I had a big fat bandage on my arm. It was cumbersome and I obviously couldn’t hide it because it was covering my whole forearm. Not only that, but I was in a lot of pain and my hand was throbbing. This injury of mine was a problem. To avoid the blood going to my hand I held my hand up in the air in front of me. So, really, I couldn’t hide my big, fat, bandaged hand that was positioned awkwardly in the air at all times. 

Everyone Noticed the Problem

I went to church like this, and I’m sure you can guess what the first thing was that everybody noticed. Not that my hair looked really good, considering I had done it with just one hand. And not that my outfit was nice, after I had spent 30 minutes scrambling, digging through my closet, trying to find something that I could put on by myself. They didn’t notice those accomplishments, but they certainly noticed the problem that I was holding out in front of myself. 

Problems are like that, aren’t they? They naturally, and instinctively, get our attention, which is for a good reason. When there’s a problem, that means we need to find a solution, and so our go-to behavior is for us to be wired to look for problems. We look for problems and then we try to find solutions, and then when we find the solution we move on to the next problem. 

That’s just how we’re wired. So, if you feel like there are a lot of problems, there’s a reason for that. There are indeed a lot of problems, and you’re wired to look for them. Something that you can work on, though, is appreciating the solutions that you’ve already found and celebrating successes that you’ve come across, and then taking the time to see that life isn’t only about problems. There is more to life than problems.

You Notice the Problem, Even When It’s Surrounded by Good

So there’s this good visual about problems that I’ve seen before, and I think about it often. Imagine a white board with no writing on it. It’s just a plain white board, except that it has a dot on it. Somebody has drawn a dot somewhere on the whiteboard. So now, when you go into the room, and you look at the whiteboard, what’s the first thing you see? The dot! You notice the dot, but you don’t notice that most of the board is white. Most of the board is clean, things are generally going well on the board, but you don’t notice that. 

No, you notice the dot because it’s out of place, and it’s a problem. We have our problem antenna active all the time, scanning, searching, looking for the problems. That’s how we’re wired and it’s okay, unless it’s not okay. Unless it gets overwhelming and unless it gets to be too much and too heavy, so that we’re only looking for problems and we’re only seeing problems. Then we’re kind of drowning in it. That’s not helpful, right? It’s not helpful.

Retrain Your Brain to Not be Overwhelmed by Your Problems

So how do you retrain your brain to not look only for the problems? That’s the question. How do you retrain yourself? This is so natural and easy, it just happens. You can pick up on those problems super easily and that can turn into criticism and it can turn into overwhelm. So how do you overcome this? How do you retrain your brain so that you do not become overwhelmed by your problems? I have three steps to retrain your brain so you’re not overcome and overwhelmed by your problems. Here are my three steps.

1. You acknowledge the problems you’ve already solved. In my story, in the beginning, I acknowledged that I did my hair with one hand. Yay, I did it! It was hard and I acknowledged that to myself. I found an outfit that I could put on by myself with one hand. Often other people aren’t going to acknowledge these successes so we need to acknowledge them ourselves.
2. Celebrate the successes of others. Look for the things that other people have overcome and acknowledge it, and congratulate them. As you see what they have overcome, you celebrate with them! They have overcome things and you can bring that up in conversation and talk to them about it so they can remember problems that they’ve already solved so they can feel good too. Once you’ve done those two steps, acknowledging your success, and acknowledging the success of others, then you can move on to step three.
3. Tackle the problem that’s in front of you. Because now you have success energy and you’re not feeling overwhelmed by your problems and defeated. You’re using that success energy that you’ve built up by acknowledging previous successes and then you tackle the problem.

The Flip Side: Things to Avoid

Then there’s the other side to this, which is what you should not do. We always have to remember what not to do, too, right? 

1. Don’t only talk about the problem. Do I need to explain why that is? It should be obvious, but maybe it’s not. People don’t want to only talk about problems with you. It just brings you and everyone around you down.
2. Don’t leave out your successes in conversations, or the successes of others. When you’re having a conversation, don’t leave out all the good stuff. Don’t leave out the positive things going on in your life or the solutions you have found. 
3. Don’t forget about all the life that is to be lived between the problems and solutions. There’s so much life in there, such as recreation, enjoyment, and play. Don’t forget about those things. When you include those in your life, you won’t feel so bogged down or overwhelmed by your problems, and you will find a nice balance. 

Overwhelmed by Your Problems No More

Next time you have a conversation with someone, what if you try to talk about your successes and their successes along with the problems you have? Be intentional. You have to be intentional to do that because the problems are obvious and easy to find. Just like my hand with the big fat bandage was obvious, and the dot on the white board was obvious (everybody’s looking at that dot–you can’t avoid it). But if you’re intentional, you don’t have to be swimming in the problems or feel like they’re too heavy. You can acknowledge your past successes and look with hope to the future for the solutions that you’re going to find.