Tag: solutions

On Activism

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I consider myself to be an activist. But I often find people are so hostile towards me and others like me. When I am only trying to help change things for the better, why is there such a negative response from people? Why is it so hard to convince them to join in on the fight?

Sincerely,

Pro Activist

Dear PA,

One important thing is you should never identify yourself as an activist. In fact, you should never identify yourself as any one particular group.

The reason I say this is because the moment you start saying “I am ____”, you immediately draw a boundary for yourself. You create walls around you and inevitably by deciding you are one thing, you close yourself off to other possibilities.

Are you capable of doing all the things an activist does without identifying as one, without needing the label? If you paint every day but don’t label yourself as a painter, does it make you any less of one?

I am not saying stop doing your activism. I am simply saying forget being an activist. Just do your activism. You will see, by dropping the identity, you allow room for others to enter your world.

But by labeling yourself as an activist, you are separating yourself from everyone else. You are declaring yourself an activist, and want others to wake up and join you. Can you really blame people for not wanting to suddenly drop everything they’ve known to join in?

Look at the amount of push back you’ve received. In many ways, it can be social suicide to take on the identity of an activist. The only people who you can associate with are other activists. But putting people in petri dishes will never change the world. It will only give you the illusion that things are better.

If you truly want people to join in, then the only way is to include them. If you try to conquer them via arguments and data and other things, it may work on a few. But if you include them, aim to understand what is in the way for them, and help them to overcome that – then you will see real progress.

It’s far easier to just vilify people. When someone doesn’t perform by your values, then they are wrong. Please see, by your standards, the entire world is failing. Not a single person has ever met your expectations. Are you really going to fix the entire world by fighting them?

It is more difficult, but more effective, to aim for individual change. Yes it takes longer. But the people who join in are not doing so out of pressure, or to please you, or out of fear, or some other negative motivation. They are doing so out of their own realization, their own compassion.

The world does not need more people with strong beliefs fighting everyone who doesn’t believe the same. History is built on the many corpses of such thinking. It doesn’t matter how morally correct your argument is. The same thinking that created this world’s problems will not fix it!

So let go of your beliefs in your righteous cause. Let go of this idea that you are in some war to fight others and win them over to your side.

First and foremost, lead by example. Share with others, include others. Practice compassion. Give people an opening into your way of thinking, don’t bludgeon them over the head with it.

Ultimately, it is true there are a lot of very serious problems facing the world today. I understand the sense of urgency and fervor with which activists fight. But it is misplaced. Put that same intensity into including others rather than fighting them. The time is dire for it!

It is important that people aim to make the world better for future generations. But you must find solutions that work in today’s world. You must find solutions that work for everyone, especially the people you see as against you. A solution that works for some and not all is no solution, it is injustice.

This world is not just for you and people who think like you. It is for everyone, even those who you don’t like. The world is full of people who don’t think the way you do. What to do with them, exile them all as wrong and work towards your solution? It is wishful thinking.

Transformation of the world won’t come through fighting. It will only come through inclusion. Don’t lose the activism spirit! Just put it in the right direction. The world needs people willing to act.

Don’t distract yourself with adversarial ideas. All that will happen is you will think you are making a difference, but you will push so many people away that one day they gather and fight back even harder.

Activism over being an activist! Inclusion over conquering! Change that, and all this hostility you feel will subside.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

On Finding Solutions

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

There’s a lot of problems facing the future of humanity and I have become very discouraged. Governments all seem so corrupt and unwilling to do anything but help the most wealthy and privileged. Why is it so hard for them to take action? Is it really just greed?

Sincerely,

Govern Mental

Dear GM,

It is true there are a lot of problems facing the world. Humanity has grown to such numbers and continues to grow that we have put tremendous strain on this planet, ourselves, and other creatures.

However, no matter what the situation is in life, there is always some action that can be taken. There are always solutions. What you are asking is “Why doesn’t someone else solve all these problems for us?”

Unless a solution works for all parties involved, it is not a solution. It will always create imbalance and people will always seek ways to deeply exploit those imbalances. This isn’t greed or right or wrong. It is simply how we are. Whenever a human is any situation, they always seek to break past it’s limitations. They look for openings to grow.

The only thing is, we have been going about our survival as a species with very little consciousness. It mostly happens by accident, and as a result, we see those imbalances everywhere. Now, because the world is more connected than ever and our population is so large, it is in our face much more.

So you might argue that’s why we elect our governments – so that they can create that conscious plan. But if you want true governance, then you must be involved.

Tell me, has there ever been a government that has fixes everything alone? When things were difficult, when things were easy, did they do it all? Are they ever successful?

So what makes you think all of a sudden this government is going to do it? You are living in a fantasy land because it’s convenient. If you always have someone to point the finger and blame, you never have to lift a finger.

I want you to understand that in everyone’s own mind, they have a story, and they are the hero. You are the hero of your story, and that politician or whatever is in theirs as well. Governments are not making some calculated effort to destroy the world because they want to be evil.

Yes, money is a huge factor in all of this. But that is not a bad thing. The only issue is we have structured our system in such a way that there are too few with too much and too many with too little.

This is where all the anger and resentment comes from. You can point your finger at the government or the rich man or the corporation and blame them. You may even be justified in it. But tell me, does that finger pointing in the long run solve anything?

Right now, if you live in North America, you are richer than the vast majority of people on this planet. They might look at you and wonder how you could earn even $20,000 a year and somehow still not have any to spare for people like them. To them, you are evil and not lifting a finger. But to you, you’re poor.

Blame gets us nowhere. You must work with what you have when you have it.

By setting aside differences and working together, with compassion and understanding, with willingness and openness – then only do real solutions happen.

If you truly want to help our future as a species, then you must seek win-win solutions. You must be inclusive, not exclusive.

There is no reason why ecology and economy can’t go hand in hand. I’m not talking about half-measures or compromises. I’m talking about building solutions that are sustainable and beneficial for everyone.

The solution has to work at all levels – for the companies, for the government, for the citizens, for the soil, the trees, the water, the air, the animals, the insects…all of it! Without exception.

If you want results, then you must learn to work with the governments of the day as they are. If you keep dreaming that “in 4 or 5 years when we re-elect, then our saviours will come”, you will be trapped in an endless cycle and by then in it will be too late to do anything. Anyway then you will have to work with what you have.

So take a look at the yourself. Take a look at your municipality, your community, your area, your nation, your planet! See where you are capable of creating solutions that work for all those interests. Then do the work.

You are uniquely qualified in some way, aren’t you? You can do something that helps everyone in a way that no one else can. It’s time to stop stifling your potential and capacity to help just because you are angry.

Turn that intensity into a desire to work together. Not because working together is the high ground or morally better. Simply because it is more effective at creating solutions.

It’s time now more than ever to work together, especially with those you blame. There are people right now all over the world doing just that. But more need to step beyond their anger if we truly want to change the course of humanity. Think and act win-win. Now is the time.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.

On Walls

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I feel as I am becoming more conscious in my life, I want to do more things to help people in this world. There are so many problems everywhere and it feels criminal to do nothing. But I am struggling as every time I try to help or take action, I am met with so many walls, both in the world and within people. How can I get past these walls and accomplish what I envision?

Sincerely,

Another Brick in the Wall

Dear ABITW,

I want you to understand that though your desire to help others may feel like you are doing the right thing, it is not coming from the right source. Right now, it is deeply rooted in your sense of identity, which is very limited.

Currently your identity sees you as the solution and everything else as the problem. You are the one to fix everything? There are no walls where you are seeing them. You have placed a wall between you and everything and are one side. Now you wonder why everywhere you look there is a wall.

When you see things like this and what’s worse you empower it with some belief that you are truly doing something that’s best for everyone, you are only going to cause a lot of trouble for the people and world around you. Why this is, is simply because you made your whole approach exclusive instead of inclusive.

Exclusivity means declaring “These are my boundaries. This is what I will include, this is what I won’t”. It is only putting up walls. Inclusivity means you have dropped your boundaries and will include whatever comes as it is. How are you to help people or this world if you won’t include them? How when you are behind a wall where no one can reach you?

So one thing is for you to start becoming more inclusive. No matter what way the world is or people are, you just include them. You don’t have to take any action. This is about the quality of inclusiveness you carry within.

Whatever life brings you, accept it, include it, and make the most of it. This is all you can ever do. Anything else you think you can do through exclusivity is just an illusion and will waste your time and energy.

It’s like this:

You wake up and find yourself in a totally enclosed square room. In front of you are two doors. The one on the left is open. The one and the right is locked and barred and nailed shut. But you wanna go through the door on the right for some reason.

So you put so much time and energy into opening it. You don’t have the keys, you don’t have a cutter, you don’t have a hammer – but somehow you think you’re going to open that door. Even if you did open the door, you would have to destroy it. It would be a destructive process, and it’s not even your door! It doesn’t belong to you!

Then, when you inevitably fail, you wonder “Why was this door so difficult to open, it may as well be a wall, it should be easier…”

Or you could just go through the open door.

Why would anyone choose to trouble themselves with a hopeless situation? You only keep finding walls in everyone and everything because you have something you are trying to figure out or prove within yourself. It’s not necessary or compassionate to use other people destructively as a means for your own growth.

This is why I say it’s all about your entanglement with your limited identity.

It is extremely important in life that you understand that results are not your concern. Your concern is only with the process. The process is the open door. The result is a closed door.

The result may or may not happen – that depends on how devoted you are to the process. But whether it happens or not is irrelevant because if you are totally involved in the process, something will result for sure.

You want the fruit but you don’t want the tree. Life doesn’t work that way.

But a process is always there, always available. Sure, you may not be able to solve all the worlds problems today or even tomorrow. But for sure, you are capable of doing something right now. If you aren’t so entangled with your walls, you will see what can be done and do it.

All we can do is what is possible in this moment. Existence have given you countless possibilities in every moment. But you find the one or two things that you cannot do and become obsessed with them and complain when they don’t work out.

There infinite open doors if you’d only look. Be sensible and go through open doors. Don’t try to break down what you see as walls. It is all a psychological game that is keeping you from seeing things the way they are.

Other people and society may have walls. That’s not your business. Look where there are openings. That is the only place where any results can happen. You don’t plant a seed in the concrete, you plant in the soil.

You don’t walk through walls, you walk through openings. Let go of your attachments to solving problems. Just find an opening and pour yourself into the process. You will see, more change will happen more quickly than when you were busting down walls.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Worry

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have an issue with worry. I am always worried about something. How can I stop worrying so much?

Worry Wart

Dear WW,

Worry gives you something to do, but it never actually accomplishes anything. You worry because you are unsure of what life might bring. In an effort to avoid that uncertainty, all that happens is you don’t live.

It is hard for people to accept that they cannot control life. People, situations, and time are all outside of your control. They never go the way you want. Once in a while, they may happen somewhat like you hoped. But never 100%, and never because you were in total control.

We are not in charge of what hand we are dealt. Only for what we do with what we are given. Life brings us each moment without prejudice. But I want you to understand, you won’t always be given a moment.

What I am saying is that you are mortal. There will come a time where you experience your last moment on this planet. You may think it’s somewhere off in the future, but the reality is, you never know. Today could be that last day. Do you truly want to waste it worrying?

Worry will not change the outcome. It will only change your experience of life and make it worse. The one thing that is absolutely 100% in your control, which is your inner experience, you throw away every time you worry.

So you can’t control the outside. Then you feel the next step is to worry about it. Now you have made the inside a problem too. The outside was uncertain, and it could go any way, even ways you can’t imagine. But the inside world, which should be entirely up to you – any possibility of it being pleasant vanishes with worry.

Some people like to imagine “I worry because I care” or “I worry because I see things clearly”. It is not true.

Worry has no use. If it was at least useful, we could claim that there was a point to it. But what is the point in endlessly fixating on problems? Does it solve them?

In the aspect of caring, does it increase your compassion or does it increase your judgment? In the aspect of clarity, does it enhance your perception or does it limit your perception?

No, if you truly cared, then you could always focus on that compassion. Even if you don’t take any action, at least within yourself you can feel for someone else’s struggle. This is not a useless exercise; it makes you more inclusive.

If you truly wanted clarity, then you would understand something very simple: that you cannot sit in your mind and imagine something and then pretend it’s true. It doesn’t matter how much data you’ve gathered.

If you are worried about yourself or someone else, the only way to gain clarity is to admit that you don’t understand everything. Then only will you seek and will truth arise. You can’t understand anything with a conclusion drawn. Worrying is just drawing more and more conclusions.

Worry is something that you manufacture. You base it on a whole bunch of psychological accumulation that has no basis in reality. It’s time to move out of illusion.

Don’t try to get rid of worry. It won’t work. The nature of your mind is that whatever you tell it, whether it’s to do something or not to do something, it will do.

Instead, simply just start accepting things as they are. Be such a way that whatever life  brings you, even if initially you react with worry, take a step back and embrace it, include it, and learn from it. Accept everything that comes in life.

You see, what may or may not happen in life is not a question of good or bad. There is no such thing as a good or bad moment. There is just this moment. If you are wise, you will take the moment as a precious gift and make your experience of it as pleasant as possible. For now, that means dissolving your worry by accepting things as they come.

But how to accept the moment as it is? It’s not about being perfect. Simply, each moment just remind yourself that the next moment is not a guarantee. Anyway that is the truth. If you go on like this, constantly remembering that life is sacred and you are mortal, accepting what comes will be natural.

Still maybe you are not convinced. Why accept things that are unpleasant? They are not unpleasant, but for the sake of argument, I’ll agree with you. The reality is, for a tree to bear fruit, it first had to go through literal shit, didn’t it? Shit certainly doesn’t smell or taste like an apple. But somehow, an apple comes.

Like this, stop worrying about what life brings you. Stop expecting this fruit or that fruit. Just whatever life brings, remember that even though things might seem worth worrying about now, it could be the soil from which something beautiful grows.

See, it’s really your choice. If you go on worrying, nothing ever takes root. You will miss every opportunity for your life to bear fruit because you are so worried about what may or may not happen. If it happens you suffer, if it doesn’t happen you suffer.

But if you just take life as it is, you will be astonished how many fruits you were missing out on, and how each moment is bursting with them.

Or as the song goes “Don’t worry. Be Happy!”

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Problem Solving

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

Life lately has been very challenging. There are so many problems that pop up in work, friendships, my love life…I often don’t feel smart enough to handle all the problems. I feel like I say or do the wrong thing. How do I become a better problem solver?

Sincerely,

Problem Child

Dear PC,

Believe me when I tell you that even the smartest people in your life say and do the “wrong” things and can be bad at solving problems. It is not going to help you to compare yourself to others. This is not about your skill level at problem solving compared to someone else.

There is no point in getting better at solving problems if you keep on creating them. Your whole life will just be one problem after another. Even if you solve every single one, this is no way to live and will drain you. You need to shift your focus inward, not outward.

The reality is there are no problems. There are only opportunities. You must start making this distinction in your life, otherwise only one outcome is inevitable: you will be the biggest problem in your own life.

Too many people are the biggest problem in their own life. Their own mind, their own body, their own emotions, everything about them is not working for them! You cannot control what goes on around you 100%. You never can. If everything around you is not working the way you want, at least you should!

Don’t be part of the problem in your life. Be the solution.

Let’s say you have a fight with your partner. You can either treat this as an opportunity to learn and grow with each other, or you can try to solve the surface level problem – whatever you were fighting about.

How many times in your life have you had a quarrel with someone and you can’t even remember what it was about? If you continue to just deal with the tip of the iceberg, when the full glacier reveals itself to you, you will feel daunted. In this example, if you don’t learn to better communicate, you cannot grow as a couple. Forget the content of the quarrel. Get to the root of the issue: learn to see life as opportunity.

At the smallest sign of inconvenience or discomfort in life you have learned to treat it as a problem. You are treating existence as though in this moment, one tiny challenge you face means your life is imperfect. Your life is fine the way it is. The outside world does not need you to fix it until you first work on yourself.

Everything in this existence is keeping you here – the air, the planet, your very body and mind, all here, functioning! This is not something you should take for granted. With this great gift, you choose to waste your time looking at things as problems?

If you truly understood that your time here is ever so brief, you would not hesitate to learn and grow. You would strive to make each moment as beautiful as you can for yourself and those around you. If you view life from this lens, it does not matter if a problem comes your way or a gift comes your way – you will see it all as a great gift and make the most out of what you are given.

From this space of willingness to learn and grow, tell me, do I need to tell you to be smarter? Or to be a better problem solver? You will naturally strive to seize opportunities, especially in challenging times. In other words, you will act with common sense. What you can do you will do, and what you cannot alone do you will seek help for.

See, it is not a matter of your skill with problems. Getting better at solving problems will not make your life more beautiful in the long run. You are only practicing seeing life as a problem this way, and you will just keep seeing more and more until your whole life is problem. See life as a precious gift. Use this gift to grow in each moment.

So don’t get in the way of your own ultimate happiness by focusing on your surroundings and tinkering with them. If you do this and expect your inner nature to change, you are wasting time. None of the outside belongs to you. Only what you have inside is yours, and only for a flicker of time.

You stop being the problem in your life. Practice learning and growing. That is the only solution.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.