The Problem with Solutions

Most people spend their lives solving one problem after another. As soon as a problem is solved, a new one pops up. In high school, your problem might be getting into a good college. In college, your problem becomes getting a good job. After getting a good job, you want to get married. Once you’re married and have kids, you have to buy a house. Once you have a house, you focus on retiring. And so on and so forth until the day you die. 

It can be easy to spend our whole lives solving problems, thinking that if only we had no problems, we’d be happy. It’s tempting to focus on external solutions while neglecting the opportunity for interior growth contained within the challenges we face. If we don’t do the work of becoming different people while working on our problems, we will find ourselves facing the same negative experiences over and over again. For example, if we don’t work to acquire the habit of living within our means, we will overspend no matter how many raises we get. If we don’t learn to be happy while we are single, the sources of our unhappiness are likely to keep surfacing in married life as well. 

This week, I invite you to ask: 

What are the problems I am facing right now? In what way might these problems be calling me to transform? As I engage with these problems, what new thought could I think (that I haven’t thought before) that would make it more likely I change for the better?

God bless,
Dan