The Sense That “There is a Problem”

October 15th, 2024

Rather listen than read? Click here.

Yesterday I asked my team where I should be putting my efforts to help nurture The Welcoming Way.

On the surface, this seems like a reasonable question. I love Welcoming and find it immensely helpful, and I want to people to find it accessible, easy, and valuable. I was asking my team how I might do that best.

In response, one of my CoFounders and best friends, Sharon Cavanaugh, asked me the most loving question:

“Is there a feeling behind your question?”

I checked my body for tension, and she was absolutely right. There was a feeling.

So early this morning, with journal on lap and coffee in-hand, I approached that feeling to investigate.

“What is that?” I asked.

Then I just felt into the tension, waiting for some information. Some ideas came, and I wrote them down:

Maybe there is fear that if I don’t improve The Welcoming Way, people will leave?

Or maybe I’m afraid of failure, of letting people down and letting myself down.

Or maybe I’m doing something wrong. Maybe I’m sharing wrong? Should I be on Instagram? YouTube? Should I promote? Expand?

Or maybe our offerings are overwhelming. We have too many blog posts and recordings. Maybe people don’t know how to engage.

After each idea, I checked my body again, and the tension persisted. None of these possibilities felt like a bullseye.

In my experience, bullseyes have an “Ahhh” feeling. There is relaxing, a release. A sudden rush of movement where before there had been stuckness.

So I did what I know to do. I went back to the tension and just kept feeling it.

That is Welcoming: Simply letting feelings be what they are without trying to fix, change, get rid of, or even attach to them.

“But I am trying to get rid of this feeling!” I thought. “There is a sense of a problem and I’m trying to figure out what the problem is, so I can solve it, and not have to feel this tension anymore.”

And that’s when I hit my bullseye.

The tension is “the sense that there is a problem.”

Let me explain.

Let’s say you smell burning in your house. You’d start looking for the source: the stove, the washer, any electronics, the fireplace. You’d poke your nose outside to see if your neighbor is having a barbecue. In the case of physical sensing, this is a really wise thing to do.

But mental/emotional sensing can be different. While feelings may point to something that needs to be addressed, they may also be historic, habitual, or misleading.

I realized the tense feeling in my body was one I had associated with the thought “There is a problem” and the sneaky corollary thought “…or else I wouldn’t be feeling this way.”

So just like with the smell of burning, when I feel this particular tension, I begin to look for problems. In this case:

Maybe the Welcoming Way onboarding is unclear.
Maybe the content is overwhelming.
Maybe we don’t have a big enough community.
Maybe we aren’t focused enough on the community we do have.
Maybe… maybe… maybe.

On and on my mind groped for problems and—no surprise—the more it searched, the more it found, and the more tense I got. The more tension I felt, the more sure I was that there was definitely a problem. Or else I wouldn’t be feeling this way.

In this case, I was lucky my mind stayed focused on Welcoming, because other times I sense there is a problem I can start investigating my whole life: Maybe it’s my house? My boyfriend? My body? My friendships? My hobbies? My geography?

Will you please stop trying to fix yourself

What if the only “problem” is the belief that there is one?

Let’s say (hypothetically, of course) that I have a habit of believing that my life and I are not enough, exactly as we are. From that sense of insufficiency I could forever be chasing, fault-finding, and fixing.

If I don’t investigate that underlying belief in lack, I will feel “a sense of a problem”.

And then I start looking for problems.

And I will find them.

Thus proving my initial belief correct.

Oh, it’s a painful, tail-eating cycle. And a self-fulfilling prophecy.

My friend Michał (pronounced “Me-How”) recently shared some different ways he’s noticed that we (people) tend to prove to ourselves that we are right about something. It is a fascinating list so let me know if you’d like a separate post about it.

One of the ways, he suggests, we prove we are right is by using our feelings as proof.

If I am angry, I must have been wronged.
If I am lonely, I must be unworthy.
If I am scared, there must be a threat.

So in this case, I was using my feeling of tightness and constriction to prove there was a problem.

But what if there is no problem? What if the Welcoming Way and I are fine as we are, and if there is something to improve, life will let me know?

What if I don’t have to go running around trying to find and solve problems that might not even be there?

This is a scary proposition because it means relaxing a hypervigilance I have always believed I needed to feel safe and successful.

It can feel a lot like slacking. To a mind that has been ruthlessly addicted to finding problems, it would feel like slacking.

But trusting life isn’t the opposite of vigilance, it is just a different kind of vigilance.

Instead of looking to the mind for problems to solve, I begin paying much closer attention to life.

What are people saying? What are they asking for? What is working? How is a particular activity making me feel? What am I doing or saying that seems to light people up? Or light me up? Where is aliveness? Where is flow?

Speaking of flow… When I had the thought “Maybe this contraction in my body is just the sense that there is a problem,” I felt that “Ahh” feeling I had been looking for. I felt that opening and flow, that rush of movement where before there had been stuckness.

I was so excited that I picked up my pen and began to write. And here we are.

I have no idea yet how these ideas will land with you all. I know that thinking about these things, writing them down, and sharing them makes me feel passionate, excited, and alive.

Now, just like before, I could use those “alive feelings” as proof that “I’m really on to something here!”

… or I could drop that belief and just allow myself to love the feelings of passion, excitement, aliveness, and maybe, actually DARE to let that be enough.

Because what are we doing with all this problem-fixing anyway? Isn’t it aliveness we’re after? Harmony? Alignment?

So maybe I can finish writing this post, for the love of it. And not because it’s the most “leveraged” use of time. Maybe I can relax my grip on “more” and “better.”

Maybe I can just let this body, this mind, this world, this life be enough as it is.

And “the sense that there is a problem?” After checking that nothing is on fire, I can see it as a feeling that comes and goes. I don’t have to react to it with any more conviction than any other thought or feeling that might pass by in the ocean of awareness.

Limitations fixed typo

Thank you so much for reading.

PS. In the spirit of this post, if there is anything that would help you on your Welcoming journey, please send your ideas to hello@welcomingway.com.