🤔A. Why Some Problem Appears “Core Problems” of Life on Which the Life Hangs?
1. Breakup:– One feels rejected. What’s the point of even living if I am rejected by the one closest to me?
2. Job Loss:– How can I manage EMIs? Children’s education fees? Parent’s medicine? What will people say?
3. Coronary Artery Blockage:– My life is at threat because of my heart’s blockage. I will die if I don’t put a balloon in the arteries.
4. Childlessness:- Everyone asks when will you have a baby. How to answer? Let’s have a test tube baby. Once we have a baby all problems will be solved.
5. Divorce:- I can’t tolerate this person anymore. Once we have a divorce, all problems will be solved.
6. Once I raise $100M all business problems will be solved.
How do life situations appear as pervasive problems?
If you closely read some of the above common life problems that people think are holding their life back, somehow solving those problems will lead to a better life. This is more due to the perceived thought that people and relatives around us will not be happy with our current life situation, which puts us in sustained negative feelings. The negative feelings then create a persistent chain of thoughts. We start living in imagination, planning, scheming, dealing with this negative feeling, and slowly these problems engulf us into them. We get so struck by these problems that life appears meaningless without solving them.
In reality, all the above scenarios are simply some situations in life. Life will always have hard situations, as life itself is navigating through the hard situations to {Survive, Thrive, and Reproduce}. A problem is one that threatens a severe obstacle to the basic needs of life, ie {survive, thrive, and reproduce}. When you observe the above situations closely, they all are to some extent related to any of these three.
Any situation in life that presents an obstacle to Survival, Thriving, or Reproduction, which we fail to overcome easily appears like a pervasive problem of life, on which the very life is dependent on;
📗B. Problems Come in Life Due to Life’s Anomalies, No Problem Causes Anomalies in Life
1. Observe the following pattern in thinking.
I have problem P, if I do solution S, then my Life Problem will be solved.
Interestingly enough, the over-imagination, over-thinking, and over-analyzing of a situation in life makes that situation into a big problem, and continuing to think and analyze the problem then makes us live around the problem, and sustained living around a problem makes us feel like the problem itself is our life. Because we have been all along living with a problem, rather than taking baby steps to solve the problem, we get stuck inside the problem and then we imagine that there must be some magic solutions for life.
📝2. Background Knowledge:–
99% of species ever lived on the planet is extinct. The fact you are still alive is proof of your good life, with or without the problem.
💡3. Problems are simply a language of your subconscious brain, and life to communicate with you it’s painful and malfunctioning.
If you are pinched, you will scream. You are not aware that you are screaming. People communicate in English, Hindi, French, Art, Music, and mind with pain and pleasure. Same way problems are the pain signals from subconscious that makes you aware of the problems.
Now that we understood that we all have a life situation that appears miserable, and that appears to take away our life due to overthinking and over-imagination, let us solve this situation, rather than trying to find a magic solution to the problems.
✍️C. (Assessment) Write Causes
The theory of blame converts a life situation into a life-death problem
💡
“When people blame you for an adverse outcome, your mind gets aggressive. But when you blame others for an adverse outcome, your brain gets angry, because by blaming others, you remove yourself from needing to address the reasons due to which an outcome became unfavourable”
We already have seen that a life situation becomes a life problem due to over-imagination. This over-imagination is due to constant negative thoughts and feelings. This chain of negative feelings is more due to what people would say and think about a situation, rather than the situation itself.
Even before we try to solve the problem, or address the situation, we want to free ourselves from the negative feelings of the situation.
Because there is no getting rid of the negative feelings without solving the people’s problem, we either resort to blaming people or think of how to brush off any possibility of people blaming us.
A blame is an alloplastic defense mechanism, by means of which we brush of our accountability about a situation and put the responsibility about an unfavourable life situation into something else or someone else.
But because the negative feelings are our subconscious brain’s message to our aware brain to do something about the situation, getting rid of the situation itself denies the pain that the subconscious is feeling, and therefore we can not take action, as we consider that the situation or the problem is due to someone else or something else.
And therefore, if we are to detach the life from the situation that appears like a life-death problem, we need to accept the situation and stop others from blaming us, and stop ourselves from blaming others;
⚙️So
1. Prevent people from blaming you.
2. Stop yourself from blaming others.
Write the 10 ways you caused the problem. Call them Causes.
Case Study: Former Indian Cricket Team Skipper Sourav Ganguly Detached Indian Cricket with the Problem of Not Winning Away Test Match Series
Indian cricket team has been historically considered as tigers in their home ground. This is because India has produced great spin-bowling talents like Erapalli Prasanna, Chandrashekhar, and Anil Kumble.
When a test match was played in India, India prepared spin pitches which visiting teams found hard to deal with. However, as Indian batsmen are too used to getting practice in such pitches and playing their domestic cricket on such pitches, they would find it hard to cope-up with the fast bowling and fast foreign pitches. There was a patch of time for almost 10 years when India did not win even a single foreign test match, leaving apart the series.
Earlier whenever India went to play an away series, they were already under pressure by the press and media of that country that “Visiting team will lose as they are home tigers”.
Indian cricket was considered as Home-Winning cricket team. You see in every field people make a perception and tell you who you are. Sourav Ganguly took charge of the Indian cricket team in 1999 after many star players of the team were banned due to match-fixing scandals and India’s pathetic Australian tour under the captainship of Sachin Tendulkar who refused to remain as a captain as it affected his batsmanship.
Sourav Ganguly detached the problem of “No Away Test Match Win” from Indian cricket and decided that the away test match win will require three fast bowlers. He started to incorporate three fast bowlers in the test team of four bowlers, where India traditionally played 2-3 spinners. This was a baby step that wouldn’t result in any immediate test victories outside, as there were several other problems including a batsman’s inability to play on the fast pitches. But as India started playing more fast bowlers, the batsmen also got confident and India started performing well outside. India went on to win not only test matches but also test series outside by this small step of detatching a problem from the life.
Just as how Indian cricketers would be under tremendous pressure due to other people’s perception of them as failures on foreign soil, they would lose matches psychologically much before they actually lost the match. This is the same pattern that you will observe in your life too.
Some tough situations in life, some unfavorable outcomes, and people would already mark you as a failure, which would put you under pressure and you will aggressively try to prove people wrong. In that quest, your focus will be people, not your performance or the problem.
👨🏫D. Causes Existed Long Before the Problem
Examples:-(Refer to the first six use cases at the top of the article)
1. You were possessive and clingy long before the breakup.
2. You were more focussed on EMI and salary, and not productivity, and upskilling long before layoff.
3. You were in a depression, long before CAD.
4. You had occasional intercourse but no intimacy, long before you realized childishness is a problem.
5. You were never prepared for the marriage in the first place(Daddy love you know?)
6. You never did a profitable business in life ever.
Accept & Acknowledge that the situations are due to you
It may be something else, but if you honestly analyze your life, you will surely find the exact patterns in your life(lifestyle, beliefs, thoughts, behaviors, insecurities) that led to the problem you are currently in, the current situation did not suddenly appeared, and they certainly did not happen due to others.
What you are doing with the acceptance is you are removing the most important two things that are used to brush off the accountability. Firstly you eliminate others from blaming you, because now you are accepting the problem and no one else has to blame you. Also, you are not blaming others as you already accepted the patterns that are behind the problems you are facing today.
By taking the accountability of a situation, by accepting and acknowledging that it is in fact your patterns in life that has led to the current situation, you detatch yourself from subconscious negative feelings, thoughts, schemes and plans to blame others.
And even after taking the accountibility, you see, you did not die.
The moment you accept your accountability, for sometimes you will feel a little bad, but not as bad as if you had stayed in your imagination. And you certainly did not die. Because problems are yours, problems are due to you, they are to be solved by you, and there is no role of anyone else in the problem.
Case Study: How Kishore Kumar Solved the Problem of “Incapable of Singing a Classical Song”
Indian legendary playback singer Kishore Kumar was well trained in classical music, but he was considered to be suited for Romantic melodies. The audience and industry created an image that Kishore Kumar can not sing Classical songs, and no such songs were given to them.
In the 1976 Film Mehbooba, R. D. Burman, the music director decided to make Kishore Kumar sing a Song named Mere Naina Sawan Bhadon. It was composed in Sivrajini Raga, one of the most complex classical Raga. Everyone told R. D. Burman that Kishore Kumar is unfit to sing this classical song. The female version of the song was supposed to be sung by the Indian playback nightingale, the late Lata Mangeshkar.
When Panchamda(as RD Burman was fondly called) told Kishore Kumar about his concern and the concerns of others about Kishore Kumar’s inability to sing a classical song, Kishore Kumar offered a solution. He did not try to convince Panchamda that he could sing the song. He detached people’s perception of him being a romantic melody singer and then asked Panchamda to make Lata sing the song first. Kishore Kumar was known as a good imitator. He told Panchamda that once Lata sings the song, he would listen to that and would imitate it. This appeared much more acceptable as Kishore Kumar was not a classical singer but a good imitator.
Lata Mangeshkar first sang the song. Kishore Kumar listened to it for a week and then came to the recording studio and recorded the final song of Mere Naina Sawan Bhado in one take, and needless to say his version overshadowed Lata’s version, even though Lata was perceived as more capable of singing a classical song.
Panchamda had worked with Kishore Kumar for 10 years and knew very well that Kishore Kumar is capable of singing a classical song. However, even he too was put into self-doubt by the people. Even Panchamda went into negative feelings and indecisiveness about the song. However, Kishore Kumar detached the problem, which was merely a perception of people from the problem, and gave us one of the timeless melodies.
In the same way, whenever you are overwhelmed by people, you are required to separate the problem from your life, and also from people’s perception. You focus on the outcome rather than the problem. You work towards the outcome rather than thinking about the problem and don’t try to find an easy escape. Neither Pancham da’s nor Kishore Kumar’s career would have got affected if Mere Naina was sung by others like Mohd. Rafi. But both did not find an easy escape, but rather detached the perception and then delivered the masterpiece.
Your not raising a fund, not being able to do a big deal, or having relationship problems is more of people’s perception of you which has led you to lose belief and faith in yourself. The problem that is amplified by people’s negative perception now appears a reality and life-death problem and you try to escape from it, not necessarily because that will solve the problem, but you want to prove people wrong. You are to focus on the solution and the outcome and neither on people’s perception nor on the problem.
🦵E. Take One Baby Step
After you have written the causes(and you don’t have to be perfect) think of one thing you can do to reduce any of the ten for the next 30 days(not involving others).
Examples of baby steps(Refer to the six sample problems at the beginning of the article)
- Become fitter, and more confident by walking 6km every day. (If you look good, a better partner will take notice of you, and you don’t have to become clingy with the fear of losing the partner, because you are confident yourself)
- Start writing a blog every day about the experience you gained on the job. (When you start writing, people will take notice of you, rather than you having to reach out to people looking for jobs).
- Start sleeping early, and wake up early. Stop using your mobile before sleep. (bettering sleep betters cardiovascular health)
- You and your partner go out for a walk daily and converse about life for 30 minutes(by talking with each other a couple can significantly increase their attachment and attraction to each other. Once attraction increases, intimacy also will increase, which will eventually bring a child into your life in the future).
- Rather than wasting your time in the court-rooms and aggression, start putting more hours into your work, improve your earnings and career(by becoming more successful in your career, by achieving more, you will become more confident and will have fewer insecurities, chances are your partners would want to come back to your life due to your new successful avatar).
- Leave the dream of raising millions of dollars, instead focusing on selling one service that will bring surplus money so that you can run your family with the money. (When you run a profitable business, investors would take notice and would want to take a position by investing money in you).
By writing the steps, committing to the steps, and following the baby steps for 30 days, you redirect your energy and attention back to real life rather than imagination.
Once you cross the 30 days, you will see that you are no more struck and there is all-new energy in you and you are moving ahead in life, confirming that the problems are not really your life. You will also notice that due to the problem, you are doing much better in life.
Now plan another set of baby steps for 30 days for the second cause and the third.
Case Study: How one baby step of one article a day created the Lyfas brand
Lyfas is essentially a platform that has a mobile diagnostic solution that enables a quick diagnosis of various disorders anytime, anywhere from an Android application. Then the data is linked to the self-assessment platform of this website. The data is then linked to the patient’s history and family history. Then the data is correlated to a patient’s vitals and a patient’s pathology test results. Finally, an integrated diagnosis is arrived at that explains the overall health of a patient. Then our team of human experts analyzes the diagnosis and creates a comprehensive lifestyle plan for the patient to recover. Everything is done from the home setup.
In today’s healthcare which is mainly disease and symptom management, Lyfas has solved critical problems like Stammering, Tinnitus, Cancer, Coronary Artery Disease, and Back Pain and we have solved 95% of cases where the patients never had to take any medicines in life anymore.
Even though we have great technology, a robust process, an extraordinary human support system, and exceptional outcomes, our key challenge has been to make people believe in our system. In today’s time where medicine is all about glittering hospitals and expensive tests and medicines, it has been difficult to bring patients and convince them that we will not treat them, but solve their problems. People’s perception is “How come they solve complex problems of life and health which we have not being able to solve even after spending lakhs of rupees for the last ten years.”
Initially, we tried too hard to convince people. Then we completely altered ourselves and became like a traditional medical company with home diagnostics and medicines. Finally, we realize that there is no escape from the perception and you can not solve the problem by finding any magic solution.
We detached the problem from the perception and from the business(our life). We analyzed the reason someone wants to get rid of an illness to have a good life. But even when one is not ill, one has several life challenges that wouldn’t allow people to remain happy even though they become healthy. We realized that everyone wants to grow in life.
That is when we created this Lyfas knowledgebase. We decided to take on one small problem from people’s life and provide deeper meaning and actionable steps to the readers. The more they start seeing benefits in their life, the more they will develop trust for us. Once they trust us, they would also want to get their illness treated and solved by us.
Today our marketing expenditure is zero. Patients are our sales and marketing team. Readers are our ambassadors. Today readers like you subscribe to us, and read us daily with our 7 AM IST daily articles. Readers like you spread our messages, and then readers like you reach out to us with other serious health and life problems.
We took one baby step of one article a day. We have been publishing one article daily in this site and in Linkedin for over four years. Today we are no more worried about people’s perception and we do not blame the system. Today we have taken action that is giving us the results.
You also need to think like the Lyfas team. Rather than trying hard to escape from the problem, trying hard to prove people wrong, or trying hard to blame others and systems, think of one thing that you can do. Take that baby step and become consistent with that step. Over a period of time this consistency is going to give you the dividence in life.
F. Why problems are not really problems?
One of the key theories for you to know is that the brain doesn’t work in two ways. If you are feeling that the current problem is your life’s biggest problem and that solving this will sort your life, then you are living a fantasy.
That’s because
your brain had many times in the past thought solving a certain problem will sort your life, and in the future too it will continue to make you delusional about the problem.
Not that reading this post will make any changes in the brain, but then you will become more aware and know that your problem is dominating your life. The problems are our switches. So the higher priority the problem gets in your life, people will also manipulate you based on them. These are trigger switches.
By simple
Write–>Analyze–>Find Cause–> Plan Recovery–> Take a 30-day action,
you remove your control and trigger switches from people’s hands.
There are no problems, only signs of anomalies.
Case Study Hannibal Was Rome’s Problem and Scipio Solved the Problem by Baby Steps
When Romans were engaged with Carthegians during their century-long Punic wars from 300 BCE, around 220 BCE, Carthegian defense was entrusted to Hannibal. Hannibal is considered one of the most intelligent military strategists that have ever lived on the planet.
Carthegian’s small army was no match for the Romans. But he developed a strategy of surprise. He would take his army through the Alps mountain which no one could even imagine. So there was no patrolling by Romans to his path of movement. He would divide the army and attack the Roman legions from all corners. He would pretend to surrender and then suddenly attack the Roman legions.
Hannibal’s forces butchered almost 50,000 Roman soldiers in a day. He became such a nightmare that there was a proverb “Hannibal is on the door.” Rome avoided all the battles with Hannibal, and wherever his forces went, Romans backed off. Romans thought that Hannibal was the biggest threat to the Roman empire. Once Hannibal lives his life out, Rome will again become a power. There was no point in going to war against Hannibal and getting butchered.
However, it is then a young Roman general Scipio was given a small force to petrol Hannibal’s movement. If Romans would know his movement, they could avoid any battles with Hannibal. However, instead of remaining as police, Scipio started capturing small but remote villages that were providing supplies to Hannibal’s forces. Wherever Hannibal went, Scipio took his small force in the other direction, rather than chasing Hannibal, and would capture a very small area.
Now Hannibal started going from one place to another where Scipio’s small force had won land. When Hannibal would reach there, Scipio would leave with his small force to another part, vacating the land, rather than a Roman way of ruling. Rather than sitting over Hannibal’s problem, Scipio took baby steps that caused huge resource lost for Hannibal in logistics. Finally, the Romans defeated Hannibal in 205 BCE thanks to Scipio’s method of detaching life from problems and taking baby steps.
You also need to start thinking like Scipio, rather than the Romans. You may have limited resources to attack the problem, but that doesn’t matter, because you can still take the baby steps. Over a period of time, these small steps will become compounding and will start giving you definitive results in life.
G. If problems are not problems, why brain perceives them as problems?
A Problem is a perception of the brain of the things that are not the way they should be. No one is knowledgeable enough to know if the desired state itself is the ideal state. For instance, if you thought that as soon as you are married, your loneliness problem will be gone, then you still do not know what extra problems will the marriage bring into your life.
And so the problem is a tool that keeps our brain engaged and makes it feel worthwhile and gives it something to do in the modern day where Google does most things that an average brain should do.
H. Why are problems increasing?
We live in an age where everyone wants to be great by a jump. Great father, greatest mother, and so on.
Life is about being wiser by each day, and slower by each day.
As we grow(both in age and knowledge) there are just too many dimensions, metrics, people, and thus problems. If each of these is to be mistaken for life itself then no one will either grow or will live.
I. Does detachment and balanced life helps in solving problems?
Equilibrium is the right word, not balance. Electrochemical reactions define life. Balance is applicable for only mass, not reactions. For instance, 50% Gold and 50% Manganese is in balance. But that substance has no value, neither it is strong, nor desirable, nor even has a utility. It has to be 90% Gold and 10% manganese.
Life by definition is enclosed autonomous sets of intertwined(not necessarily interconnected) chemical reactions at 99.9% homeostasis. 100% homeostasis is called death.
Just because one is alive at the time one sees the problem as life-threatening, one is already on the higher side of homeostasis. (95-99%) if things are not right. So, one has to get 4% of things in order to attain life’s homeostasis. Instead, people often think their life is out of sync by 90% due to the problem.
Detachment gives a sense of the existing life. Rest life takes care.
Case Study:
J. 📗Conclusion
Detach your problems from life. Life is about living daily and getting better a little. If you don’t do that, people would want to profit from your problems, by making you feel that your Problem= is your Life, and such profiteering people hold the solution to your problems.
Examples of people making you feel that the current problem is your life, and then benefiting from that are:
Problem=Virus, Solution=Vaccine(Profit to the pharma companies)
Problem=Marriage, Solution=Divorce(Profit to the advocates)
You walk ahead, problems stay behind, you stay there and problems walk ahead!
You are not dead yet like the 99% of the species inspite of your problem, and so the problem is not at all a life-death situation, because if it was then you wouldn’t be living at the first place;
K. 🛒Take a Baby Step and Buy the eBook of this Article
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You can always find other shortcuts in life like bookmarking. Because the brain doesn’t work in two different ways, when you find a shortcut to your knowledge, you also keep finding shortcuts in other aspects of life.
