Ep #168: You Are Not Your Problems

Are you infatuated with your problems, or are you in love with your life? Are you in love with your creativity? Are you in love with creating your future? If you feel like you are always working, always on some kind of hamster wheel where there’s a problem that you need to solve before you arrive – whether it is money or being good enough in your creative work, finishing, whether it’s weight, whether it’s relationships, and it’s the same thing over and over again and your energy is so taken up by it that you don’t actually have much for the life that you have, much less the life that you would love to have – then today’s episode is for you.

You are listening to The Art School Podcast; a show for artists and creatives who want to become the next greatest version of themselves. Learn how to cultivate an extraordinary way of being and take the mystery out of making money, and the struggle out of making art. Here is your host, master certified life coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Art School Podcast. So, here is another episode that I am recording for you weeks in advance. There is a part of me that is always a little concerned that I’m going to miss out on some sort of zeitgeist and not tap into the collective. But that’s silly because the collective is outside of time and space. So, this will find you when you need it. I’m going to trust that.

And I’m also going to trust that you will love and appreciate this short and sweet – but packs a powerful punch – episode because this is a bit of wisdom that has helped so many of my clients release a lot of unnecessary baggage and free up creative energy to actually love their life. And not only that, but more powerfully create results.

So, this is a place where I’ll do what I call a creativity audit, which is partly technical, but a lot of it is intuitive, that I’ll do with a client if they’re working and they’re doing things, they’re taking action in their life, but their results aren’t showing it.

So, I’ll go back upstream and look for, okay, where are these actions not being fueled by the appropriate energy? Whether in their thought process, their emotions, because that’s what’s driving and creating the result.

So, I’ll preface this conversation by sharing a quote that I’ve shared here before and share often from Albert Einstein that, “You cannot solve a problem from the same level of consciousness or thinking that created it.” And so, I want to extrapolate from that and say, often, even our attention on the problem is keeping us from the thousands of other possibilities that exist from our life.

Our attention, our energy is so invested and wrapped up in the problem that that’s what our life force is feeding. So, we’re thinking, “I have this problem I need to solve.” And those of you that are mindset ninjas out there can follow along with me here. In the thought model process, if you are thinking, “There is a problem that I need to solve. I need to solve this problem because it’s what’s keeping me between myself and my actualized self, between myself and my potential, between myself and my dream.”

But if our thoughts are creative, and they are, then it follows, when I am thinking a thought, “I have this problem I need to solve,” what that thought actually creates in your result line, the only thing that thought can create is a need to solve a problem. The only thing the thought, “I have this problem I need to solve,” the only thing that can create are more problems, the experience of problems that always need to be solved.

Now, I have nothing against problem-solving skills or analytical skills. But that is only one aspect, one power, one skillset available to our human brains. We also have the ability to think, to dream, to imagine, to allow ideas to come through us, to innovate in so many other ways. And there’s way too much emphasis on the problem solving, especially when you know, again, that the thinking creates the result.

So, if you’re thinking, “I have to solve this problem, or I have a problem I need to solve,” you’re going to be caught in this sphere, in this self-fulfilling endless loop of, “I’ve got a problem to solve. I’ve got a problem to solve. I’ve got a problem to solve.” And then people get addicted to that cycle. And then also because what we give our attention and our focus to is what we give our energy to, and anything you give energy to feeds it, grows it, gives it life force. So, we simply grow a paradigm where our lives are consumed with problems that need our attention, all of it imminently, urgently, first, and need to be solved before we can move on.

But that never comes because we can’t escape that loop, because that is, if it were a software program, it is just a self-contained loop. A problem that needs to be solved creates a result where there are more problems that need to be solved.

And for those of you out there who are just finding me and are new to thought work and the fact that your thoughts and your feelings are creative, hang with me, check out many other episodes, check out other things that I offer, other ways of working with me, dogear this and come back. This one, this is a gamechanger.

The other thing is that our society often glorifies this sort of obsession with problem-solving loops. And there are billion-dollar industries that also feed this obsession, diet culture, for instance. Let’s tell people that their bodies and their weight are a problem, and how much energy and obsession and time gets trapped in that loop? How much life force and mental process, and not to mention resources, financial resources – that’s why it’s a billion-dollar industry – get poured into that, “Oh, your body is a problem that you need to solve for. Your weight is a problem that you constantly need to be vigilant and solve for.

And then, we just stay in that loop. And I have seen incredible transformations take place for clients once they saw this. Oftentimes, all they needed was just to see it, see it out in front of them, rather than this – I think of it as a sphere. And if it’s like a hamster wheel, like a ball that a hamster runs on, but it goes nowhere. But they can take it out of their brain and see it out in front of them and see it.

Another analogy I use is it’s like it’s this tangled barbed wire ball that we desperately try to unravel and it makes our hands bloody and it’s painful, but it’s like we can’t put it down, “Because if I could just unravel it, it would no longer be painful.” But if we can do this work – coaching helps with this immensely because it’s hard to see it when you’re in it.

To take this ball of barbed wire out of your mind, take that hamster sphere out of your mind, see it out in front of you, and realize you can drop it. You can drop it. you can left swipe it.

And then, you might be able to do that in an instant and you feel this flood of relief and this energy, all of this flood of energy comes back to you, that’s all of the energy that you had been investing, literally all of the energy that you had been giving to the problem which grows it and feeds it, one you let it go, all of that energy comes back to you. And then, guess what? You’re no longer so exhausted.

Guess what? You now have that energy available for other things. You have that energy available for actually loving and living your life. You have that energy available that’s no longer invested in a survival, problem-solving loop. That energy comes back and it gets to be creative energy that feeds your creative state, that is generative, that you can use, again, to live a life you love, create a life you love, create work that you love.

Other problems, fears, endless loops, barbed wire balls that we carry around are, “I need to figure out…” whatever X, Y, and Z is. Well, what is life for you after figuring that out? What energy would come back to you? What if you’re wrong about that? What if you actually don’t need to figure that out?

I see this come up a lot too with money work. People who are like, “I need to figure out my scarcity energy.” No, you can just drop it. Scarcity is even a judgment. It’s not even a reality. You can just drop that and put that down, and instead be like, “I love my life and I love creating money. I love money and money loves me.” There are 1000 other ways to become wealthy, to experience abundance, and there is a way not to. And that is to problem solve.

You might make some strides, but it’s always going to be limited and you’re never going to be free because you’re going to still, on the inside, your mind, your spirit is going to be enmeshed in this relationship where you’re infatuated with you, your identity as a person who has to figure out money. It’s like a hobby almost, that this money problem, it’s not actually what’s going to help make your dreams come true. But it can sort of become, again, like an addiction.

We can be addicted to our problems. We can be addicted to that sort of bait and switch that happens where like, “If I could just figure this out, I’ll have relief and be free.” But nope, it doesn’t happen because, again, if we have a thought, “I have this money situation, this scarcity consciousness that I need to figure out, I need to problem solve for,” that just keeps money as a problem in your life, rather than a joy, rather than a resource, rather than a love, rather than something that supports you and nourishes you and flows.

Another problem sphere, endless loop, barbed wire ball that is very common is the one of, “I need to be good enough.” So, essentially it’s, “Something about me or my work is a problem. And if I can just solve for that, then I’ll have the creative life I want, then I’ll be free, then I’ll be successful, then I will believe in myself.”

So, the key there is to drop the middleman of solving the problem. The key again is to see that loop, see it outside of you, and see it as completely optional, see the problem of not good enough, whether it’s your work, your paintings, your writings, where you currently are, any of it, seeing that belief that something about you is a problem and not good enough, seeing that as optional and something that you have been giving your attention to because we are conditioned to believe that the best thing we can do is give our attention to problem solving. And if we can just solve all the problems, then we’ll be free, and then that’s the promise land.

But in areas like this, what’s actually available for us is to see that whole cluster F, you know what, of a situation that we romance, we get infatuated with, we make it our hobby. We make becoming good enough, we make perfecting our work, perfectionism, or we’ll use words that sound, you know, really responsible and legitimate, like professional, like responsible, like having high standards.

And yet, we’ll know something by its fruit because if our life isn’t actually flourishing, if our work isn’t actually flourishing, if we’re not actually bringing more of ourselves and our creativity into the world, if we’re holding back on our contribution to our own life, if we’re holding back on our own life force and fulfilment, then you know that no matter what pretty words you put on it that sound official, incredible, like high standards, responsible, professional, what have you, then you know that that’s just an empty label and that’s just a distraction and that’s just a way that we lie, a way we keep ourselves from seeing the truth, which is, “I’m embroiled in problem solving energy, but I’m actually continuing to perpetuate the problem,” rather than becoming someone where there’s an absence of this, where this is not a problem at all.

And that, my friends, is what is available to you. So, this brings me to the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to lean in and really work with me, coach with me. You know where I’m going.

What problem-solving loop are you infatuated with? Can you identify where you have a thought, “This is a problem that needs to be solved. I need to solve for this.” And then, can you stand back and see, from that place when you’re thinking that, how do you feel? What do you do?

Can you see how your powerfully creative mind, your powerfully creative thought actually then creates the need for more problem solving, but keeps you running in that hamster wheel, keeps you trapped in that sphere? And can you see how your energy is feeding that? And then, can you just imagine, if you got that real estate in your mind back that you currently give to that problem, if you got the real estate back in your heart, and your energetic capacity back that currently goes to trying to solve for that problem and you could imagine what it is, what life is as a person who doesn’t have that problem, I know your brain’s going to say, “But I have that problem,” because it’s not actually the truth.

That’s the program running that says, “I have a problem.” See that outside of yourself. And all of that energy, all of your life force that has been invested, given, to growing that problem, to keeping it alive, bring that back. And without your attention and life force, that problem will wither without that attention, that neural pathway in your brain, will begin to wither and die. And all of that energy instead can come back and be channeled into living a life you love right now, into being powerfully creative right now.

You know, in the last couple episodes, I referenced the Walt Whitman quote, “I was simmering, simmering, simmering and Emerson brought me to a boil.” I thought of this analogy too of, if our energy, part of it goes to boiling the water, but then part of it is just lost to things that never accomplish the boiling of the water, we’re never going to come to a boil. So, having all of that energy come back, boiling the water is natural. It just happens.

I asked a question two episodes ago that I wanted to bring back here, which is, what would it be like if nothing stood in the way of all the things you want to do? And one of the ways that we keep ourselves stuck or we hold back is when we give energy to problems, it is we are intentionally giving energy to things in our way. And when we learn that it is available to us to no longer give those things energy, then those things no longer are in our way.

Again, I know some of you listening out there have done a lot of coaching, are coaches yourself, are pretty far along on your awareness journey, your thought work journey and will run with this. And for those of you who are like, “Wait, huh? That makes no sense…” I’m excited for you because there is something coming that will blow your mind when you really get what I am saying.

So, if again, this is a more advanced episode and if you’re like, “Wait, I’m not keeping up,” with how you can just, there’s a problem and you can just no longer give it energy, and then all of a sudden there’s no problem, there is practice to it. There is nuance. There is awareness. There is definitely though a skillset and a process that is available for all of us to require – I said require. I think that’s because my next thought was, it should be required, this skillset, this should be taught, this should be required in schools, teaching us that we have the ability to have mastery, to have such higher awareness over our thoughts, over our feelings, and understanding the causal relationship.

We have our thoughts, our feelings, our energy, our emotions that drives, that fuels our action, and that creates our result. And so, if we could see the problems in our world that persist and that we just can’t seem to get out of and we really embraced what I’m saying here abut this causal connection, which is not just something I’m saying, but there is neuroscience to back this up. There are thousands of years of wisdom traditions.

And this is such an exciting time to be alive. We have all of this information around us about how to tap into the potential of our human mind, how to tap into the potential of being human, of the human spirit. But it all just remains information if we stay passive. It all just remains information if we stop at the places where we’re like, “That sounds whack, I don’t know about that,” and we do an eye roll and walk away.

Don’t do that. And if you’re listening here, I guess you are probably not somebody that would do that. Look at this. Look at this human mind as having this infinite potential and that you can tap into it. You can have mastery over all of this energy that’s available to us, through our thoughts, this creative energy, through our emotions by learning how to shift your awareness, by learning, “I believe utterly mind-blowing things like, this feels like a eureka to me. Every time I remember this, oh yeah, if I have a thought that I have a problem and I’m stuck in problem solving, it’s because I’m at a level of consciousness where I’m continuing to feed the problem.”

I think of it as two spheres. I draw the spheres, again, from my clients, like one is the smaller hamster wheel sphere. It starts off looking like the world. It just feels like, this is the way the world is. But then, I draw for them, in the upper right-hand corner, this big, glorious sphere of light that’s like the sun, that dwarfs this tiny little sphere, and leaping to that, that next level of consciousness is what is available to us. And at that level of consciousness, at that level of creativity, at that level of thinking, the problem, you’re like, “What problem? What problem?”

So, play with this in so many ways. Use your own imagination. Think like, is this a problem Sara Blakely has? Is this a problem Picasso had? Is this a problem Andrew Lloyd Webber had? Is this a problem Beyoncé has? And then, they are human. Allow yourself to tap into that energy. Use your imagination.

Or if those are too big of leaps, practice using bridge thoughts, intermediate thoughts like, “Is it possible? Is there even 1% of a chance that it’s possible that I’m wrong about this being a problem?” enter in this angle.

For instance, “If I weren’t always consumed with trying to solve for my money problem, what would be different?” Another way of approaching it is thinking of a problem you don’t want to have. Let’s say you don’t want to have a weight problem, you don’t want to have a money problem. You don’t want to have work that you think is not good enough; creative work, artwork, coaching work, writing.

So, use your imagination. Stop problem solving for a moment, for more than a moment. String together many moments. Go for a long walk. Journal. Meditate. Talk about this. Contemplate, think about it. What would it be like to be a person for whom this is just not a problem? This is just a nonevent. Let yourself saturate in that energy. Let your body attune to it. Let your central nervous system attune to it. Let it start to change your cells in the fabric of your being.

Read about epigenetics. Be inspired by that. Think about someone you know for whom this isn’t a problem. Because for you it seems like, “Oh my god, this is such a truth, this has to be a problem.” But then think of someone for whom they never think about it, it’s a nonevent, they don’t struggle with it. They just go about it. It just seems to work out for them. It’s because they’re not actively problem solving for it, right?

So, use them as sort of like a tricycle, as like training wheels, piggyback on what you think must be their mindset and their lack of attention, their complete noninterest or maybe even nonknowledge that it’s a problem.

Think of children who are so creative and then way too often then get to school at a certain point and, all of a sudden, decide that their creative work is not good enough. What? That is total conditioning from the outside in. What if you could raise children in some sort of healthy, selective vacuum where they were never exposed to the thought that they weren’t creative geniuses.

Imagine if you had never been exposed to that. Do not underestimate the power of your mind, of your thoughts. Think about this as the most exciting thing you’ve heard in a long time, like I’m telling you that it is. If you think something is a problem, you absolutely give life force to it. You take action in a way, you feel in a way that then creates for you the result of always needing to solve that problem.

But there is a way out. You take it out of your awareness. You look at it. You look at it objectively, all sorts of modalities for doing this. Get a coach, be in a group. Get an awesome therapist who does this work too, who doesn’t go back and rehash all your problems and keep you embroiled in it. There’s a place for that, but that’s not how you do this particular work.

Do what you can to bring your energy back. Do what you can to let go of the places where you are infatuated with your problems, where solving them is like your job, almost, and it’s your job to be good enough, to be thin enough, to be whatever before you can actually be in love with your life and just be the creative genius, heart and soul on fire that you are. That is what is available to you.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. And thank you so much for helping me reach my goal of a million downloads. Okay, not yet. But for a moment, I wanted to give you a shot of practicing that level of consciousness. For me, it would feel like magic. It would feel like connecting collectively. It would feel like just so much damn fun.

And so, coming from that place, it’s for sure really easy to take a goal and turn it into a problem. But instead, what we can do, what we can be examples of are being in love with our dream and inviting in all sorts of ways for other people to join us in that energy, in that powerful magnetic energy of being someone who is alive with a vision and in love with life and in love with the creative process and with sharing it.

And I am in love with sharing this process with all of you. Thank you so much for being here. If you’d like to learn more about my work, you can go to www.leahcb.com. You can sign up for my newsletter. And I would love to connect with you on Instagram. My handle is @leahcb1.

To close today, I wanted to also offer just a shot, an infusion of what is possible. This is something, this concept, when people grab it, when they really – when I’m able to tap into their secret language so that they get it, this is something where I see places where people have been for years thinking, “Oh, my money is a problem,” or, “My weight is a problem. My not-good-enoughness, my intellect is a problem.” And we’ve really been able to create wiggle room around that, take it out of them so it’s actually no longer part of their identity, but they can see it as this cluster of beliefs and conditionings outside of themselves that they’ve just given so much energy and attention and life force to, that it began to feel like who they are.

Your problems, they’re not even yours, problems you think are yours, that’s not who you are. You are so much greater, immensely, infinitely greater. It’s like Mount Everest compared to a molehill.

Remember who you are. Remember who you are not. You are not your problems. Starve them of your potent, powerful, creative energy, soul, and life force, and they are nothing. They cease to exist and then you have all of those aspects of yourself, all of that energy back for you to integrate. That is to make whole again, that is to heal, that is to be in integrity. So, coming at it from another level, when we are thinking we are our problems, that’s who we are, we are out of integrity. And that’s why it feels, why life feels out of whack to us. That’s why we feel out of whack.

That’s not who you are. You are not your problems. Allow all of that energy, allow yourself to come back to you. Allow yourself that fullness, that wholeness, and allow yourself that holiness. And watch out, world because look at what you’re going to create from that place.

Have an awesome week, everyone. And I look forward to talking with you next time.