Episode 30
How to SOLVE 99% of YOUR PROBLEMS
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We’re diving into how to tackle 99% of your problems. Seriously, it sounds big, but it’s all about being aware of what’s really causing your suffering. We chat about how we often try to numb our pain instead of facing it. Think of it like having a headache: taking painkillers won't fix the problem if you don’t address what's causing it. We emphasize that by understanding the root of our issues, we can make them disappear like magic. So grab a pen and paper, because we’re about to get real about what’s behind your stress!
Solving most of your problems is a big claim. Is it really possible to solve 99% of your problems? I think it is, however you've got to do one thing in order to make that possible. If you don't do what I talk about in this episode you will never be able to get rid of any of your problems.
Life throws us all sorts of punches, right? So, what if I told you that most of our problems could be tackled with just a couple of simple shifts in how we view them? During our chat today, I dive deep into the idea that to really solve our issues, we need to face them head-on instead of just trying to numb the pain. Think of it like dealing with a headache. Sure, popping painkillers might help for a bit, but if you don't figure out why that headache keeps coming back, you're just playing a short-term game. We explore how many of us, including governments and organizations, often react to problems instead of addressing their roots, leaving them to fester. The key takeaway? Dig deep into what’s really causing your stress. Once you pinpoint those core issues, many of your other problems may just melt away. We also throw in some practical tips on managing stress, like ensuring you get enough sleep and eating well to lay a solid foundation for tackling life’s challenges.
Takeaways:
- We often face problems because we avoid dealing with the root causes of our suffering.
- To truly solve our issues, we need to face our suffering head-on and understand its origins.
- Life will always throw challenges at us, but we can lessen the impact by being prepared.
- Identifying the core issues in our lives can help us resolve multiple problems at once.
- Ignoring our problems only leads to more suffering; we must confront them directly.
- Taking care of basic needs, like sleep and nutrition, can significantly reduce our stress levels.
Transcript
So you want to solve 99% of your problems, and I get that.
Speaker A:I understand that.
Speaker A:And, you know, who wouldn't?
Speaker A:And in this podcast, I'm going to help you to solve most of them.
Speaker A:And there's really just a couple of simple things we can do that would solve nearly all of our problems.
Speaker A:To get rid of some of that suffering that we're having every day, all the time, coming back, standing up and boom, you're knocked down.
Speaker A:Standing up and boom, you're knocked down again.
Speaker A:You know, that is.
Speaker A:It seems to be so normal for so many of us.
Speaker A:So in this podcast, I'm gonna give you a different perspective, a different way of looking at your problems, different way of looking at how we can suffer less.
Speaker A:I'm Stephen Webb, your host of Stillness in the Storms, and I help you to have a little inner peace in the most difficult times in life.
Speaker A:When I'm talking about problems, let's say the analogy of a headache.
Speaker A:You get a headache, you take some painkillers.
Speaker A:If the headache gets worse or it's persistent, you go to the doctors.
Speaker A:The doctor gives you some more painkillers, stronger ones, and you take them for a while, and then the headache comes back and you go to the doctors.
Speaker A:And the doctor at that point might listen a little more.
Speaker A:He might decide to diagnose it and may even give you an X ray or something or some kind of scan.
Speaker A:And then he may put you on some stronger painkillers until eventually, at some point, you got to deal with a headache.
Speaker A:The problem is, we want to numb our suffering.
Speaker A:We want to numb problems.
Speaker A:When you look at the world at the moment, you know, the whole reason why we have Black Lives Matter, the whole reason why we have the.
Speaker A:The whole reason why we have the protests and the violence and the looting and the anger and the frustration is simply because we never dealt with the problems.
Speaker A:We tried to numb them.
Speaker A:We tried to put sticky tape over them.
Speaker A:Now, basically, you build your house on sand, it's going to fall.
Speaker A:You build your house on rock and firm foundations, and it's going to be okay.
Speaker A:Well, the problem is governments are one of the biggest organizations that are guilty of this.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker A:They build their house on sand.
Speaker A:And I say that.
Speaker A:And let me explain.
Speaker A:Nearly every policy they make, nearly every decision they make is based on a reaction, just like going to the doctors and the doctors prescribing the tablets.
Speaker A:That's what government's doing.
Speaker A:We have a problem arise.
Speaker A:Covid19 the government says, how can we deal with this?
Speaker A:How can we react well, they say respond, but really they're reacting and they're always on the back feet.
Speaker A:They're always trying to guess, primarily because, and I don't want to make this political, but both the UK and the US got rid of the pandemic committees and the organizations in government.
Speaker A:They unfunded them in America, I think it's about two years ago, and in the UK it was about six months before the pandemic.
Speaker A:And that is.
Speaker A:That's basically building your house on sand.
Speaker A:You know, you're basing it on what's happening now.
Speaker A:You know, if you want to get rid of 99% of your problems, base what you're learning now on anything that might arise in future.
Speaker A:You know, when you're looking at sorting out your suffering, you know, you're doing the meditation not to get rid of your suffering now, but to be able to deal with the suffering later.
Speaker A:You're always going to have pain, you're always going to have problems.
Speaker A:Life's always going to take its turn for the worst.
Speaker A:Life's always going to hand you something you don't want, hand you something that is going to cause pain.
Speaker A:You know, when I broke my neck at 18, I wasn't planning that.
Speaker A:When my bankruptcy come, although now I can see the signs of it, I wasn't planning it.
Speaker A:You know, hindsight afterwards, I can see, yeah, I can see where that was going.
Speaker A:But at the time I couldn't.
Speaker A:I was trying to avoid it.
Speaker A:But I now realize that these things happen a lot of the time because we didn't do our homework, we didn't build that foundation, we didn't.
Speaker A:We didn't have the core roots.
Speaker A:And I talk about this quite a lot, the core values that are the roots that hold the tree down.
Speaker A:A tree is the perfect example.
Speaker A:It has deep roots.
Speaker A:And when it does have deep roots, it doesn't have to worry about the weather, it doesn't have to worry about the storms.
Speaker A:It can weather them no matter what.
Speaker A:When, when we have the core values in place, when we're ready and planned for the future to some degree now, then, okay, you cannot plan for everything and I cannot fix the problems you currently got.
Speaker A:But there's a huge culture in the spiritualism, and I think it's in most religions, and that is to brush everything away, to almost accept things as they are.
Speaker A:Everything is okay, everything is fine.
Speaker A:And some of my teaching is about.
Speaker A:It's not my teaching, but some of the things that I find works for me is to accept the present moment for what it is.
Speaker A:But that doesn't mean to say the present moment is okay, how it is.
Speaker A:This is the paradox of Zen and the paradox of the real spiritual world.
Speaker A:You have to accept the present moment, you have to see it with awareness in order to be able to do something with it.
Speaker A:And just brushing it under the carpet, to use a phrase, just.
Speaker A:Just pretending it's not there, or numbing it or putting yourself in a bubble, it's not going to deal with the problems.
Speaker A:It's not going to deal with your suffering.
Speaker A:You first have got to face the suffering face on.
Speaker A:And if you don't turn around and face your suffering and see the suffering for what it is, how can you deal with it?
Speaker A:And going back to the headache analogy, you know, you can go to the doctors, you can get the painkillers that'll make you feel better temporarily, but at some point that headache is going to come back.
Speaker A:Unless it's something temporary in your life.
Speaker A:You just had a headache for just a moment.
Speaker A:But in general, if there's an underlying cause of the suffering of headache, until you deal with that underlying cause, you're going to have to keep up in the painkillers, making them stronger, stronger.
Speaker A:It's never going to go away.
Speaker A:It's just going to grow.
Speaker A:Just very much like being in a toxic relationship, you know, just trying to stick the plaster over, just trying to perhaps have another child or get married or do any of those things that you think will repair a toxic relationship, just simply won't.
Speaker A:You have to deal with the underlying issues of what is causing the problems.
Speaker A:You know, it's.
Speaker A:It's very much to keep the analogies going.
Speaker A:You know, if you get a thorn in your finger, it's no good putting a plaster on it.
Speaker A:You got to take that thorn out until you take the thorn out.
Speaker A:You know, you could put numbing cream on it.
Speaker A:You can take painkillers, you can do all the things, and I'm sure it'll make you feel better temporarily, but it won't solve your problems.
Speaker A:What you have to do to solve your problems is to become aware of what is causing them.
Speaker A:Become aware of where the anxiety is coming from, why the anxiety is there, why the stress is there.
Speaker A:You know, if it's a particular thing causing you 90% of your stress, ask yourself, why?
Speaker A:Why is this thing causing me my stress?
Speaker A:Is it congruent with how I feel?
Speaker A:Is it congruent with what I'm doing?
Speaker A:You know, if you're slogging yourself out at a job and not being able to pay your bills, yet you're doing that job just to pay your bills.
Speaker A:You're not going to be happy, you're going to be suffering.
Speaker A:And just looking for a quick bonus is not going to pay your bill.
Speaker A:It's not going to solve the problems.
Speaker A:Yes, it might mean you can pay your bills this week.
Speaker A:All right, next week, the week after, you're going to be suffering again.
Speaker A:Your problems are going to be back.
Speaker A:So really, it does come down to becoming aware of what's underneath your problems, what is causing the problems.
Speaker A:And once you become aware of that, so many of your problems will go away and disappear.
Speaker A:And your problems tend to be like trees in the way they branch out.
Speaker A:You'll have a couple of real big core issues underneath.
Speaker A:And when you solve those, most of the other ones will disappear and they'll just disperse.
Speaker A:They won't be there anymore because problems escalate.
Speaker A:You know, you have two problems today and four problems tomorrow and eight problems the next day, and they escalate from the same origin.
Speaker A:So it's going back to.
Speaker A:It's almost the levels of problems.
Speaker A:You know, we're stressed today because we have 500 problems when really we have 500 little problems and we have 100 bigger problems.
Speaker A:And those 100 bigger problems are the ones we look at.
Speaker A:And then you go underneath them and go underneath them.
Speaker A:And you might find your one job that you're doing that you're really stressed about is creating 80% of your problems in life.
Speaker A:So look to your life where you're most stressed.
Speaker A:Look to you in life where you're most struggling, you know, and, and I can tell you now, you can solve most of your problems by sorting your sleep out.
Speaker A:Sleep out and eating sensibly.
Speaker A:If you can get the amount of hours you need for your sleep, you'll sort most of your problems out.
Speaker A:Every human, everybody needs sleep.
Speaker A:And you know, if you're not getting enough sleep, you will end up with a knock on of so many other problems.
Speaker A:So to recap and wrap up this relatively short podcast, I just want to just become aware of the root of a lot of your problems.
Speaker A:Just grab a piece of paper, you know, take some time out, look at what is going on in your life that is causing most of your problems.
Speaker A:Because, look, unless you become aware, unless you become aware of what's really going on, you're really, you're never going to be able to solve them unless you become aware of what's creating the headache.
Speaker A:You're just gonna have to continuously take painkillers and that.
Speaker A:That's the analogy of standing up in the road and get run over and standing up in the road and getting run over.
Speaker A:And that's what it feels like.
Speaker A:It feels like life hits us again and again and again.
Speaker A:And it's hitting us because we're giving life the best chance of hitting us.
Speaker A:You know, we're not edging our bets.
Speaker A:We're not.
Speaker A:We're not getting out of the way of the cars, to use that analogy.
Speaker A:We're not helping to tip the balance in our favor.
Speaker A:We're just hoping.
Speaker A:We're just hoping to.
Speaker A:At some point, things will let out, let off, let go.
Speaker A:I'm not quite sure of which one, which one of those I should use, but, you know, that's the reality.
Speaker A:I just hope life would stop knocking me on my butt.
Speaker A:So we sit back and we wait for that time to happen.
Speaker A:Well, life is going to knock you on your butt, but it'll do it a lot less if you become aware of what you can change and the best chance and best odds.
Speaker A:So that's the way to solve 99% of your problems.
Speaker A:Become aware of what's causing them, what's creating the problem.
Speaker A:You know, we're basically walking down the road with a stone in our shoes, complaining about the stone in our shoes.
Speaker A:You know, stop, sit down, take your shoe off, take the stone out, put the shoe back on, and get back on with your journey.
Speaker A:I think that's the point.
Speaker A:And I know that's a simple analogy, but it works.
Speaker A:I'm Stephen Webb and I want to say thank you to my patrons.
Speaker A:I have five patrons so far.
Speaker A:I'm trying to build up enough that we can do a Q and A each month.
Speaker A:I help you to find a little inner peace.
Speaker A:You know, I'm here to help you Head over to my website and you can download some goodies that will help you.
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Speaker A:So take care, guys.
Speaker A:This is Stillness in the Storms and I'm Stephen Webb and My website is stevenweb.com thank you.
Speaker A:Sa.
