to be a certain way,

It's a little fucked up that basically what it means is we're standing exactly in our way of being able to have what we want.

And so what I think is kind of truthful example of this is let's say all of a sudden I snap and wake up to myself in a moment of discomfort or suffering.

And I say to myself,

Okay,

I'm going to do two to five minutes of straw breathing to make myself feel better.

It's not okay that I'm feeling this way.

So I'm going to breathe and that will make me feel better.

Oftentimes what happens is even though I use a breathing technique that is really profound,

I'm probably not going to feel better.

And why is that?

In my experience,

It's because my mind is focused on confirming the bias that I'm not okay and it doesn't allow me to actually relax into the experience of just being with my breath.

Now let's take the exact same scenario and I find myself in a moment of stress and I say,

Oh my dear,

Let's just pause for a moment and breathe.

You deserve this rest and respite.

With no need of how I feel on the other side of this gift I'm giving myself,

I'm just going to give myself a gift of two to five minutes of strawberry thing.

What tends to happen is that on the other side,

I feel more relaxed,

More at ease,

More in a space of openheartedness and tenderness,

Right?

So sometimes and oftentimes our expectations,

Our need to change what's happening stands in the way of that change happening naturally.

And this is why I said it can be a conundrum.

It's a little bit confusing.

But this is basically what I'm suggesting with this idea of the problem mentality is it is the idea that what's happening in a moment is a problem that almost is the concept that stands directly in our way of allowing the experience itself to change in somewhat of a natural way out of suffering and into that sense of okayness,

Right?

And so maybe I can offer an example here.

Let's say I'm going about my day and all of a sudden I get an email and the email says something that means I immediately have to stop what I'm doing.

I have to give my attention to this email and there is an actual problem I need to solve,

Right?

Let's say there's a series of tasks that I have to undertake in order to solve this problem.

There is the quote unquote problem at hand,

But then on top of that is my feeling of frustration that I don't want to have to be doing it.

And that's where the problem mentality lies.

And so I've actually literally had this experience many times where I've recognized that problem mentality and as soon as I see it,

We have the capacity to say to ourselves,

Okay,

Well,

I'm going to treat this like this isn't a problem,

Right?

It inherently is not a problem.

It is inherently just what's happening,

Right?

And what we really want is to be happy and to enjoy the moments that we're experiencing.

And I think the problem mentality comes from believing that whatever is in front of us is inherently going to keep us from being happy.

And the incredible thing is that when we drop the problem mentality and in a new way kind of say,

Well,

I'm cool with this.

Like if this is what's here,

I'm down to be present to this and give it my full attention and see how it feels.

Oftentimes what happens is I tend to enjoy whatever experience it is.

I'll give you a real world example that even as I reflect on it,

I feel like it's kind of gross.

One day over the summer,

I was weeding my garden.

And because I live in Atlanta and it tends to get really hot over the summer,

I have to admit that I let the weeding go a little bit too long.

And I had about three to four hours of work that needed to be done in order to actually get my garden cleaned out.

So I was probably about a half hour in.

I'm sweating.

It's hot.

And I start to notice lots of gnats flying around me and landing on my skin.

My skin that's already a little moist.

I kind of hate that word from being sweaty.

And now there's this feeling of lots of little bugs landing on me.

And immediately my problem label kicked in.

I didn't like it.

It didn't feel good.

And I wanted to get rid of it.

What I recognized in the moment,

This moment of waking up to what was really happening,

Was I was in a state of rejection.

And in that state of rejection,

I disliked what was happening way more than I just disliked having the feeling of gnats on me.

And I also recognized I'm like 30 minutes into three or four hours of work.

Do I really want to spend the next two and a half to three and a half hours hating every moment of what I'm doing?

No,

I kind of don't.

So the curiosity arose,

Like,

How do I change this experience?

And this is where that piece of recognizing that if we're trying to rid ourselves of the experience,

If we're trying to change it in a way that we need the outcome to look a particular way,

We're going to tend to stand in our way of actually getting there.

I maybe will say got lucky in this instance,

Or maybe I'll give myself a pat on the heart or a pat on the back to say,

I feel like this moment is a reflection of my moments of practice.

It's why I encourage meditation.

Because these moments of naturally arising mindfulness where we do have the capacity to change our experience,

To change our minds in order to change our experiences.

And maybe this is kind of the caveat,

Right?

It's not that we need the outer world to change,

But when we're willing to change our mind,

The outer world can stay the same.

And the experience,

How we feel about what's happening changes.

But if we want the what's happening to change,

Then our experience of it,

How we feel about it tends to stay the same.

So in this moment of noticing how much I was absolutely hating the feeling of having naps on me,

I got curious about what it might look like to drop this as a problem.

And in that curiosity,

It arose how interesting my body is made up of the exact same things that a nap's body are made of.

My body is made up of the same natural composition of minerals,

Nutrients,

And elements that are made up of the earth,

The same things that nats are made of.

And all of this organic stuff is just coming in contact with other organic stuff.

What if I thought about myself like a tree?

Would a tree be bothered by bugs landing on it?

No.

So how might I play with the concept of being one with nature,

A part of nature,

Instead of seeing myself as separate and negatively impacted by nature contacting me?

In fact,

What's really different between a gnat landing on me and the feeling of a blade of grass brushing against my skin?

So as you just took a dip into my whirlwind of consciousness,

Hopefully you were able to see that out of the willingness to drop the problem mentality came a lot of curiosity.

And what that opened the door for was dropping my concept of the feeling of a gnat being on me,

Being gross or nasty,

And into the invitation of what does that actually feel like?

And the radical thing that kind of happened is that one of my favorite feelings in the world is having my back rubbed.

My mom used to do this for me when I was young,

And my sweet wife still does it for me now.

And what I mean by back rub is not like massage,

But like back tickles.

Like I love having somebody just run their fingers over my back.

And in the moment that I dropped my problem mentality with these gnats,

I recognized that having them all over my skin was kind of like having my back rubbed.

It was this sense of a little bit of tickling.

And if I could pause the immediate reactivity of my mind to say bad,

Gross,

Bad,

Gross,

Get rid of that,

Swat it away,

And instead absorb the entirety of the experience,

It actually felt really nice to have all of that alive body sensation.

Now maybe you're sitting on the other side listening to this going,

You are an absolute weirdo.

Gnats are gross,

And I'm uninterested.

And if that's the case,

Hopefully you can put yourself into a different scenario.

Maybe an interpersonal experience where let's say you're sharing a space with another human being,

And that human being is annoyed or agitated with you.

And we tend in these moments to when someone is expressing anger at us or hurt or even resentment to want to push that away or get rid of it.

We want to justify ourselves and tell them why they're wrong for feeling the way they're feeling.

And I think even this comes from the sense that it's a problem for that person to feel the way they're feeling.

And in that,

We need to fix it.

We need to resolve it.

We need to make it go away.

I have certainly experienced this in my relationships with my family,

With my friends,

With my loved ones where if I know they are upset with me in any way,

My natural inclination is to want to fix it and to make it go away or even to be upset with them for feeling the way they're feeling.

If we can catch ourselves in these moments of friction,

In these moments where we don't like what's happening,

Where something quote unquote is a problem,

And we can simply say to ourselves,

How would I feel about this if I didn't think this was a problem?

What I find,

Especially in interpersonal relationships with other people,

Is that my heart immediately softens.

There's a sense of being willing to be with the other person's pain and suffering,

An openness to a natural outflowing of compassion.

And the cool thing about this is that feels good,

You guys.

We can think about what it feels like to be in our own experiences of suffering,

And it's painful.

It hurts.

And it hurts to know that we've hurt someone else,

Or it hurts to know that we don't like what's happening.

It just hurts to suffer.

But if you can think about what it feels like to hold someone you love when they're hurting,

That feels a lot like love.

And so in a moment where somebody's angry at you and you're angry or hurt with them for feeling the way they're feeling,

What happens when we say,

This isn't a problem.

I can be with this,

Is it's literally like welcoming ourselves to opening our arms and holding our suffering and their suffering with love.

And that feels a lot like love.

It's soft.

It's tender.

And it's counterintuitive that when we feel angry at someone else,

The antidote to that anger is to not see what's happening as a problem and to be willing to love.

But if we can start with not needing to even do that for the other person,

But do it for ourselves,

It hurts to hurt.

But man,

It feels amazing to be in love.

And I think a lot of times the hurt that we feel comes from this idea that what we're experiencing is a problem.

It's not okay.

And so I'll invite you as we end our time together to get really curious in your moments of suffering.

If you find yourself there naturally,

If you wake up to what's happening and go,

Man,

This sucks.

I don't like this at all.

Ask yourself,

What am I seeing as the problem?

And what might it be like to have this moment not be a problem at all?

I would love to hear your explorations and curiosities,

What comes naturally out of your own experience in your life.

May you wake up radically to the fact that every moment is full of beauty and that neither you nor your life are ever a problem.

Thank you so much for being here.

I look forward to seeing you next time.

Reviews

Gorgeously irreverent. What a way to reverse a paradigm. Thank you.

Thank you. I understand. Not sure it will make a difference l, but I've given myself to the end of the year- so I'll ask/answer those questions, and try some things, like seeing how Meetup.com feels. Not the activities based around drinking.

Great way to try and reframe an experience. I’ll give it a try!

Accepting what is when you don’t want it is challenging. Something to work on. 🙏

Awesome one of the best things I’ve listened to on insight timer.