Why thinking doesn’t always solve the problem
1.
Have you ever tried to think your way out of a problem? Usually, it’s not a bad idea. It’s especially effective when you have control over the situation, your role is clear and you’re motivated— planning your next trip, compiling a report for work, figuring out the best way to tackle a creative project.
But we’re often given problems that don’t have apparent, logical solutions.
For example, you have to do a presentation for work. You've done all you can do but still get an anxious feeling and have trouble sleeping for several nights. You want to get out of it, but you have to suck it up.
Or you’re at a family Christmas dinner and get upset with uncle Jim for always pushing your buttons. His personality can’t easily be changed, and you sort of just have to put up with it.
Or maybe you have a bunch of different roles – parent, partner, your job, hobbies, volunteer, friend. When you put effort into one, the others suffer, and it always seems like you’re neglecting one area. There’s no balance that makes you feel alright.
There isn’t a productivity hack or mental model that can be applied here. Some situations actually get worse with more thinking. Trying to untangle the problem with more thinking somehow doesn’t seem to work and takes you to a dead end, or makes it worse.
The Chinese finger trap tightens its grip. The loops and sub-loops of your mind spin faster and faster, a circular hell with no end. When we treat our life as a series of Rubik’s cubes to crack – dammit, if I could just get those two reds to line up — we can overemphasize the role of thinking and underplay the importance of something much deeper — emotions.
2.
I believe that focusing and untangling our feelings is an alternative to this thinking-first habit. Instead of jumping into problem-solving mode with questions like, “How do I solve this? What are my options? What are the pros and cons?” we can ask something like, “How do I feel about this? When have I felt this before? What will make me feel better or worse?”
When my wife comes home and shares the day’s trials and tribulations, the solutions to her problems become glaringly obvious to me. I can’t help but offer my unsolicited advice. Chickity-check yo’ self before you wreck yo’ self. This is rarely what she wants, and my advice is followed by an annoyed glare and the very true declaration, “You’re not listening to me!”
While I’m not 100% there yet, I am getting better at slowing down before immediately offering advice. Sometimes, of course, people do want to hear your opinion. It’s useful to sometimes ask what the other person needs right now. A good practice is to ask, “What kind of support are you looking for right now?” They could respond with, “Yeah, I just need to vent a bit.” Or maybe they really are looking for ideas and solutions. It’s best to clarify.
The weekly meditation circle that I started recently has proven to be good practice for this. At the end of each session, people share their experience. Our rule in the group is to not offer advice or solutions, but to just listen. I didn’t understand why this was so powerful until I realized that most of the time, especially at work, we’re going around trying to solve problems. It’s refreshing to just sit and listen.
3.
Let me share another personal example where I prioritized changing my feelings over trying to solve the problem with thinking.
I was recently involved in planning a big event with a friend of mine. We underestimated the size of the project, and it quickly turned into a big, hairy problem that began to occupy every waking moment of my life. Even after planning as much as we could given our resources and timeline, I didn’t feel at ease. The accumulated stress of the whole situation came bubbling up and caused me to go into fight-or-flight mode. I had physical symptoms like shortened breath and a mind full of thoughts like Mexican jumping beans.
There was no extra planning or conversation that could have made me feel better. I was living in a world clinging to thin air, frustrated at the whole process (past) and worried about the outcome (future). These were illusions and both outside of my control. Peace would not come from contemplating them more than I already had, but by letting them go. And it would certainly not come from doing more.
My first action wasn’t to escape these feelings (like with alcohol), but to sit with them. Yes, meditation. I pulled up some free insight and metta meditations on the Insight Timer app, and sat. The space started to widen between my anxious thoughts, and I slowly shifted from a feeling of being contracted to being more open and spacious. My emotions and thoughts, like the clouds, drifted on until I could eventually see the blue sky. The emotions didn’t go away, but I began to feel space between those stressors that were occupying my mind.
The second action was to reduce my accumulated stress. Physical exercise does wonders, so I did a few dozen pushups, squats, and finished with a cold bath with about 30kgs of ice from the local 7/11 (since then, they have started limiting me to 10kg of ice since I always clear them out). I also practiced a few breathing exercises, including the Wim Hoff Method. The tension in my mind and shoulders began to melt away. The meditation helped me reframe my relationship to my emotions, and the physical exercise helped me calm down and just chill the fuck out.
This two-pronged approach resulted in a totally new perspective and a feeling of space, freedom and joy. And it required precisely no extra thinking related to the actual event, apart from my decision to take those actions. This in turn allowed me to show up to the event with a clear head.
Do you see that it was precisely the absence of more thinking that I needed, and rather more space between how I was relating to myself and my emotions? Nothing external had changed.
When we change how we relate to our emotions, we can solve our problems without thinking. Of course, there’s an added benefit here: feeling better often leads to a clarity of thought, and that in turn can lead to better decisions. So it sort of works in a positive loop.
This is all to say that changing our feelings, not our thoughts, is what I’ve found solves problems which at first have no apparent solutions.
4.
I’ve been meditating for a few years now. One of the main meditations I do is a mindfulness body scanning technique. For the sake of simplicity let’s say that it works something like this:
First, I scan my body from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. I take note of how each part of my body feels (tingling in my hands, numbness in my leg, tension in my chest, etc…). And second, very crucially, I make a note of when I am being reactive — getting clingy or trying to run away from a thought. I catch myself if I am being critical or judgmental or frustrated, and try my best to take a more gentle view and keep a balanced mind.
With time and practice (and especially after a meditation retreat), a wonderful thing began to happen. When I did this technique over and over and without reacting and clinging to what is popping up, I found that, in turn, I stopped immediately reacting to my emotions. Somehow, my body is connected to my emotions at a much deeper level than I thought. A space began to open up that allowed me to see when a thought was popping up, when an emotion was surfacing, and noticing it without getting lost in it. A middle ground was starting to develop.
In time, a heavy weight started to lift off my shoulders. I became a happier person, less judgy and less reactive. Back in day to day life, when something difficult or tense happened, instead of basking in it for hours, I let it go. It wasn’t like I had indestructible armor that deflected all incoming thoughts and emotions, but at least my reactions didn’t last as long, and I had a bit more humor around my own seemingly important issues.
The analogy of a heavy boulder is useful here. A boulder may weight a shit-ton, but you don’t actually have to lift it. You can walk around it, look at it, and observe it from different angles. You don’t have to lift it. The thoughts and emotions we experience are like this boulder, and we often feel the need to burden ourselves with their weight, when we don’t actually need to. This technique and others that allowed me to walk around the boulder and bring me “into my body,” have been game changers for me.
Over time, I became more attuned to my emotions, and an oh-so Sensitive Dude.
But perhaps hearing about my meditation experience isn’t convincing. The idea of observing your body as a release for your emotions seems counterintuitive or strange. How is it that by simply observing my body, in a sort of neutral way, that I can suddenly feel more free, light, and less attached?
5.
For a long time now, Buddhists have known that our emotions are stored in our bodies. After 2,500 years, science is finally catching up to this ancient wisdom.
A study out of Finland mapped our emotions to bodily sensations. They found that regardless of sex, race, culture and geography, we more or less experience many of our core emotions in the same parts of our body.
“Sensations in the upper limbs were most prominent in approach-oriented emotions, anger and happiness, whereas sensations of decreased limb activity were a defining feature of sadness [i.e, cold feet]. Sensations in the digestive system and around the throat region were mainly found in disgust. In contrast with all of the other emotions, happiness was associated with enhanced sensations all over the body…”
You already know that your emotions are stored in your body, even if it’s not something you think about. To experience tension or anxiety, watch this movie clip from the Tunnel of Terror scene in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (warning, you might feel anxious!). You’ll likely feel tense from Gene Wilder’s performance – and maybe smile a bit – and if you pay attention you can perhaps feel this emotion in your chest and stomach area.
Maybe skip that clip if you have too much anxiety in your life. Here’s something a little bit more uplifting: the final musical scene of 40-Year Old Virgin. As you watch this, you might experience lightness and tingling in your head, hands and chest.
The Finland study is significant because it shows that our bodies, not just what’s in our minds, is at the core of emotional experience. It means that our bodies play critical roles in emotional processing. Regulating our emotions is connected to, well, pretty much everything important in our lives, since we measure the quality of our lives by how we feel.
The impact of my meditation practice starts to make more sense now. When I was observing and accepting the sensations in my body, I wasn’t just taking note of the physical senses like tingling, numbness, itchiness, heat, cold, and so forth. Those sensations were actually connected to my emotions, and…Eureka!
Because emotions are in our body, by accepting, investigating, and not reacting to my bodily sensations, I was in turn teaching myself not to immediately react to my emotions.
“Everything you'll ever need to know is within you; the secrets of the universe are imprinted on the cells of your body.”— Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millman
This is all to say that our minds, bodies and emotions are extremely interconnected. Trying to compartmentalize problems or ignore problems doesn’t work, as they will eventually catch up to you.
Acknowledging and expressing our emotions can result in both mental and physical health, and not expressing them can result in illness. Our bodies are a gateway to our emotions.
6.
Many people live their lives in constant tension. They hold grudges, regrets, and frustrations. There are many ways to reduce stress, like going to the gym, playing sports, or going to the sauna, which I personally enjoy. These are absolutely a great way to get space between yourself and your emotions, and just to be mentally and physically healthy. Oftentimes, a run in the park will clear your mind and change your emotional state.
This strategy alone is not enough, though, otherwise every gym rat would have high emotional intelligence and a great sense of self-awareness. Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t the Dalai Lama, after all (but it’s funny to imagine). You can be physically healthy and active but still be largely caught up in your head. There’s a need to get deeper and to really understand how you're relating to your emotions, yourself and to others.
This means that the next time you’re stressed about a presentation, more preparation may not be the answer. You’re better off taking the time to find space and relax.
It means that when you’ve been thinking through a problem for days, that perhaps the problem isn’t actually an intellectual one, but an emotional one. Perhaps the solution requires you to change how you’re relating to yourself before the lightbulb goes off.
This means that frustration with a family member or colleague may not always have an immediate right or wrong answer, and thinking in terms of right or wrong ignores the many nuances of life. It could be better to just find a way to let it go.
When we find that peace of mind, we can shift our perspective and change how we see the world. And when you do actually feel a sense of space between the emotion itself, then you reduce the feeling of burden on yourself, and can in turn even come up with a better solution, if there even is one.
7.
As a final example let’s say your boss tells you that you need to do a presentation on short notice. You feel anxious, frustrated, and want to figure a way to get out of it. Maybe you can call in sick…But instead, you employ several techniques to skillfully deal with the situation.
Depending on how anxious you are, you might start with some high intensity exercise and a sauna session to calm the nerves. When you’re feeling a little bit better, you can start to explore your relationship to your emotions.
For example, you could try the RAIN technique popularized by Tara Brach, a gentle and very practical meditation. If you’re crunched on time, you can do a Clearing the Space exercise (‘the felt sense’) developed by Dr. Eugene Gendlin, which can quickly give you a feeling of spaciousness. Or, the body scan techniques I mentioned earlier (watch here), a metta loving kindness meditation (watch here), or a walking Zazen meditation.
You can also use the power of your breath. In the same Finnish study on emotions, they found that emotions were associated with changes in breathing and heart rate. This is one reason why many holotropic breathing techniques like the Wim Hoff method, Tummo, and kundalini yoga have an immediately noticeable influence on our mood.
With some of these mindfulness and breathwork practices, the clinging to thoughts and worries could go into a different direction. Your belief and assumption that your boss and others are the true cause of your suffering starts to slowly change. Lightness, openness, release of tension.
Perhaps, you realize in a moment of insight, there’s too many factors outside of your control: you can’t control the outcome of the presentation and what your boss will think, or what others in the room will say. You don’t just tell yourself this intellectually, but you actually feel that this is true.
You loosen up a bit, realizing that you can only do your best. You start to create space between you and your emotions, and the day is a little bit brighter. You start to feel better and decide to go to the presentation.