How to Instantly Solve all Your Life Problems in One Go

Get over these troubling emotions and get back your vitality.

If you are currently consumed by any negative emotions like anger, guilt, hopelessness, and you feel like they are sucking your life out of you, this article is my gift for you, and for my future self who feels emotionally stuck again.

I don’t know about you, but many of my negative emotions come from the comparison traps.

You know, you go on social media, and you are just constantly bombarded with all these feeds that make you feel less attractive, less successful and less whatever.

I seldom feel jealous of those people, but I can’t help but wonder, as a self-identified capable woman, how come I am not there yet? How come I am not travelling in my private jet yet? Like why?

I. First, Ask Yourself — Is There Really a Problem?

There may be a zillion sources of your stress, but to be honest to yourself, those problems are only problems because you interpret them so.

And I am almost 100% sure, ok maybe 99% sure, these problems you are having now are not life-threatening and are minuscule in reality.

Ask yourself, will this issue matter in the coming three years, five years or even just in the coming one month.

I read this article about the lifespan of an average American, which I think can be compared to mine because the States and Hong Kong are both pretty developed.

And the article says if we subtract the time we spend on obligations like work and basic physical needs like sleep, we might only have around 17.5 years left in our lives.

17.5 years…scary…I don’t know about you, but I have no interest in letting non-senses affect my sense of well-being when I am aware of this.

So, relax and let go of those tiny andunnecessary things that stress you out and stop you from enjoying your precious little life.

II. Detach Your Thoughts and Feelings from the Circumstances

Life would be so much easier if we could watch our problems objectively without being lost in them.

This is the definition of inner freedom in the book “The Untethered Soul”. I love love love this book, and I go back to it often, even when I am emotionally stable. In it, Michael A. Singer says,

If you’re willing to be objective and watch all your thoughts, you will see that the vast majority of them have no relevance. They have no effect on anything on anybody, except you.

One of the self-coaching exercises I have been using is the CTFAR Model from the Life Coach School.

The C stands for Circumstance, T stands for Thoughts, F stands for Feelings, A stands for Actions, and R stands for Results.

This is how it works. First, you identify the circumstance, which is a fact. For example — you may feel like you hate your job and are stuck, but this is not a fact. The truth is you have a job. And your current thought may be this job is a waste of my potential, and your feelings may be frustration and hopelessness.

These kinds of thoughts and feelings would likely lead to whining and complaints, which literally would create no meaningful results for your life.

To separate yourself from the circumstance or the fact, rewrite your T and F by choosing empowering thoughts that lead to empowering feelings.

For example, your new thought will be “I deliver results in whatever circumstance”, and your new feelings will be empowerment; these thoughts and feelings will lead to positive actions such as you becoming aware of the value you deliver in your job and improving them, and your new result will be you excelling at your job.

III. Personify Your Mental Chatters and Give that Voice a Name

I know, even if you have tried the self-coaching exercise, you may still be experiencing those troubling emotions.

Those inner conflicts are real.

Also, what should you do when you need to quickly and objectively observe your mental chatter because you are in that situation that requires your immediate responses.

Well, that requires some upfront work, so let’s do that now.

To detach yourself from that voice, this is sometimes serving you and sometimes not, pretend this voice comes from a person outside of you, and imagine the whole personality for this person.

Well, introducing my psyche, my alter ego, Molly.

Now, I know you want to ask this person to shut up, but we all know it’s not going to work. Because we all know that the more we want to resist something, the more energy we put into that thing.

So instead of trying to control this person and seeing Molly as my enemy whom I want to control, I make Molly my best friend, because after all, Molly is the person I have been spending my whole life with.

Sometimes Molly tells me I am fantastic and the world is mine, and other times she tells me I am nothing and I have over-estimated myself.

The more time I have learnt to observe what she tells me, the more I realise how conflicted she is. And I am like, “girl, please get yourself together…”

But now, instead of having another inner conflict with her, I have learnt to accept and acknowledge her by saying, here is Molly talking again, or here is this thought or feeling again, and learning to detach myself from this voice so I can regain the clarity I need to make the mature responses to a situation.

Being aware of these opinionated voices is the first step to diffusing those feelings associated with them.

Besides taking a deep breath and asking yourself questions such as, “what is happening and how do I feel now,” it is also helpful to engage in activities that bring out your positive emotions, such as cooking, reading, shopping etc.

IV. Accept that You Can’t, and There is No Point to, Figure Out Everything

As Micheal A. Singer says in “The Untethered Soul”,

When you finally realised you, or your mind, are the only reason for your problems, you will break your habit of trying to fix people or things outside and instead learn to let go of that part of you that seems never to get satisfied.

One hard but comforting truth is that since we can never figure out why things happened that way or people behaved that way, we may accept that it is not our job to figure everything out.

I’m not sure about you, but this acknowledgement has freed my mind and saved a lot of my mental energies.

We have no power to fix or change anyone or any situation with 100% certainty; the only meaningful changes are those we bring to ourselves.

So may I ask you to shift your focus back to yourself and make changes for the better.

V. Commit to Prioritising Growth

As much as I think “Letting go” of those unhealthy emotions is helpful, that’s also easier said than done.

Of course, I have practised meditation and mantras to let go of those emotions.

Yet to me, the more productive approach is actually to ask myself, are these emotions supporting my personal growth?

The moment I realise they are not, I take initiatives, like doing self-coaching exercises, to adopt more positive thoughts that lead to positive actions and results.

The key here is that you need to make that commitment with yourself and choose growth for yourself. Because I know, sometimes we find it romantic to indulge in our negative emotions, but it is neither romantic nor sexy really.

When you prioritise growth, you will see the world differently and react differently.

Making that commitment to yourself will also give you back your power.