A couple of months ago, pre covid-19, an acquaintance’s daughter was considering different options for college. Those thoughts seem pretty reasonable, right? Who wouldn’t consider all those variables when deciding a college to go to? Who wouldn’t consider financial reasons? Who wouldn’t think about the proximity of the college with living arrangements?

Well, while these thoughts seem very reasonable because of course, our mind has to go into a problem-solving mode when facing a problem, the challenge is that it could easily drive us into analysis-paralysis. Planning for solving a situation is one thing, but planning for solving a situation, over and over, it’s quite different.

Excessive amounts of problem-solving, over-preparing, and finding solutions to potential problems that “may or may not happen in the future” are another way of playing-it-safe when dealing with fears, worries, anxieties, and obsessions. You may wonder, how come?

Playing-it-safe are all those actions that we do to either approach a situation with half measurements or avoid it completely. So, as tricky as it sounds, problem-solving is a great tool if it drives action towards a particular goal and value but it’s also another thinking strategy that keeps us stuck for a long time.
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Here is how you may want to check if you’re into problem-solving mode as a playing-it-safe behavior.

​1. What are you trying to solve?​

Are you trying to solve a problem or a what-if scenario?

For instance, Mary is 33-years old and hasn’t filed her taxes for the last 9 years; when thinking about taking care of them, she usually sits down at her table, puts all the papers out there, then immediately feels a sense of dread and imagines that when she calls an accountant, she will be rejected. Next, she plans how she may respond to the accountant’s questions. Other times, she thinks that the State of Washington may give her not only a fee but also extend to her a criminal record because of delinquency on not paying taxes accordingly. Then Mary starts thinking of the steps she may need to take if that were to happen. On the weekends, Marys’s mind comes with thoughts about how she won’t ever get married because no one would understand why she didn’t pay taxes; so in response, she starts thinking of how she could explain to a potential romantic partner her difficulties with dealing with taxes.

In the above scenarios while paying taxes is a problem that Mary is facing, she’s also solving potential scenarios – what-if scenarios, but the outcome is that she stays in her head solving this situation.

So, it’s important for you to check what you are really trying to solve: a direct problem or a what-if scenario. Share on X

​2. Check when problem-solving is helpful to you and when it’s not.​

This may sound a bit complicated, but it’s not, once you get the hang of it. Distinguishing when problem-solving is helpful to you or not, is fundamental to getting unstuck and to start living. Here are some considerations to keep in mind:

When you’re engaging in effective problem-solving you:

* Focus on a single problem (not a chain of problems)
* Accept the fact that it may not be perfect & you may not know the outcome
* Focus on what matters, not what fear-based reactions push you to do
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When you’re consumed with ineffective problem-solving you:

* Focus on a chain of problems or a chain of what-ifs (which is endless, as you may realize)
* Continue massive amounts of problem-solving hoping for the best scenario or best outcome
* Take action based on your fears of what could happen and not in what really matters to you.

​​3. Label the problem-solving moves your mind makes

​What about labeling those problem-solving strategies as “here is my thinking machine; here is my mind going wild; Inspector Gadget just showed up,”and so on.

Labeling is one way of catching our thinking, not necessarily to interrupt it or block it but to remind us of our ability to choose how to handle it.

​​4. Ask yourself what’s the feeling you’re trying to manage behind all those problem-solving responses

​Here is a key question of you, if you don’t spend all that time problem-solving, how does it feel? What shows up for you? Some emotions that may show up are fear, anxiety, impatience, and many more. Don’t worry if you cannot find the perfect name for your emotion, but labeling it will help you to have the emotion and make room for it. You can also describe what you’re feeling in your body (e.g. my hands are sweaty, and so on).

​​5. Ask yourself what would you need to do to make room for that feeling and keep moving?

​This is also a key question because quite likely we have been told that we stop feeling this or start feeling that, then we can do all types of things. But, if you have been reading my newsletter regularly, you may hear me saying “oh boy, it doesn’t work like that.” Getting rid of, suppressing, minimizing, or avoiding a feeling, just makes it bigger and bigger. So, considering how to have that feeling and still take action is much more helpful in the long-run.

​​6. Allow yourself to sit with not-knowing how things will be​

No matter what problem you’re trying to solve, there will be a degree of uncertainty about the outcome, the process, and how things will turn out. At times, we play-it-safe by overthinking about all those potential negative outcomes and without realizing, we’re engaging in massive amounts of problem-solving that cannot anticipate everything that could go wrong and that end up keeping us stuck.

​7. Giving yourself a break​

Taking a break is like a sip of new energy sometimes because we can easily be overwhelmed with all the noise that shows up in our mind. So, as you solve a problem that needs to be solved and make room for all those emotions that come along, make sure to be gentle with yourself because stopping playing-it-safe behaviors by pausing our overthinking, over-preparing & over-anticipating potential negative outcomes or a chain of “what-if” situations is work.