A few years ago, I had a dream that has stayed with me.
I parked my car in a perfectly normal spot. But when I came back after running errands, another car had blocked me in completely.
My first reaction? Blame.
“You should’ve parked somewhere else,” my inner critic snapped, working overtime even in dream-land. “This is your fault.”
And just like that, I was in problem-solving mode—running mental simulations, having imaginary conversations, picturing myself knocking on doors to find the culprit.
Then something strange happened.
As I walked away from the car that had boxed me in, it simply disappeared.
Poof. Gone. No tow truck. No confrontation.
And in that moment, something clicked: Not every problem is here to be solved.
Some resolve themselves the moment I stop trying so hard to fix them.
That hit harder than I expected. Being a problem solver is part of my identity. I don’t just solve problems—I hunt them down before they have the chance to exist.
If something feels stuck, I poke it until it moves. If someone doesn’t reply, I follow up. If plans are vague, I force clarity. And if things don’t work, I double down—more action, more control, more trying.
It’s exhausting. And worse, it makes me pick up things that were never mine to carry. Then, when life doesn’t go according to plan, I blame myself—as if I could’ve predicted every inconvenience if I’d just tried harder.
When you give too much energy to problems, they multiply—like gremlins fed after midnight. One issue becomes five, then ten. Soon you start seeing the world not as it is, but as a lineup of problems waiting for you to fix them. Before long, everything looks broken simply because you’re addicted to fixing it.
We’re conditioned to act. To solve. To control. To “take initiative.” Solving problems means that you’re useful, that your efforts matter. In contrast, letting go feels lazy, even irresponsible.
The most aligned people I know don’t buy into this mindset. They don’t rush to fix everything. They know which problems deserve their energy and which will disappear on their own if given space. They wait. They watch. And somehow, life rearranges itself around them.
That kind of discernment is its own superpower. It’s not passive—it’s perceptive. They’re not ignoring reality; they’re collaborating with it.
That dream was a quiet nudge from my subconscious: what if my need to solve is the very thing that keeps some problems alive?
Once I saw it, I started noticing it everywhere.
When a project stalls, my instinct is to push harder—schedule another meeting, clarify every bullet point. Yet half the time, real progress happens when I step away and let people breathe.
Creativity works the same way. The best ideas show up right after I stop chasing them. I’ll spend hours wrestling with a blank page, convinced that discipline equals output—only for the perfect lines to show up when I’m brushing my teeth.
Maybe the universe doesn’t need more problem solvers.
Maybe it needs more people who can see the difference between what needs fixing and what just needs time.
When I catch myself itching to automatically fix something, I think back to that dream—me, standing in an empty parking lot, the problem gone.
And the only thing left to do, finally, is drive away.
Related
Bold
