“What if it’s not a problem?”

What happens if I accept things the way they already are?

I made some stickers to help me remember to ask myself a question:

This question pauses my brain’s rumination and problem-solving cycle and asks me to consider what the situation would look like if the current problem wasn’t a problem at all, but instead, was just a given. This is particularly useful for me when it turns out that the “problem” I am trying to “solve” is, in fact, beyond my control – for instance: global pandemics, other people’s habits, or the number of hours in the day. 

It also leads me to ask other questions, like:

• What would I need to do if changing this wasn’t an option?

• What are the consequences of not “fixing” this?

• Are there alternate ways to move forward in spite of this?

• What if this “problem” is actually a feature?

• What if no action is required?

What would that look like?

Last weekend I found myself with a small to do list in front of me and absolutely zero motivation or energy for any of it. The only thing I could do was drink tea, watch The Great British Baking Show, and… well, not much else.

My impulse was to feel bad about it — to beat myself up for not getting things done, or think of the other things later in the week that would be impacted by these things not getting done now. Shockingly, neither guilt nor fear created more energy and motivation for me to do the tasks! 😱

Another approach I could take is to ask myself this question: What if it’s not a problem? What if I just planned to take Sunday as a rest day, and redistributed my subsequent to dos for later in the week? Would any catastrophe await?

In fact, disaster seemed unlikely. With material circumstances being equal, that left me with two options — don’t do the things on the to do list and feel bad about it, or, don’t do the things on the to do list and accept that this is just fine.

I’d love to tell you that I did the latter and moved into my lazy Sunday with complete grace and joy, but, alas… that’s not exactly how it went down. Nevertheless, I am glad to have the tools available to me to see how I could frame things differently, even if it’s only in retrospect. It makes me hopeful that at some future moment I might take the opportunity to ask myself the question and reframe the problem as not-a-problem. Because, as Jon Kabat-Zinn often says, “It’s already here.” Wanting things to be different from how they are doesn’t actually, in and of itself, make them any different.