We are all living in a world full of problems.
As a result, we have developed a problem-solving mindset or mentality, naively believing that by solving others' problems, we could also solve our own.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
First of all, why are we beset by problems of all kinds -- health, relationships, money, politics, and careers problems, among many others? It is because we are living in a complex world with complicated people and difficult circumstances.
Where do these problems come from? They all come from our minds, which process our experiences, and they become our memories stored in our subconscious minds.
These memories affect how we presently think, act, and react.
We erroneously believe that we make our own choices and decisions; the fact of the matter is that our past memories control and direct, to a great extent, our conscious minds when we make our everyday life choices and decisions.
The explanation is that memories, both good and bad ones, become our emotions, which ultimately create or become our problems -- even pleasant memories from the past.
But how do pleasant memories cause us problems? To illustrate, if you have success in accomplishing something, the pleasant experience satisfies your ego, and that pleasant memory subconsciously makes you want to repeat your success in the future.
That creates anticipation, and the need for more effort to guarantee the reality of that outcome in the future.
The process may generate stress, frustration, and even disappointment -- the sources of more problems further down the road.
If you look more deeply, the root cause of your problems is your ego, which you want to satisfy and protect; Without the ego, there would be no expectation, and no extra effort required to sustain that ego created by your memories, and, accordingly, there would be no stress.
Therefore, you or your ego is the cause of all your problems, and you are 100 percent responsible for them.
Let go the ego.
In the process of solving our problems, we often strive to solve others' problems as well, thinking that solving theirs may also be instrumental in solving ours as well, because we erroneously believe that their problems may partly be responsible for ours too.
Again, that does not work.
Why not? It is because they, too, are 100 percent responsible for their own problems, just as we are responsible for ours.
To illustrate, the Russians tried to solve the Ukrainians' problems through military intervention, while the Americans strove to solve the Russians' with sanctions; In the process, not only new problems are created, but also the original ones remain unsolved.
Solving others' problems is tantamount to "controlling" which never works in real life.
To illustrate, if a stranger says something provocative to you, you become angry; your anger is your problem, not the stranger's.
You cannot "control" what the stranger says; your reaction may not even "stop" the provocation.
So don't attempt to solve someone else's problems (the stranger might have mental issues); solve your own first, such as reacting negatively to the provocation or controlling your anger.
So, how do you solve your own problems without striving to solve others', or how do you stop thinking that others' problems have become yours? The answer is "awareness" or "mindfulness.
" The basic problem is that we "allow" the thoughts of a past memory from our subconscious minds to tell us what to say, what to do, and how to react.
In other words, our past memories unconsciously control our conscious minds.
and we do nothing to stop that.
So, when the stranger in the above illustration says something we "think" is provocative because we might have encountered similar experiences before, we act accordingly to what we did before or what our past memories tell us.
If we had no past memories of similar incidents, we would have no anger.
We are all judgmental; our minds remember what we did before and our action or reaction anticipates the expected outcome.
But once we become "aware" that it was no more than a memory, and not a reality, we might think differently with different perspective.
Problem-solving is about "awareness" -- what exactly is the problem? how serious is it? where does it come from? is there a solution (some problems have no solutions because they are beyond our control)? what is the solution to it? "Awareness" or "mindfulness" lets us understand better our own problems as well as those of others but without attempting to solve them ourselves.
For the sake of illustration, the aggressive stranger mentioned above might have had a bad-hair day under extreme stress (although that might not be a valid excuse for the aggressive behavior towards you); your "awareness" of your lack of information might change your reaction.
The bottom line: very often we create our own problems through our experiences, our mental interpretations of those experiences that have become our memories to continue to haunt us.
Being in the present may go a long way to helping us have clarity of mind towards our problems without striving to solve those of others.
Problem-solving may not solve problems.