Solving Problems at the Root Cause

People have problems; they’re a reality of living life.  However, most people are trying to solve problems at the level of the symptom, while the disease goes untreated.  I’m going to tell you how to determine if the action you take is only solving the symptom while the root-cause is left untreated and left to manifest more problems again in the future.

Let’s explore how to identify the root cause by diving into a very common dilemma that surfaced this week for a client.  With her permission, I am going to share how we got to the bottom of her problem - the inability to create work-life balance.  I want to be clear that it would have been easy to jump right into setting priorities or boundaries, but just taking any action is not the answer to all ailments.  No, what we want is to solve the real problem with right action, which means we want to know why this woman created the situation in the first place.  So, we start there:   

Step One:  Do you own the problem?
Yes, owning the problem has to be the starting point.  Most, if not all, of our problems are self-created by our beliefs.  This woman could have easily blamed the culture, her manager, or the heavy workload.  Instead, she said she wanted to figure out how she was creating this situation. This was a perfect starting point.

Step Two:  Are you specific enough about the problem?
Once there’s ownership, you want to determine how this situation is a problem.  Though a lack of work-life balance is commonplace in our society, the way it impacts this woman’s life will be specific to her.  She shares that she isn’t able to leave the office until everything is done.  As you can see, this is still too broad - so we explore how she continues to do this problem almost every day of the week.  This is called a strategy.

Step Three: How do you do the problem?
In this step we are exploring, in detail, how someone runs a strategy that creates a specific problem time and time again.  You want them to relive the experience as if they are looking through their own eyes.  Using the same level of intricacy she would use to describe tying her shoes or making the bed, the client provided step-by-step details of what happens when the clock says it is time to leave but her head says stay a little longer.  As if we were watching a movie together…frame-by-frame…in slow motion…she walks me through how she does this problem.  Early in the process, she explains she feels guilty…bingo!

Step Four: Can you connect to the emotion of the problem?
At some point, an emotion will be part of the strategy.  It could be anger, sadness, guilt, anxiety, or fear.  In fact, often the problem itself is an attempt to avoid a more exaggerated emotion.  For our purposes, the emotion tells us we are getting closer to the root cause by tapping the beliefs held at the unconscious level.  If emotions aren’t surfacing, it means the person is trying to rationalize their behavior instead of exploring it fully.
  
Step Five:  What does the emotion tell you or what comes after the emotion?
Once you connect to the emotion, this is the time to pay close attention.  Language always holds important clues to what’s really going on.  For this client, there was an internal conversation that said, “If I don’t get everything done or say no, it would mean people might not want me.  They might go to someone else in the future.”  As we explore this statement together, the client discloses it is almost impossible for her to say “no.”  The problem is getting even more specific — her inability to say no — and we’re on the threshold of uncovering the beliefs behind the behavior.

Step Six: What would it say about you as a person if you abandoned this problem?
This step will uncover the beliefs behind the behavior.  In her case, by saying “yes” all the time, she has been attempting to avoid disappointing people and being viewed as selfish or unproductive.  Here are the beliefs she uncovered:  it’s not okay to disappoint people, to be selfish, lazy.  And not being nice is absolutely out of the question…even if it generates self-sacrifice and resentment in the process.    

Step Seven:  What is the earliest experience that comes to mind as you talk about these beliefs?
Our job now is to connect to the experiences that created these beliefs.  The easiest way to do this is by asking the unconscious mind to give you the first or earliest experience that comes up after talking about your beliefs.  And like magic, the unconscious mind will serve up some important insight.

What came up right away for my client is a memory of getting that look from her father if she ever disappointed him; no words were necessary.  So, this woman learned early in life that being nice, obliging and productive was the perfect way to be loved and, more important — to stay out of trouble.  As you can see there was no malicious intent or childhood trauma involved; just the work of the little brain creating a well-intentioned strategy to make her feel loved.  In fact, this is the root cause of the problem — an overriding need to be loved and wanted.     

Can you see that putting first things first, making schedule changes or delegating wouldn’t have solved the problem at the level of the root cause?  Once she feels she is truly wanted, needed and loved as a result of who she is—not by what she does— she can show up fully unencumbered by old strategies. Until then, she has the invaluable opportunity to negotiate, reframe or let those old beliefs go, allowing her to determine what new strategies she’d like to employ in order to have more balance in her life.

The Little Brain Makes Scary, Scarier

Most people today understand that our childhood shapes how we see, experience and respond to the world around us. So much so, it’s easy to assume someone who’s subjected to a challenging upbringing is at risk for carrying unwanted protective “baggage” into adulthood. And yet, we now know that a design flaw of the brain can easily misinterpret even the most benign of childhood experiences into scary memories that can hold us captive for a lifetime.

In the simplest terms, the design flaw is tied to the fact that humans are born with a fully functional old brain at birth. This part of the brain does many things, but most importantly, it contains the primitive hardwiring for protection and safety. In other words, it is always on high alert for threats. This mechanism is exacerbated in the precious and formative years of a child, when the absence of the yet-developed new brain leaves a child without logic and reason to counterbalance the protective tendencies of the mind. In fact, most people are surprised to learn the cognitive abilities housed in the new brain will not fully mature until the child reaches their early twenties.

This natural wiring causes our little protective mind to translate benign experiences into significant events. For a small child, a stern warning on the dangers of snakes can easily morph into an uncontrollable snake phobia by adulthood — as was the case for one of my clients. And, it makes scary events even scarier. A locked door at naptime in the child’s eye is a devastating sentence of trapped. The moment is seared into the unconscious mind in a collage of pictures, sounds, and feelings that tells the child what to avoid in the future. And as the child moves into adulthood, she is inclined to make a series of decisions meant to keep her safe from ever being trapped again. I know this because my client brought this scenario to my office just this week, which is probably why this morning’s circumstance seemed so poignant.

It was just 6:52 a.m. when the blood curdling screams made their way through my hotel door, “Mommy! I…WANT… MY.. MOMMY!!”

A minute passed with escalating volumes and intensity, and I knew this wasn’t an ordinary tantrum. I entered the hallway and saw a frightened little girl who couldn’t have been more than three. It appeared she had somehow been locked out of her room, which is what I surmised from her huddling body in the doorway. Her face was red with fear as she attempted to catch her breath in-between cries for her mother.

A minute or two later her mother made her way down the hallway. Her approach was nonchalant and her explanation irreverent, "I left her in the hallway to give her a timeout. Sorry if it woke you up."

Though I didn’t ask and she didn’t volunteer, I’m sure she had some rationalization for the decision she made to momentarily leave the child: her sanity, exhaustion, ill-advice given to her. After all, I had a million “excuses” for all the poor choices I’d made, but that didn’t stop me from voicing my opinion. I was mortified, and said just as much.

After all, I was now fully aware of the potential repercussions of how this event could impact her adult life. Just like the woman in my office this week who’d spent half of her life trying to avoid being abandoned or trapped again in incredibly well-intentioned ways, the experience of this little girl has the potential to change the trajectory of her life. The chances she won’t surrender to the protective inclinations seared into her unconscious mind created in that small five-minute window will be dependent on conscious choices that will feel totally foreign and contradictory to her instincts. It could happen, but it is equally probable that she will move through life making limiting decisions meant to keep her safe from similar circumstances.

So, you see anyone who experienced a childhood is at risk for having baggage. If words of caution can grow into a phobia, then making fun of a small child for coloring outside the lines can translate into a lifetime in search of perfection. Being reprimanded for crying on your first day at school becomes an unconscious prompt to avoid any situation that could feel emotional. A brief experience of feeling abandoned or trapped becomes a charter to stay in control at any cost, because the old brain makes the scary…scarier.

The Unfortunate Phenomenon

The greatest obstacle to success is actually hard-wired into the brain.  In the same way we can breathe, drive a car, or sing the words to our favorite song without any conscious thought, we have automatic programs that tell us what to see and how to think, feel, and behave.  In other words, we are on automatic pilot.  But, most people don’t understand are the enormous risks associated with this automatic pilot we’ve come to take for granted.

The risks are tied directly to a design flaw of the brain.  In the simplest terms, the brain is wired first and foremost for safety.  This stems back to the time of primal survival, which is why we sometimes refer to the internal mechanism that stores our automatic programs, runs the body and manages the self-preservation system as the old brain.  Where the old brain comes fully functional at birth, the rational and cognitive part of our brain will not mature until early adulthood.  In the absence of the logical counterbalance in our childhood, we misinterpret life’s experiences and messages through the lens of self-preservation and fear.  So without consciously realizing it, many of us move into adulthood with old programs born from disempowering beliefs.  At Awakening Works, we call this a protective mindset, which is a compilation of self-limiting beliefs created early in life.  

I want to be clear that we are not just talking about unproductive thoughts.  These are beliefs—deeply held definitions of right or wrong that send direct neurological commands to the body.    If you believe you’re not good enough, you might unconsciously give up on the notion of applying for the big promotion at the moment of contemplation.  A striving for perfection and control could be born from the belief I am not perfect or capable. If you believe I don’t deserve prosperity, you will not see or realize our opportunities to prosper.  Every belief unconsciously tells you what you shouldn’t or can’t do and comes with a promise to protect you.  
     
What we’ve come to understand at Awakening Works is that we can uninstall the patterns of fear and avoidance that create a protective mindset and plague our lives with disappointment.  Yes, we can alter the internal programming that keeps us small and blocks our ability to step into the divine magnificence that is our birthright.  We know it is possible to reverse this unfortunate phenomenon and empower people to step back into their full potential. Our clients have proved it to us, again and again.  And, this is what I'll be writing about.