We Don't Solve Our Problems, We Outgrow Them

I was recently reminded of a great quote from psychologist Carl Jung, he said, We don t solve our problems, we outgrow them.   As I've been thinking about this the past few days, I realize how often my attention is actually on solving my problems, not outgrowing them.  No wonder the ones I obsess about the most seem to linger. However, we ve all experienced this outgrowing process many times.  Think back to some of the biggest problems in your life when you were a child or an adolescent (or even just a few years or months ago) that are no longer issues for you anymore.  In most cases, you simply outgrew these things.

How can we make this awareness process more conscious and deliberate, and not simply happen by accident?  It's important that we shift our focus, as Jung reminds us, from solving to growing.   As we try to solve the biggest problems in our lives related to relationships, career, health, effectiveness, money, awareness, and more maybe we can stop trying so hard to fix these things and look more deeply at the feedback we're getting and where we can enhance our own growth.

Here are a few things we can think about as we look to deepen our growth and shift away from the obsessive problem solving mode many of us find ourselves in:

1)  Confront your biggest problems.   Tell the truth about the biggest issues in your life and look at what you ve been doing to either avoid or solve them neither of which will ultimately give you what you want.

2)  Look for the growth opportunity.  With authenticity and compassion, see if you can look beneath your avoidance or even your intended solutions, and find the beautiful feedback life is giving you right now about where you can grow.

3)  Reach out for support.  Getting support, feedback, and guidance is an essential aspect of our life and growth, especially when we want to change, transform, and grow into new and deeper places.  When we re looking at outgrowing some of the most challenging aspects of our life and transcending certain "problems" (some of which we may have been dealing with for quite some time), it's fundamentally important we reach out for help from people in our lives friends, family members, co-workers, counselors, coaches, teachers, and others.

As we do these three things, with a sense of kindness and appreciation towards ourselves, we can expand our growth, which will ultimately lead us to where we want to be in our lives.  Remember, there is no specific destination we're after in this process growth is really about deepening our experience of life and enhancing our capacity for joy, fulfillment, and love.

(For this week s audio message, click here.)