The Solution is in the Problem

I know I said problem in the title, but let’s be honest, who really wants to talk about problems. So, while keeping our problem end point in mind, I want to do so by playing around with the concept of pleasure, and more specifically, your pleasure.

And just so we don’t veer too far astray, let’s talk about a problem that relates to pleasure. Here’s a good one: many of us have a very shallow understanding of how we experience pleasure. We have a loose grasp of what gives us pleasure, and often struggle to maintain an ongoing engagement with the pleasure we do know about. Our pleasure is often an afterthought if it’s considered at all. How’s that for a worthwhile problem?

So today we’re going to discuss pleasure, your pleasure, and we’re going to start by talking about what you find pleasurable.

Because if you want to create more pleasure in life, you have to know what feels good to you.

This discussion can really take off in a lot of different directions, for instance, what do you find physically pleasurable, or what stimulates and excites you mentally, or what feels good to you on an emotional level? These are important things to explore when you have the time and inclination to do so.

But for now, let’s keep things simple. Why don’t you pick one thing you’re currently experiencing in your life, something where you’re like “meh, not so much fun.” It could be related to your kids, or friends, or work, or home, whatever is top of mind for you and could use a pleasure boost.

Really step back and take a minute to think of something specific. For instance, if I were going to do this exercise with you, I might choose my office space, and the experience of being there. Where in your life would you like to experience more pleasure?

Okay. Now that you’ve chosen your needs-more-pleasure experience, take a few minutes to think about it. Really explore your experience with as much detail as possible. Consider how the situation makes you feel, emotionally and physically, and the thoughts that often go along with your experience of this thing that’s not quite working for you.

And while you think of your experience, I’ll do the same thing with a hypothetical office space example. Let’s say I sometimes experience a wave of discouragement when I’m in my office. This discouragement often translates into sluggish performance as I become distracted with what I’m doing; maybe at these times I feel unmotivated and find myself scrolling the internet for new office space. Going further with my experience, I discover my office is darker than I’d like and maybe the set-up is not comfortable for long hours of work. Maybe there’s also quite a bit of background noise as it’s in a suite with other practitioners.

In my description above I went way beyond “I don’t feel comfortable in my office space” to a more detailed understanding of what my experience actually is: my physical, emotional, and mental experience of the space. I also noted several of the factors disrupting my ability to be comfortable in my office and experience it as a pleasurable place to get work done.

Now take a few minutes to get clear on the full range of discomfort you experience with the situation you’re considering: it’s mental, emotional, and physical components, and the factors contributing to your experience.

Now, before we move on to creating more pleasure with your situation, I want to emphasize the point I’ve been making.

We can be pretty good at noticing when we don’t like something, picking up a general state of dissatisfaction with this thing or that thing in our life. But we often don’t take it further.

We often don’t drill down into the full range of our experience to understand what we’re feeling. We don’t get granular about what we feel and the factors that contribute to what we feel.

“I hate my office” might be a good overall description of how I feel, but it doesn’t give me much to work with to actually solve the problem. Going deep with your experience is what reveals what’s going on and will give you the information you need to do something impactful to improve your situation.

It really is true that the problem suggests the solution, if, I might add, we really let ourselves fully experience the problem. This is the takeaway from our work today. It’s an important concept to really understand and embrace. The more granular you get in defining the problem, the easier it will be to discover solutions, and the more nuanced your proposed solutions can be.

To give you an example of the solutions that emerge when we open ourselves to the full experience of a problem—it’s mental, emotional, and physical components—let’s go back to the experience of my uncomfortable office, and how thoroughly describing it has already revealed what I can do to make my office a more pleasurable place to be.

Here are some of the issues:

• Dark office

• Not comfortable

• Distracting background noise

Just considering this list has me already “seeing” solutions. For instance, if my office is too dark, I could get more lighting, paint the walls a lighter color, cover the dark floors with a light and even playful carpet, hang pastel paintings on the walls, and so forth and so forth.  

Take a minute now to go back to your experience of the problem you’ve been considering. What are the mental, emotional, and physical components of what you feel, and what factors are making you feel that way? Get as specific and as granular as you can. List out the factors. Do solutions spring to mind as you consider the list you just made?

There are so many ways to creatively respond to problematic situations and create more pleasure if in fact we take the time to really sit with our experience and fully listen to what our discomfort is communicating. And again, the more granular you get in defining the problem, the easier it will be to discover solutions, and the more nuanced your proposed solutions can be.