What “Seems” to be the Problem?

As I waited to pick up my vehicle from an oil change one morning, I overheard the auto mechanic on the phone asking a caller, "what seems to be the problem?"  The caller obviously had some sort of car trouble somewhere, and between the two of them, they were trying to identify the source of the problem.  After about five minutes of questions, and speculation, and theories, the two seemed no closer to correctly diagnosing the problem than they were when they started. 

This scenario got me thinking that what we may think the "problem" is, often isn't...

The world is as you are, not as it is. - Jim Blackburn

Our perceptions of life are our reality, whether true or not.  The information we consume forms our values and beliefs which ultimately drive our behavior. In his book What God Wants, Neale Donald Walsch points out that: "It's what people believe that creates their behavior.  Therefore, it is at the level of belief, not at the level of behavior, where behavior can most profoundly be modified."  

In other words... change what you think and you'll change what you do. 

If we really want to address our "problems," then we need to address the thinking that precedes the behaviors that produce the problems.  So what "seems" to be the problem is often mis-diagnosed because we want the problem to lie outside of ourselves, not within.  We want the problem to be the outward behavior, not the flawed inward thinking.  We want to point fingers and blame rather than take responsibility for our own actions.  Most learn how to do this very well beginning in early childhood. 

There are two main forces (or instincts) that drive all human behavior: 1) the desire to avoid pain and 2) the desire to seek pleasure. 

Everything we do in life revolves around these two pursuits.  It's argued however that our desire to avoid pain is more powerful than our desire to seek pleasure. Pain is the ultimate enemy and has to avoided at all costs, whereas pleasure, though very desirable, is expendable.

We have to dig deep and uncover the real problems we face; not just the symptoms of the problems.  When your car runs out of gas; it's not that there is no gas available, it's that the decision to get gas sooner was not made.  The gas isn't the problem, the lack of timely decision-making is. 

The solutions to problems then, start with being honest with ourselves about what the problems really are in the first place.  We then have to go one step further and tell another person about it to produce accountability.  Without accountability, many good intentions to improve become just that... intentions, not actions. Often, we evaluate ourselves by our intentions, while others evaluate us by our actions. 

Accurate problem identification is the first step on the road to the solutions.  The second step is actually beginning to do the things necessary to overcome the problems at hand. Too many people waste too much time working to solve problems that aren't the actual problem. So, make sure that what "seems" to be the problem is actually THE problem.

©2011 Tom Leu