Expansion is the Solution

How often do you focus on problems? Hours, days, and even years of consideration or attempts at fixing may be the outcome, usually with far less progress than desired. In workplaces, I’ve seen simple tasks take on giant lives and become far more complicated than they need be by the focus of problems (a need for increased self-importance?). The only way to shift into a better use of time is by giving attention to solutions and new ways or opportunities. This brings expansion and even efficiency, whereas problems create contraction.

How do you expand into a solution?  It is a matter of attention.  It involves looking for what works, what creates a desired result (maybe not THE desired result if you’re viewing something as a problem), but the something that moves things forward or creates a better experience.

Let’s look at it like a river. A river doesn’t stop to look at a rock in its ways wondering why it’s there, what it did that made the rock appear in the first place, or analyze ways for the rock to change or move (isn’t that what most of us do?).  The river simply finds where it can flow and how it can be itself with the rock exactly where it is. Now over time, the rock may shift or begin to take on a new shape after many years of gentle erosion, but that will happen in its own time and way. In the shorter term, a person may even come along and move the rock. The river,  however, will keep doing what it does and looking for ways to flow. And if it can’t flow, it simply waits and enters a state of being, it just is until something shifts.

So when you look at your life or work, are you stuck on the seeming problems?  Or are you able to keep moving with new solutions? We expand through solutions and contract when in problems. This is actually  a physical experience in our bodies that we can sense when we pay attention. Our bodies give us that signal very quickly and clearly and so we can access that information by simply looking for it. When you find yourself in contraction, there is an opportunity to choose. Knowing what expansion feels like is our guiding light. We think another thought, take a pleasing action, breathe, imagine a new result and soon we find ourselves in a place that is far different than a problem.

For me, expansion feels lighter, easier, natural, free and open. It doesn’t always come quickly, but the more I look for it, the sooner it does arrive.  At times I’ve mistakenly listened to advice suggesting I work at solving a problem. The only benefit from this process is that I began to understand the intricacies and sometimes the “why” of the problem, but rarely has that resulted in a solution. The solution exists outside the problem, not inside it as many suggest.  Happiness does not exist amidst pain. Ways to become wealthy do not lie in examining poverty. Connection cannot be found in isolation.  Instead we must land in the river that flows to what we want in order to have it. And in the end, isn’t that what we’re after?

How often do you focus on problems? Hours, days, and even years of consideration or attempts at fixing may be the outcome, usually with far less progress than desired. In workplaces, I’ve seen simple tasks take on giant lives and become far more complicated than they need be by the focus of problems (a need for increased self-importance?). The only way to shift into a better use of time is by giving attention to solutions and new ways or opportunities. This brings expansion and even efficiency, whereas problems create contraction.

How do you expand into a solution?  It is a matter of attention.  It involves looking for what works, what creates a desired result (maybe not THE desired result if you’re viewing something as a problem), but the something that moves things forward or creates a better experience.

Let’s look at it like a river. A river doesn’t stop to look at a rock in its ways wondering why it’s there, what it did that made the rock appear in the first place, or analyze ways for the rock to change or move (isn’t that what most of us do?).  The river simply finds where it can flow and how it can be itself with the rock exactly where it is. Now over time, the rock may shift or begin to take on a new shape after many years of gentle erosion, but that will happen in its own time and way. In the shorter term, a person may even come along and move the rock. The river,  however, will keep doing what it does and looking for ways to flow. And if it can’t flow, it simply waits and enters a state of being, it just is until something shifts.

So when you look at your life or work, are you stuck on the seeming problems?  Or are you able to keep moving with new solutions? We expand through solutions and contract when in problems. This is actually  a physical experience in our bodies that we can sense when we pay attention. Our bodies give us that signal very quickly and clearly and so we can access that information by simply looking for it. When you find yourself in contraction, there is an opportunity to choose. Knowing what expansion feels like is our guiding light. We think another thought, take a pleasing action, breathe, imagine a new result and soon we find ourselves in a place that is far different than a problem.

For me, expansion feels lighter, easier, natural, free and open. It doesn’t always come quickly, but the more I look for it, the sooner it does arrive.  At times I’ve mistakenly listened to advice suggesting I work at solving a problem. The only benefit from this process is that I began to understand the intricacies and sometimes the “why” of the problem, but rarely has that resulted in a solution. The solution exists outside the problem, not inside it as many suggest.  Happiness does not exist amidst pain. Ways to become wealthy do not lie in examining poverty. Connection cannot be found in isolation.  Instead we must land in the river that flows to what we want in order to have it. And in the end, isn’t that what we’re after?