Stop Feeling Stuck: A Simple Problem-Solving Process Explained

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 281. When I mention the word problem, what comes to mind? What comes into your body? Do you start to feel fearful? Do you feel like your teeth are starting to clench? If that is you, or if you have a completely different relationship with the word and concept of a problem. I invite you to listen to today's episode in which I discuss somewhat refreshing way to look at the concept of a problem. How do we decide we're going to face a problem head on? How do we decide that our resistance to solving the problem is no longer needed? How do we make this entire process of moving from feeling stuck and maybe even a little bit fearful to moving into action very simple, very doable, very reasonable and effective. Let's go listen to this episode where I share my problem busting framework with you in very simple steps. Look forward to sharing it with you now. Hi, I'm Dr.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:16]:
Christine Li and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast. Hello. Hello. I'm so excited about today's episode because the topic which is how to solve problems is the topic that is on my mind the most.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:08]:
I'm always trying to figure out how to solve problems my own and the problems that my clients bring to me and share with me. And I think it's high time I shared my ideas about how to solve problems with you. We're going to start with the problem framework and then we're going to move into the efficiency and efficacy framework. And these two frameworks taken together should help you to take some action in your current situation that might be feeling problematic for you. You're going to see that you do have options when you are feeling stuck in the middle of a problem or two. So let's start by getting pen and paper. This is that kind of episode. And if you happen to be driving or on the treadmill right now or doing something where you can't do the pen and paper route, I invite you to keep listening because you're going to get the message.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:14]:
And then when you get home or to your desk or to your office, you can then get the pen and paper out. And you will quickly be able to recount what we're talking about in this episode and jot down some ideas about problems that will help you to move through them. So for those of you who have pen and paper now, let's go. The first thing I want you to do is to think for a second about two or three problems that you currently have in your life. Think about two or three problems that you currently have in your life. It might take you a millisecond to think of two or three. You might be also thinking, well, I have 50 problems. What do you mean, two or three? But I suggest you just extract two or three from that list of 50 and write those two or three down.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:06]:
And then there's another camp of you who might be thinking, I need to think about this. I need to think. What would I call a problem in my life? And do I have two or three? And no matter which camp you're in, I want you to just jot down two or three topics to think about. Now, the second step, now that you've got those two or three jotted down, is I want you to select just one of those problems to focus on for this exercise. It doesn't matter if it's big or small. It doesn't matter if it is really stressful or not stressful at all. Does not matter. I just want you to focus on one.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:48]:
And this already should be causing you to feel like you have a bit more oomph towards solving the problem. Because when we get ourselves to focus mindfully and consciously on one thing, we end up eliminating all the things that could be overwhelming to us, like thinking that we have 50 problems. That feels overwhelming. Just saying that. So imagine being saddled with 50 problems and feeling like you have no focus. So in some ways, the first step is to regain your focus. Decide what you're going to focus on. And the only requirement for this one is that you consider it a problem currently.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:38]:
Now, this next phase of the problem framework is we're going to ask a set of questions to move yourselves out of the problem framework. That means you're just going to decide. I'm going to dig deeper into what is going on. So I don't feel as stuck or as scared or as overwhelmed or as burdened as I do now by the problem. So the first question is, what about this situation constitutes a problem for me? Again, what about this Situation constitutes a problem for me. I would give you some examples about how to answer that question, but I have a feeling that your problem is specific to your situation, so I'm going to have you handle that. What comes to mind? Is it that it feels daunting? Is it that it feels like you don't have the expertise? I said I wasn't going to give you some examples, but I just gave you two. But be honest with yourself and it's like a journal exercise here.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:45]:
So it's all for you, it's all private. So decide what is problematic for me about this situation and then ask yourself the second question. How do you feel about the problem? Are your feelings rational? Are your feelings completely outsized and causing you to feel distracted from your day to day responsibilities? I don't know what the situation is, but I would love for you to jot down some reflections about how you feel about the problem currently. That should help you to tease apart what is the actual thing that you're facing and what are you feeling. The third question I would love for you to journal on is have you been feeling like you must procrastinate on actually dealing with the problem? For this one, I would have you rate yourself on a scale of one to ten. Ten being I am completely procrastinating a hundred percent and one could be no. I feel like I would want to solve it as soon as possible if I knew how. Reflect on that with question number four.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:58]:
If you are feeling like procrastinating, let yourself write down what is the category of my delay. Is it that you have so many floating problems you feel like you need to procrastinate? Is it the fact that you feel like you don't have time right now that makes you procrastinate? Is it the feeling that you don't know what to do that makes you feel like you can't take any steps? Is it the feeling that you think that this situation might be hopeless or really difficult? Is it that you feel like you don't have the energy or the physical bandwidth, the emotional bandwidth to handle this problem? Is it that you would need to communicate with someone to solve the problem and you feel afraid or anxious or awkward about starting that conversation? It could be anything. Because procrastination is something that's almost always available to us. But we come to it through different routes. We come to it through overwhelm, through time lack, through feeling awkward, feeling hopeless. All these situations in life can lead us to feel like we have to stop dead in our tracks. But I'M telling you to review your current situation so you don't feel like you are just stuck there dead in your tracks, because we really are never fully stuck. We can feel emotionally stuck, but I think that's temporary.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:34]:
It typically always is. And so you want to remind yourself, oh, there are reasons I feel this way. And I'm going to review those reasons because by reviewing these reasons, I gain mastery over myself, I regain control over my operating system. It's like a reboot. And you're going to see, oh, here's my current issue, here's what I'm feeling about it, here's how I might be procrastinating on it, and here's why. That is what I consider the problem framework. Now we're going to shift towards getting out of the problem framework and being immersed in the problem. And we're going to move into the efficiency and efficacy part of the framework, which feels more lively.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:23]:
Just by my describing the names of these frameworks, you simply want to feel good and powerful and able to move. Because we want to know at the very beginning that problems are solvable. You wouldn't be calling them problems if there weren't solutions, because things that don't have solutions, we typically don't call it problems. So for every problem there is a solution. Remind yourself of that as you move into the exercises in the efficiency and efficacy framework. The first part is I want you to remember to focus on one problem at a time and the one you selected, maybe it has a deadline that's approaching, maybe it's has a really big payoff for you somehow, whether it be financially or in opportunities or in freedom of time. I don't know what it is for you, but pick a good problem that is juicy for yourself because you're going to have great results and you want to be able to look forward to the results of solving your problem. So the first part of being more efficient and efficacious is to decide again what you want to focus on.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:47]:
The second part of this framework is you want to decide what is the one action you could take that you would say would be able to trigger the release of that feeling of stagnation, inertia, avoidance, procrastination? There's probably something that you could do right now to do that. Is it writing down a schedule of events before you get to your goal? Is it taking a walk in the park to release the anxiety you feel? Is it writing something down on your calendar? Is it booking an appointment? Whatever it is, figure out one small, doable, reasonable Action step to help you move through the problem energy and release that stagnation that you've been sitting in. The third step is you want to clear your fears. Because sometimes, even when we have action steps and we have desire to get out of the stagnation, the fear still hangs around. So what do we do there? We want to examine what your fears are about. Typically, fear lurks in our problem setup, causing us to feel like it's too dangerous to move forward. There's something that we might run into that we really don't want to face. And so you want to decide to explore the beliefs that are behind the fears.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:24]:
Fears are emotional, but every emotion has a thought behind it. So is it something like, I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable, I'm not ready. It's that kind of thought that triggers the fear, that triggers you to feel like you can't move forward, like you're blocked. So clear your fears. Decide that even if you don't feel ready, you can still take one action step. That's a great example. It's probably the simplest, most powerful way to get over anything is to decide you don't need to feel ready before having an impact on the situation, before changing the situation. Because there's a huge difference between being in action and being inert.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:11]:
Not moving, sitting still, sitting in your office chair, not doing anything. But stressing. Stressing doesn't get you anywhere, gets you more stress. But when you take action, you release, you move forward, you get information, you change yourself by becoming an action taker instead of the inert person. Okay, we don't want to have inert inertia energy. We want to have actual energy. So face your fears. It will be okay, I promise.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:43]:
Step number four, when you're in action, I want you to get clear about what the situation holds for you. Now, typically when we're thinking about problems and not taking action, we only have a certain level view into what could happen. But once you take that first action step, typically what happens is the rest of the situation unfolds in front of you. You start to see what might be some challenges, you start to see what might be the quicker solutions through. You start to see how much time you're actually going to need. You start moving into reality, into the reality of time and how much energy you're going to need. And what happens then is your resistance tends to go away because you're in action mode. You've got more motivation now that you've started.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:36]:
You've got more energy because you've cleared your fears. Resistance, turns out, oftentimes is the original problem. After all we've been thinking, that is, it is the person or the opportunity or the responsibility that is the problem. But really, because we're such great action takers and magical light beings also typically what is the actual problem is our resistance. So that is a little bit of the secret sauce of this framework. When you see, oh, all I need to do is master my own feelings, beliefs and energy and then I can do anything. You are much more inclined to say, no more resistance. I don't have time for resistance because I want to get more things off my plate into my life.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:31]:
I want the problems cleared away. I want to see that I don't even have to call things problems anymore. And that's a great shortcut to seeing the action path forward. You want that kind of energy. Resistance energy is stressful and not so fun. The energy of moving forward and being in your full self. That's really fun and I wish that for each of you. I hope you run and apply these frameworks in your life.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:03]:
Starting today or as soon as you've got that pen and paper and the paper all filled out, I want you to see that these principles work. That action really is healing, that you are powerful. And I never, ever, ever want you to forget these principles because they're really, really helpful. And if you would like a free download to remind you of what I've said in this episode to remind you of the problem solution framework, I invite you to go to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/solution. Again, it's maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/solution. It'll take you a minute to fill out your name and email address and you'll get the free download within the minute, I believe. And I look forward to sharing that download with you and next week's episode will be coming soon enough. I will see you then. Thanks for being with me today.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:03]:
Bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also Visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes and all the resources we mention on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name Procrastination Coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you been listening to and let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:45]:
Talk to you soon.