EP30 - How to SOLVE 99% of YOUR PROBLEMS

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.

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So, you want to solve 99% of your problems. I understand that and who wouldn't?

In this podcast, I'm going to help you to solve most of them. There's really, just a couple of simple things we can do that would solve nearly all of our problems; to get rid of some of that suffering that we have every day, all the time, coming back, standing up and boom, you're knocked down, standing up and boom, you're knocked down again. It seems to be so normal for so many of us. So in this podcast, I'm going to give you a different perspective, a different way of looking at your problems. A different way of looking at how we can suffer less.

 I'm Steven Webb, your host of Stillness In The Storms and I have yet to have a little inner peace in the most difficult times in life. I'm not talking about problems; let's say, the analogy of a headache. You've got a headache, you take some painkillers. If the headache gets worse or is persistent, you go to the doctor. The doctor gives you some more painkillers, stronger ones, you take them for a while and then the headache comes back. You go back to the doctor and at that point, he might listen a little more. He might decide to diagnose it and may even give you an X-Ray or some kind of scan and then he may put you on sort of stronger painkillers until eventually, at some point, you've got to deal with the headache. 

The problem is we want to numb our suffering, we want to numb problems.

When you look at the world at the moment, the whole reason why we have Black Lives Matter, the whole reason why we have the protest and the violence, the looting, the anger, and the frustration is simply that we never dealt with the problems. We tried to numb them, we tried to put sticky tape over them. Now, basically you build your house on sand, it's gonna fall. You build your house on a rock and firm foundations and it's going to be okay. 

Well, the problem is governments are one of the biggest organizations that are guilty of this. They build their house on sand, and let me explain. Every policy they make, every decision they make is based on a reaction. It's just like going to the doctors and the doctors prescribing the tablets; that's what governments are doing. We have a problem arise, COVID-19, the government says, how can we deal with this? How can we react? Well, they say respond, but really, they're reacting. And they're always on the back feet, 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. They unfunded them in America, I was thinking it's about two years ago and in the UK, it was about six months before the pandemic. And that is basically building your house on the sand. You're basing it on what's happening now. If you want to get rid of 99% of your problems, based on what you're learning now on anything that might arise in future, you know, when you're looking at sorting out your suffering, you're doing the meditation not to get rid of your suffering now, but to be able to deal with the suffering later, you're always going to have pain. You're always going to have problems. Your lifestyle is going to take the turn for the worst.

Life is always gonna hand you something you don't want and hand you something that is going to cause pain.

 When I broke my neck at 18, I wasn't planning that. When my bankruptcy came, although now I can see the signs of it, I wasn't planning it. The hindsight afterward, I can say, yeah, I can see where that was going but for the time I couldn't; I was trying to avoid that. 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 have the core roots. I talk about this quite a lot.

The core values are the roots that hold the tree down.

A tree is a perfect example. It has deep roots. 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. It can weather them no matter what. 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 have, but there's a huge culture in spiritualism and I think it's in most religions and that is to brush everything away, to almost accept things as they are. 

Everything is okay, everything is fine. And some of my teachings are about, 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. But that doesn't mean to say the present moment is okay, how it is. And this is the paradox of Zen and the paradox of the real spiritual world. You have to accept the present moment and you have to see it with awareness in order to be able to do something with it and just pushing it under the carpet. To use a phrase, just pretending it's not there or numbing it or putting yourself in a bubble is not going to deal with the problems, it's not going to deal with your suffering. 

You first have got to face the suffering face on

If you don't turn around and face your suffering and see the suffering for what it is, how can you deal with it? And going back to the headache analogy, you can go to the doctors, you can get the painkillers, that'll make you feel better temporarily, but at some point, the headache is going to come back. Unless it's something temporary in your life, you just had a headache for just a moment. But in general, if there's an underlying cause of the suffering of headache, until you deal with the underlying cause, you're going to have to keep up in the painkillers, making those stronger, stronger. 

It's never going to go away. It's just going to grow. Just very much like being in a toxic relationship, 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, you have to deal with the underlying issues of what is causing the problems. To keep the analogies going, if you've got a thorn in your finger, it's no good putting a plaster on it, you've got to take that thorn on out. Until you take the thorn out, you could put numbing cream on it, you can take painkillers, you can do all the things and I'm sure it will make you feel better temporarily, but it won't solve your problems. 

 

What you have to do to solve your problems is to become aware of what is causing them.

Become aware of where the anxiety is coming from, why the anxiety is there, why the stress is there. There is a particular thing causing you 90% of your stress. Ask yourself why? Why is this thing causing me my stress? Is it congruent with how I feel? Is it congruent with what I'm doing? If you're slogging yourself at your job and not being able to pay your bills, yet you're doing that job just to pay your bills, you're not going to be happy. You're going to be suffering and looking for a quick bonus is not going to solve the problems. 

Yes, it might mean you can pay your bills this week but next week, the week after, you're going to be suffering again, your problems are going to be back. So really, it does come down to becoming aware of what's underneath your problems, what is causing the problems. And once you become aware of that, so many of your problems will go away and disappear. Your problems tend to be like trees in the way they branch out. You'll have a couple of real big core issues underneath. When you solve those, most of the other ones will disappear and they'll just disperse. They won't be there anymore because problems escalate. 

You have two problems today and four problems tomorrow and eight problems the next day and they escalate from the same origin. So it's almost levels of problems. We're stressed today because we have 500 problems, when really, we have 500 little problems and we have 100 bigger problems. And those 100 bigger problems are the ones we look at and then, you go underneath them and go underneath them. 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.

Look into your life where you're most stressed

Look into your life where you're most struggling. And I can tell you, now you can solve most of your problems by sorting your sleep out and eating sensibly. If you can get the number of hours you need for your sleep, you'll sort most of your problems out. Every human, everybody needs sleep and if you're not getting enough sleep, you will end up with a knock-on of so many other problems. 

So to recap and wrap up this relatively short podcast, I just want you to become aware of the root of a lot of your problems. Just grab a piece of paper, take some time out, look at what is going on in your life that is causing most of your problems. Because unless you become aware, unless you become aware of what's really going on, you're never going to be able to solve them. Unless you become aware of what's creating the headache, you're just going to have to continuously take painkillers. And that's the analogy of standing up the road and get run over and then standing up in the road and get run over.

And that's what it feels like. It feels like life hits us again and again and again, and it's hitting us because we're given life the best chance of hitting us. We're not edging our bats, we're not getting out with the way or the cars, to use that analogy. We're not helping to tip the balance in our favor, we're just hoping. We're just hoping to, at some point, things were let off, let go. I'm not quite sure which one of those I should use. But you know, that's the reality, I just hoped life would stop knocking me on my butt so we step back and we wait for that time to happen. 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.

So that's the way to solve 99% of your problems.

Become aware of what's causing them what's creating the problem.

We're basically walking down the road with a stone in our shoes, complaining about the stone in our shoes. Stop, sit down, take your shoe off, take the stone out, put the shoe back on and get back on with your journey. I think that's the point. And I know that's a simple analogy but it works. 

I'm Steven Webb and I want to say thank you to my patrons. I have five patrons so far. I'm trying to build up enough that we can do a Q and A each month. I help you to find the little inner peace, I'm here to help you. Head over to my website and you can download some goodies that will help you. And you can also become a patron and get some deeper inside videos and extra stuff that I don't share elsewhere. So take care, guys. This is Stillness In The Storms and I'm Steven Webb and my website is stevenwebb.com. Thank you.