Who benefits from the problem staying unsolved?

This month I want to show you a question I use with my clients. And what happened when I turned it on myself.

There was a year where the only thing I wanted was restful work. Restful home. Restful coming and going.

I had decided that. The autumn was meant to be spacious.

And then I said yes to a piece of work with someone I admire. Work that made sense. Work that was not wrong in itself. The ideas kept coming, because that is what I do, and every idea I had, I added to my own plate. By the time I noticed, I was spread so thin I could not do anything well. The autumn was full. Something had to give, and the thing giving was me.

I want to be precise about what the problem actually was, because for a while I told myself the wrong version. It was not the work. It was not the person, and we worked well together. The problem was that I had said yes to what felt good in the moment, not to what I actually wanted. I skipped the thing I usually do. I sleep on it. I stay true to what I have already decided.

And then the question I ask my clients turned back on me.

Who benefits from this staying unsolved?

The easy answers came first. The work got better because I was in it. The people in it got more of me than the agreement asked for. The other person got my ideas and my energy. But none of those was the real one, and I knew it, because if it were only them I would have stopped long before.

The one who benefited was a part of me. The part that loves seeing what something could become. The part that cannot quite let a thing be good enough without my full mark on it. The part that feels the pull of a good idea and reads that pull as a yes, when it is only a pull.

As long as the problem stayed unsolved, that part of me never had to do the harder thing. Which was to say one clear sentence and mean it.

“I am not available to build this if it costs me what this year was meant to be.”

This is why I am telling you mine first. Mine was small. A full autumn, too many good ideas, a yes I should have slept on.

Yours is probably heavier.

There is something you can see. You have seen it for a while. And you are not saying it, or not acting on it. You tell yourself you are being patient. You do not want to hurt anyone. You do not want to be the difficult one. So you retreat, and you call it judgement.

So ask the question. Who benefits from this staying unsolved?

Sometimes it is other people, who carry on undisturbed as long as no one names the thing. Sometimes it is the room, which stays comfortable. But often, when you are honest, the one being protected is you.

Because saying it would mean being seen as too much. As the one who does not let things go. As the one who asks, and then has to hear them think, “who does she think she is.” And underneath that is the fear you do not say out loud. That if you say the true thing, you will be the one who pays for it.

So you leave it. And you call it patience.

That is the cost the unsolved problem hides. Not the work. Being seen as someone you have worked hard not to be.

So the question is not why am I so tired, or why am I spread so thin. That keeps you looking in the wrong place.

Could it possibly be that the better question is this. Who benefits from this staying unsolved? And is the one I am protecting actually me?

Seeing it is the part you do alone. Acting on it does not have to be.

If this is where you are, let’s have a conversation.

Love,

Rita

P.S. If you would like a conversation of your own, you can reach me here: https://www.ritahausken.com/contact