Are you a match to the problem or the solution?

Image of a Yin and Yang symbol

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Consider that you may have it backwards: solutions don't make you feel better; solutions come once you've made yourself feel better.

If you're a match to the problem, here's what it looks like: You're walking around feeling what it makes you feel—frustrated, scared, sad. You talk about what's happening as a problem to be solved (or as hard or impossible to solve), as urgent, as being terrible (or infuriating, or hopelessly unfair, or whatever the emotive flavor du jour). You think about it a lot (as a problem). You worry, strategize, agonize, obsess.

This keeps you in the problem.

If you're a match to the solution, you trust there's already a solution on the way—called in the moment you observed or named the problem. You know it's already okay and will resolve—all will come clear without your needing to know how right now. You're able to let go of the parts you can't control. You're watching for where you can step in gracefully; you're open to inspiration, which you can grasp and respond to quickly (catch the wave) because you're not weighed down with worry or even hopelessness. In short, you can hold the thing with curiosity and expectation, trusting that this problem is ultimately no problem, and simply move toward or open to the solutions as you see each next step or possibility.

This brings in solutions.

How do you get out of hard emotions that perpetuate the problem—or keep you as a match to the problem?

The short version is, Quit putting a story to the feelings, and just be with the feelings. Or, since the story will assert itself, notice what you're saying to yourself or others about it, and quit saying it.

Of course, you'll have thoughts. Thoughts happen. The trick is not to get involved with them. I have a client currently going through a break-up and she worked beautifully on simply witnessing thoughts moving through. They're so typical, those break-up thoughts, aren't they? I'm not lovable, No one will ever love me, There's something wrong with me, I'm no good at relationships. Later, in session, she and I were able to question and deconstruct those thoughts. On her own, she just put them aside and took care of her emotions. She let herself feel and cry without telling herself lies (or without focusing on and running with any lies that temporarily whispered to her).

Think of writing thoughts down as a great and crazy-simple tool for getting them put down and put away without your losing track of what they can reveal. (Ah, a break-up still shows me what's left of my illusion of unworthiness.) If you want to look at them later and pull them apart, call them for the lies they hold, or see what else is true besides what you were believing at your worst, do that.

A how-to note: Try making lists of short, simple sentences, one thought per line, instead of journaling—which can have the same negative effect as telling it all to a friend. You expand the problem and all the feelings around it as you tell detail after detail, and embroider without even noticing, and throw in a bunch of interpretations as if they were facts. (She undid everything I'd worked on since the project began. They threw me under the bus.)

Focus on soothing what feels bad—not understanding it, fixing it, or making it go away; not coming up with solutions so you can feel better.

Consider that you may have it backwards: solutions don't make you feel better; solutions come once you've made yourself feel better.

Thus, simply being with the feelings kindly becomes your first priority, and you can feel good (not irresponsible) about not thinking it through. Look away from the story, and make it your one and only job to soothe the feelings. Be your own mama to your own inner sick kid, and do anything to make things feel better. (If you're male, ungendered, gender-fluid—whatever—still be your own mama.) Maybe it won't look like reading aloud, bringing juice popsicles, making soup, stroking a forehead, or singing songs (though it could). It might initially look like simply witnessing the pain, allowing it, dropping into it, giving it breath (the only balm you can apply from within).

If you don't have my book, Scooch!, you can get it from Amazon as a real book or an e-book (you can also peek in and read a bunch with Look Inside feature). Chapter 3 walks you through separating out minding the pain body and tending the mind. Chapter 5, “Good Tears versus Bad Tears,” describes how to release emotion without getting sucked into story.

Quit figuring out the solution. Get out of ploblem solving.

When effort and striving characterize a search for solutions, you're still a match to the problem. Instead, scooch toward trust that you're fine and the solutions will come. Then you're in what Abraham-Hicks calls a space of allowing, and solutions can come in (more) effortlessly, perhaps in unexpected ways.

A how-to note: Speaking of Abraham, you can use their tactic (and easy-to-remember two-word admonition) GO GENERAL. Pan out and away from the details you've got under the microscope, and tell yourself general things you can believe: I don't have to figure this out right now. I've been in worse places and it worked out. I can think of one person right now who's had a similar experience and got through it. They may be able to provide support and resources. I'm doing fine. I can think of three things I've done right recently in this realm and whatever I've done wrong is probably fixable and certainly forgivable. Keep talking for as long as you need to to reset your mind toward the general, believable, and kind without needing to work out any particular kinks in the tubing.
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By the way, I'm not categorically against problem-solving. Brainstorming and pushing around puzzle pieces have their place. Do them after the soothing, when you're in a space of allowing.

How fine and well (relaxed, trusting, joyful, present) can you be before the solutions come in?

Being a match to the solution does much more than bring in solutions. It allows you to be fine before solutions come: you're already okay; you don't need solutions to make you okay. It creates the openings for solutions to come. It allows you to see when radical solutions are needed or, conversely, when there's actually nothing to do whatsoever. It also releases you from urgency and the illusions around timing and time that we human beings so easily fall prey to.

The basic concept in this writing comes from Abraham-Hicks, and their language goes like this: “Be a vibrational match for the solution, not the problem.” I know that as soon as the word vibration gets in somewhere, it can sound airy-fairy. That's why I saved it for last. And have you read up to this point? This is so solid. If you're not sure it'll work, I invite you to experiment with it (and make it a grand experiment—what have you got to lose, except a furrowed brow and tense muscles?).

​For myself, once I got past the languaging, I found that Abraham's teachings often come to me in an instant on a deep level, and then I tease them out to understand the application through various means: things they say and things I experiment with on my own and the seemingly magical ways, right when I'm working with a particular idea, that my clients seem to have stuff come up that obviously asks for just that concept. Now that this is part of my conceptual tool kit, I notice that people can have a releasing ah-ha when I simply point out that they're being a vibrational match for the problem.

So hey, what problem are you a vibrational match for right now? Wanna be a match for the solution?
Love & blessings, Jaya​

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