January 21, 2025 • 30 mins
Do you know why writing a manuscript is harder than writing an instagram caption? Because we’re not used to “dragging out” a problem in stories. Yet the books and movies that capture our attention don’t resolve problems quickly.
They lean into the tension as a tool for transformation of the hero.
And it keeps you engaged.
If you’re facing a problem in your life, is it possible you’re jumping too quickly to a solution? Are you simplifying a matter that is not simple because living in the problem feels too painful? Are you “waiting on a miracle” as a way to numb the pain of the present moment?
I believe miracles exist and I also believe most of us have no idea what a miracle really looks like. What if the miracle is found deeper inside of the problem you’ve been busy trying to solve?
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
Follow Ally on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allyfallon/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
piece and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and cold. It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon. I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about this idea of resolving or problem too soon. That
sounds like a weird thing to say, but I came
up with this idea while I was helping my group
(00:45):
of authors to edit the first draft of their manuscripts. So,
if you're new here, I have a group of authors
who I've helped over the course of the last six
months to write the first draft of their book manuscripts.
And one of the things that I promised them I
would do is as they finish their manuscripts, they could
submit a chapter to me and I would do what's
called a live edit, which is basically I'm editing their
(01:06):
chapter in front of the rest of the group to
show them if I were their editor at a publisher
or if an editor that they had hired, this is
how I would give them feedback on their piece. And
I'm doing that directly to the author, but I'm doing
it in front of the entire group, so that way
they're not the only ones who are learning from the edits,
but everyone else gets to learn from them as well.
And you'd be shocked at the stuff that's just universal.
(01:27):
The type of things that I'm going to say while
I'm editing one manuscript is the same thing I'm going
to say when I'm editing another manuscript. And one of
those common themes that has been coming up is this
idea of resolving a problem too soon. This is something
that's challenging to learn as you write a manuscript because
even though we all somewhat intuitively know how to build
(01:48):
a narrative arc in a story, we're used to doing
it in a much shorter context than a book manuscript.
Think about this, So you're used to writing an email,
You're used to writing a Instagram caption, You're used to
telling a story out loud to a friend who sits
in the desk next to you at work, But you're
not used to telling a story across fifty five thousand
(02:09):
words of material or you know, two hundred and fifty pages,
three hundred pages, whatever it ends up to be. And
so to to like extend the narrative arc over that
much space is not something that we're very used to,
and we have to learn. We have to kind of
like get that muscle memory and learn how to do that.
So we've been talking a lot about this in the group,
(02:31):
about how do we extend that narrative arc across three
hundred pages of material. One of the ways that you
do it is by making sure that you're not resolving
the problem too soon. Now, in the many ways that
life and writing kind of go hand in hand and
represent one another, this is one of those times where
(02:51):
like a lesson that we learn from the act of
putting our stories on paper is also a lesson that
we can take into our lives. And so I've been
both saying this over and over again on these calls
with my authors, saying, you know, make sure you don't
resolve this problem too soon. What it does is it
brings the narrative arc to a screeching halt and makes
the reader feel like they should disengage and you know,
(03:12):
move on with their regular lives essentially, and I've been
saying that to these authors and then also experiencing something
in my life which I'll talk about, reminding me that
when we jump to solve a problem too soon, we
miss what the problem is there to teach us. So
that's what I want to talk about today. It's not
really about editing a manuscript, although I'm using that as
(03:34):
a metaphor, but it's about what it looks like in
our lives when we face a problem that we feel
we cannot solve, or actually, maybe you face a problem
that you feel you can solve. But what does it
look like to solve the problem too soon and to
not take in what the problem is here to show
you or teach you. Now, just to extend the metaphor
(03:55):
in storytelling, when you resolve a problem too soon, your
reader loses interest, your reader loses engagement. It would be
like if you were sitting in a movie theater watching
a romantic comedy and twenty minutes into the film, the
couple gets together and they go shopping at the mall.
That is an example that I learned from one of
my mentors, Donald Miller, who uses that example a lot
of times when he's teaching brands how to develop their
(04:17):
narrative works. So if you were in a theater and
you were watching a romantic comedy and the couple gets
together and then they go shopping at the mall, you'd
be like boring, Okay, moving on, I'm going to leave
the theater and go on about my regular life. The
beauty of stories is that they suck us in to
the tension of a problem and we go on this
crazy roller coaster ride with the character. We live vicariously
(04:38):
through the hero of the story, the main character of
the story, and we experience the tension with them, and
we also experience the resolution with them, and we don't
want that resolution to come too quickly, mostly because and
I write about this and write your story, mostly because
the tension is where all of the transformation comes from.
And that's really what we're in it for in a story.
(05:00):
We're in it for the transformation. We want to experience
the transformation of the main character with the main character.
That's why we pick up fiction books and read them.
That's why we pick up I mean nonfiction too. It's
why we go to the movie theater, It's why we
engage with a great reel on Instagram. It's how any
brand who catches you with a beautiful ad or really
(05:22):
compelling at a funny ad. It's how any brand gets
your attention and keeps you engaged from the beginning of
the ad to the end of the ad. It's how
great brands get you to make a purchase. It is
the way of the human brain, the way of the
human being. We are drawn in by stories. We want
to experience that tension and resolution, and yet in our lives,
(05:42):
for some reason, we have this sense that when a
problem pops up. Maybe we don't all maybe I have
this sense. I think a lot of us do, But
for sure I do have this sense that when a
problem pops up, my job is to figure out a
way to resolve it immediately. And I just started seeing
this connection in the past couple of weeks and thinking
about what storytelling might have to teach us about resolving
(06:02):
problems too soon in our lives. If you're new here
and you haven't listened to any other episodes, let's say
this is the first episode that you're ever listening to,
you could go back and catch up on a few
of the old episodes that share way more about this
story that I'm going to just zip past really quickly.
But if you've been around for a while, you know
that my husband and I made a big business investment.
We felt like, absolutely and utterly compelled to do this
(06:27):
thing that we were so excited about, and everything crashed
and burned. It didn't go the way that we thought
it were going it was going to go. We lost everything,
and we've been kind of picking up the pieces of
that loss over the course of the last several months.
Everything really fell apart last May, and so it was
like four years of work and then a big crash
and burn, and we've been trying to figure out how
(06:48):
to pick up and move forward from here. Now, this
is one of those times in my life where I
have faced a problem that I don't know how to solve.
I feel like because of my privilege, because of my background,
my education, my feeling fairly well resourced in my life,
most of the time, in most aspects of my life,
I have been able to resolve problems fairly, easily and quickly.
(07:12):
I think this is true for a lot of us
who live in the first world, and especially if you
have white skin, especially if you are a male, as
little as we want to talk about it. Having those
privileges gives us the sense that we have control and
power over our lives, and that when a problem presents itself,
we can just go and solve it fairly quickly. And
so I've moved through the world with that type of confidence.
(07:33):
I mean, I have faced a handful of problems I
couldn't solve in my life. I went through a divorce
and that was a time of great helplessness in my life.
It was not the way that I saw things going,
and it was extremely painful and frustrating. But you know,
even that problem, I feel like I kind of put
my mind to it and my heart to it, and
I moved through it and I was able to find
(07:53):
my way on the other side. And now my life
is so much better for having had that experience. And
this this season that I've been living through, where I'm
facing a physical, tangible problem that I do not know
how to solve, has been really confronting for me and
incredibly depressing. And I actually I've talked about this to
my therapist and to a few close friends as what
(08:15):
I have called my second deconstruction. It's almost like I
had my first deconstruction where I left the Christian Church
and had to sort of rethink, like what's my worldview.
This was happening when I was going through my divorce
because I was married to a pastor and we planted
a church together, and then when that all fell apart,
I was like, Oh, the world is not how I
thought it was. It doesn't work the way that I
thought it did. These beliefs and ideas that I've had
(08:38):
about the world are no longer congruent to how I
want to live my life, and so I had to
rethink and rebuild my world from the ground up. And
this season that I'm living through, I've been calling it
my second deconstruction because it feels like the worldview that
I put back together was you know, same same but different.
You know, it was different in a lot of ways
(08:58):
and more open in many ways and more accepting, and
also like it had some similarities to the old way,
which I think is kind of normal. I think if
you've been through an experience like this where you've like
you know, left either your small hometown or maybe not
a small hometown, but you've left sort of like you're
moved away from your nuclear family and gone out into
(09:21):
the world to have new experiences and discover new things
about yourself. You've also had what I would consider a deconstruction.
Maybe you're not calling it that, but you have gone like, Okay,
I have to figure out for myself the way the
world works and what I believe about people and our
people you know, mostly good, and how does the world operate?
And who am I inside of the world. And you're
answering all those questions for yourself, and we have to
(09:43):
re answer those questions a handful of times throughout our life. Well,
I've been going through this period of time where I
feel like I'm re answering those questions for myself again.
And one of the things that I've been bumping up
against is every other time in my life when I
have come up against an issue or a problem, I've
always felt pretty resourced to solve it. Almost always, in
almost every issue of my life, I have felt like, Okay, yeah,
(10:06):
there's this problem in front of me, but listen, I've
got support, I have family who loves me, I have
good friends. I feel really connected. I feel, you know,
materially resourced, Like I've got skills and I'm creative and
I can go get a job, and I've worked every
job under the sun, you know, I've worked like service jobs.
I'm not saying like I've always had these like great
(10:26):
high paying white collar jobs or something. But I've always
felt like, even if the ground fell out from underneath
of me, like i could go bartend or something, and
I'm going to be able to take care of myself.
And this period of time that I've been walking through
has really challenged that feeling that no matter what happens,
I'm going to be able to resolve the problem that's
in front of me. Because I've been faced with this
(10:46):
problem that feels unresolvable. It's the first time in my life,
I think, I think I can say that confidently, the
first time that I have faced a physical problem that
feels unresolvable. It's nothing that you do ali is going
to fix this problem. So now what and what I'm
finding is that leaning into the problem. I mean, I've
done a fair my own fair share of panicking around
(11:07):
the problem and just kind of like throwing everything that
I could at it, you know, the old analogy of
like throwing the spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
I have done so much of that, and my husband
and I together we've like like run around like chickens
with our heads cut off, trying to figure out how
to resolve the problem. And one of the gifts of
this time is that as none of those solutions have worked,
(11:28):
we've been forced to do something that we never had
to do before. It's almost like our privilege was blocking
us from this deep work like this deep almost like
spiritual transformation work. The juice of the story, like the
richness of the story, is in the tension. It's in
the part of the story before the problem gets resolved,
(11:50):
because as soon as the problem gets resolved, everybody checks
out and goes about business as usual. And so in
the part of the story where the problem is not solved,
this is where all the good, juicy transformation happens. And
(12:11):
we have been forced in a way that we've never
been forced before, to go deeper into the problem and
to let the problem teach us what it is here
to teach us. And I'm telling you this is uncomfortable,
it's horrible, it's scary, it's deeply unsettling. It's vulnerable in
a way that I've never experienced vulnerability before. And it
(12:33):
has made me think so many times about that passage
from scripture that I learned growing up, about how it's
easier for a camel to pass through the eye of
a needle than it is for a rich man to
get into heaven, get into the kingdom of Heaven. And
what I've realized is, I think what that ancient text
is trying to say is that when you are resourced
enough to quote unquote solve problems quickly and easily, when
(12:58):
you're privileged enough that you live in a way world,
you live in a like a universe where you think,
any problem that comes my way, I'm resourced to solve it.
When you live in that way, you never have to
come face to face with your own vulnerability. And all
of these stories, all of these people are coming into
my path right now who are also mirroring this back
(13:21):
to me, showing me that you know, sometimes you're diagnosed
with disease, or with with cancer, or with something an
illness that no matter what you do, you don't know
how to resolve this problem. And I think I have
been drawn in my life, over various points in my
life to different spiritual teachers who talk about, you know,
(13:43):
how human beings are so powerful and more powerful than
we know that we can access that power, that we
can manifest our realities that we can And this is
all kind of Second Deconstruction stuff. But if you go
back to my Christian days, it's the same, same but different.
It's you know, like, pray to Jesus and Jesus will
come and save you, and you're in dwelled with the
Holy Spirit and you have as much power as Jesus had,
(14:06):
and same ideas. It's like, no matter what is in
front of you, you have the power to resolve the problem.
So what happens when we bump into a problem that
we actually don't have the power to resolve, Then we're
forced to go deeper into the human condition. Then we're
forced to surrender to the problem. Then we're forced to
(14:26):
sit in the tension and to wait for a problem
that may never be resolved, for a problem that may
stay in perpetuity. And I think that's a terrifying concept
for so many of us. And I also think it's
such an important concept inside of this world that we're
living in because since twenty twenty, things have gotten progressively
(14:46):
more chaotic, progressively messier, progressively more confusing, and in the
chaos and the confusion of all of that. I think
that we're using an old operating system as human beings,
where we're like, well, and maybe only in the Western world,
I don't know if this extends beyond that, but for sure,
(15:07):
in the world that I'm familiar with, we're using an
operating system that says like, oh, we are resourced to
solve this problem. We can figure this out. All we
have to do is X, Y, and Z. Let me
come up with a plan, let me have a strategy,
let me put a program in place, let me get
more organized, let me be more productive, let me be
more efficient. And we're using old programming to come at
(15:29):
a new situation that's totally new. It's never existed before.
It's extremely chaotic and confusing and messy, and the old
programming is in direct contradiction. It's like, yeah, no, your
productivity and efficiency is not going to work here. Your strategy,
your three part system is not going to apply here.
(15:52):
And I think for those of us who are paying attention,
it's all coming unraveled. We're realizing like, oh my god,
we are facing we are up against problems that we
do not know how to solve. We do not have
the resources to solve these problems. Now, I want to
make sure that I'm really clear that I'm not saying
that we shouldn't solve problems we do know how to solve.
(16:14):
If there's a problem in front of you that you
are resourced to solve by all means, please solve it.
And if there are collectively problems that are in front
of us that we do know how to solve by
all means, we should for sure solve them. But I
think if we're honest with ourselves, many of us are
beginning to face problems that are out of our control,
that are out of our scope of capability. And for
(16:38):
us to pretend like we're resourced enough to solve those
problems when we are absolutely not is just blasphemy. It's
just complete denialism. And my eyes are being open to this,
and so I'm watching it happen not only in my
own life but all around me, and so many spiritual
teachers kind of like bump up against this, and so
many the way that we talk about, you know, whether
(16:59):
it's like Christian spirituality or whether it's manifestation or whatever
kind of spiritual practices you're into, just start to notice
if there are ways. I'm not saying there's anything wrong
with any of these spiritual practices or with solving a
problem when it's solvable. All I'm saying is, notice the
ways in which your current framework of spirituality puts you
(17:20):
in control of a situation that, in reality, you are
not in control of. And for us to pretend that
we are in control when we are absolutely not in
control as just utter delusion. And I think that there's
like a thin line between what many of us are
calling spirituality and delusion. And I'm not saying that to
be spiritualist to be delusional at all. I think that
(17:43):
there just is a crossover. And you know, again, like
bringing that old programming to the new world gets a
little tricky. You realize, like, oh, my programming needs an upgrade.
I can no longer operate under that old programming before.
And if I continue to attach myself to that old
programming so tightly that I'm unwilling to let it go,
(18:04):
then I inevitably become delusional in this new world. And
I have one hundred percent, for sure and guilty of
carrying that delusion with me, because it is easier to
be delusional than it is to be honest in a
time like this, at least in my little world. I
don't know if it feels that way to you, but
it feels that way to me in my little world.
Sometimes facing the truth of what's really going on for
(18:26):
me in my own little world is too painful, and
so the choice that I make at certain points is
to instead be delusional, is to instead say a miracle
is coming. You know, maybe a miracle is coming. I'm
not saying that it's not. But notice the difference between
believing a miracle is coming to anesticize you from the
(18:47):
pain of facing your present moment, or believing a miracle
is coming because you truly understand what a miracle is.
A miracle, Marian Williamson says, is sometimes a shift in circumstance,
but more often it's a shift in perspective. And this
is what's happening for us right now. I believe as
a collective, our entire consciousness is being upgraded. And it's
(19:09):
by that I just mean the old programming that doesn't
work anymore is falling apart underneath of our feet, and
we're being required to upgrade the software system to a
new type of program to something that's going to work
on the computer that we have in front of us.
You know, the old programming is not working anymore, and
for us to attach ourselves to that old programming and
(19:30):
refuse to let it go is delusional. So this shift
in perspective that Marian Williamson talks about that is the miracle,
is happening right now. But you know what this is,
This goes right back to what I was saying before.
That shift in perspective only happens when we stay in
the tension of the story and don't resolve the problem
too soon. So as a collective and as individuals, the
(19:54):
problems that are in our lives, when we're just like, oh,
no problem, I can solve this problem. I'll throw one
hundred bucks at it. Or I can sell this. I
know someone who can fix it. I'll give them a call.
When we don't stay in the tension of the problem,
or when we too quickly come up with like a
the only word I can think of is like a
thin solution. It's like not really a rich solution with depth.
(20:16):
It's like a thin band aid kind of a solution
band aid on cancer. It's like I'm going to slap
this on, because then I'll feel like the problem is
solved and I don't have to really face it or
deal with it anymore. And when we do that, we
miss out on what the tension of the story was
trying to show us and teach us. The character, the
main character of the story only transforms because of the tension,
and they have to stay in the tension to the
(20:37):
end of the story, or the viewer, the reader, the
person paying attention, loses interest. So carry that metaphor all
the way into your personal life, your personal world right now,
think of a problem that you're facing that feels unsolvable.
(21:00):
If you don't feel like you have an unsolvable problem
in your life right now, I would say it's likely
because you're living in an environment in a culture. I
am too. Many of us are too. So this is
no shade or shame at all. But we are living
in an environment, in a culture where we get to
be very insulated from the truth of what is taking
(21:21):
place around us, so many of us are not paying
very close attention. That might sound a little confrontational. I'm
not saying it at you. I'm saying it as a
culture as a whole. In the Western World, in the
first World, in the United States of America, at the
very least, I'll throw us under the bus. In the
United States of America, we have such resource, such privilege,
(21:43):
We are so well resourced that we aren't forced in
a way to face the unsolvable problems of the world
around us. And so you know, to open your eyes
and pay attention, and you'll see there's a war happening
in the Middle East where people are dying every day,
and you maybe you have a strong opinion about that
on kind of one side or the other. There are
(22:04):
two sides of the issue that have really strong opinions
about how that problem should be solved. Again, the transformation
happens when we don't jump immediately to a solution, but
when we lean into the tension of the problem. And
I'm not saying that we shouldn't like find solutions where
we can find them. I'm not saying we shouldn't enact solutions.
(22:24):
I'm saying it's a problem that we can't quickly jump
to a solution, that the solution quote unquote solution is
actually found in leaning into the tension of the problem
and experiencing the transformation that is available for us there,
but most of us are just not doing that because
it's too painful, it's too vulnerable, and we don't have
to to be honest. Like you know, we just live
(22:47):
in our own private little realities over here where most
of the problems we face on a daily basis can
just be solved with a credit card. And again, so
going back to that ancient text that says it's easier
for a camel to pass through the eye of a
needle than it is for a rich man to enter
the kingdom of heaven. I think a big piece of
that is that when you are rich, quote unquote rich,
and you may not think of yourself as rich. I
(23:08):
definitely don't feel rich right now in my life, but
I am in so many ways rich. And when you
can pull out a credit card and solve a problem,
you aren't forced to go deeper into the tension of
the problem. I know that's a lot. Here is what
I want you to get from this episode. What would
it look like for you to go deeper into the
tension of a problem in your life right now? I
(23:28):
want you to take a minute and think about a
problem that is in front of you that feels unsolvable,
and maybe it's a personal problem. Maybe you have a
relationship in your life that feels like there's just no
way that this relationship could ever you know, be peaceful,
or there's just no way that I could ever get
what I need out of this relationship. Maybe you have
(23:50):
a job that you think like, or maybe it's with
your purpose, your career for example, maybe you think like, yeah,
there's just no way that I could ever ever live
out my purpose and make money doing it, or whatever
whatever it is for you, or maybe it's money. Maybe
you're you know, this is what it has been for us.
It feels like, you know, we made this set of
(24:12):
choices that were our choices, and we are not victims
in this, but now we're up against this impossible block
that feels like we'll never get past it. Whatever it
is for you, just take it. And maybe it's not
a personal problem for you. Maybe for you, maybe it
is the war in the Middle East. Maybe you watch
what's taking place there and something about it just kind
of tugs at your heart, and your heart is like
(24:34):
crying out for the human suffering that's happening on the
other side of the world. Maybe it's the fires in
La for you, maybe it's another social issue altogether. Maybe
it's global warming, maybe it's I don't know, whatever it
is for you, Or maybe you're hiding a secret and
you think, yeah, there's just never a world where I
could be honest about who I am to the people
(24:55):
who love me and that they would still love me.
Maybe you're just holding that back, thinking that's just an
impot possible problem that could never in a million years
be solved. There's nothing that we could do that would
fix that problem. So take a minute to think about
just one problem for you that feels unsolvable and ask
yourself what would it look like to live into the
tension of the problem, to let the problem exist, Like,
(25:18):
maybe just start for a minute with being really honest
with yourself about the problem and the bigness of it,
the depth of it, the pain that it's caused you,
the reality of what has taken place. This would be
an amazing writing assignment, by the way, and a great
start to a story because stories always start with problems.
(25:39):
We enter into the story at the point of highest tension.
So if that calls to you, maybe turn this into
a piece of writing. Maybe pull out a piece of
paper or pull out your computer and write about a
problem in your life that feels unsolvable, that feels too
big for you to solve, and it would take an
absolute miracle. And I'm not saying I don't believe in miracles.
I think that we are radically wrong in our culture
(26:00):
about what a miracle looks like. We think the miracle
is the immediate solving of the problem, and I think
sometimes the miracle is in the problem. There are so
many other stories that I would love to share. They're
not mine to share, but I do want to say
all of these people have been coming across my path
who are in a place where they're facing a problem
(26:21):
that they cannot solve. And I will tell you that
the most inspiring people the people who I am choosing
inside of this reconstruction that I'm in. My therapist has
said to me, like, I think you need to find
new role models. You know, people who you really admire.
And I'll tell you these people are not necessarily names
that you would recognize, but they're just everyday people who
(26:42):
you'd love if you met them, who are going through
unsolvable problems in their lives, are up against an unsolvable
problem and who have chosen to live into the tension
of the problem, and have chosen to let the problem
humble them, and let the problem rip them apart, and
let the problem show them their own humanity, and let
(27:03):
the problem reveal their depth, and let the problem teach them,
and let their problem, yeah, be their greatest teacher. These
people are heroes in my book, and their heroes because
of their ability to let the miracle unfold in the
way miracles do. I do believe in miracles. I just
(27:25):
think that we're radically wrong in our culture about what
a miracle looks like. And when you're wrong about what
a miracle looks like, what ends up happening is your
faith falls apart because you think, oh, I waited on
a miracle and the miracle never came. Well, what if
the miracle did come and you just missed it. What
if we just missed it. What if we're all missing
the miracle that's right in front of us because we
were wrong about what miracles really looked like. So consider
(27:49):
the problem in your life that is unsolvable. Ask yourself
what it would look like to lean into the tension
of that problem, to let the tension of the problem
teach you and show you everything that it has to
show you. There's a quote that I put in my
book called Indestructible by David Foster Wallace. He says, the
truth will set you free, but not until it's done
with you, which is a great example of this kind
(28:09):
of system upgrade that I'm talking about that I went
through in twenty fifteen when I went through my divorce.
That I you know, I had always believe the truth
will set you free. That's in scripture, and it was
something I was taught my whole life, and so I
had always believed that. And then when my marriage fell apart,
and when I really started to see the truth of
what had been going on, it felt like the truth
(28:30):
was so confronting and upsetting that how could it possibly
be truth? That the truth will set you free. Well,
then I saw this quote, the truth will set you free,
but not until it's done with you, and it was like, oh,
system upgrade, Okay, the truth is having its way with
me right now, which is extremely uncomfortable but is part
of the process. And so we're going through a similar
system upgrade right now. I really believe that, and system
(28:52):
upgrades are always incredibly uncomfortable and extremely confronting. And so
if you're feeling that, then I I believe you. I'm
here with you, I'm in it too. This is not
for the faint of heart. And we have two choices.
You can either live in delusion, and you know, the
delusion can look very spiritual. The delusion can be like
(29:14):
a miracle is coming, Jesus is in control. While those
things are true. You know, God is in control, a
miracle is coming, while those things I do actually believe
both of those things are very true. And also they
can serve as a tool for a nesticizing the pain
(29:34):
instead of inviting us to confront the truth, inviting us
to confront what is right in front of us, to
really live in the tension of the problem, and to
really let the problem show us what it's trying to
show us. So, if you're not feeling any of this,
if you're just like, what's this lady talking about and
you're still listening, then wow, I'm impressed that you're still listening.
But if you're just kind of feeling like, no, life's
(29:56):
pretty good, I'm happy things are going great, then ignore me,
move along, you know, move on, No need to like
force an awakening or an evolution that is not ready
to happen yet. I believe it all happens, and it's
right time, and it invites us when it is the time.
But if you are in it, if you're in it
and you're feeling the pain right now, then just know
that you're not alone, you're not crazy, you are not
(30:16):
making this up. You are a truth teller and you're
a seeker and that's why you're seeing clearly right now.
And I'm in it with you. I believe in you,
and I believe in the strength that you are going
to gain from living in this tension. And I'll see
you next week on the Right Story podcast
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
piece and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and cold. It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon. I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about this idea of resolving or problem too soon. That
sounds like a weird thing to say, but I came
up with this idea while I was helping my group
(00:45):
of authors to edit the first draft of their manuscripts. So,
if you're new here, I have a group of authors
who I've helped over the course of the last six
months to write the first draft of their book manuscripts.
And one of the things that I promised them I
would do is as they finish their manuscripts, they could
submit a chapter to me and I would do what's
called a live edit, which is basically I'm editing their
(01:06):
chapter in front of the rest of the group to
show them if I were their editor at a publisher
or if an editor that they had hired, this is
how I would give them feedback on their piece. And
I'm doing that directly to the author, but I'm doing
it in front of the entire group, so that way
they're not the only ones who are learning from the edits,
but everyone else gets to learn from them as well.
And you'd be shocked at the stuff that's just universal.
(01:27):
The type of things that I'm going to say while
I'm editing one manuscript is the same thing I'm going
to say when I'm editing another manuscript. And one of
those common themes that has been coming up is this
idea of resolving a problem too soon. This is something
that's challenging to learn as you write a manuscript because
even though we all somewhat intuitively know how to build
(01:48):
a narrative arc in a story, we're used to doing
it in a much shorter context than a book manuscript.
Think about this, So you're used to writing an email,
You're used to writing a Instagram caption, You're used to
telling a story out loud to a friend who sits
in the desk next to you at work, But you're
not used to telling a story across fifty five thousand
(02:09):
words of material or you know, two hundred and fifty pages,
three hundred pages, whatever it ends up to be. And
so to to like extend the narrative arc over that
much space is not something that we're very used to,
and we have to learn. We have to kind of
like get that muscle memory and learn how to do that.
So we've been talking a lot about this in the group,
(02:31):
about how do we extend that narrative arc across three
hundred pages of material. One of the ways that you
do it is by making sure that you're not resolving
the problem too soon. Now, in the many ways that
life and writing kind of go hand in hand and
represent one another, this is one of those times where
(02:51):
like a lesson that we learn from the act of
putting our stories on paper is also a lesson that
we can take into our lives. And so I've been
both saying this over and over again on these calls
with my authors, saying, you know, make sure you don't
resolve this problem too soon. What it does is it
brings the narrative arc to a screeching halt and makes
the reader feel like they should disengage and you know,
(03:12):
move on with their regular lives essentially, and I've been
saying that to these authors and then also experiencing something
in my life which I'll talk about, reminding me that
when we jump to solve a problem too soon, we
miss what the problem is there to teach us. So
that's what I want to talk about today. It's not
really about editing a manuscript, although I'm using that as
(03:34):
a metaphor, but it's about what it looks like in
our lives when we face a problem that we feel
we cannot solve, or actually, maybe you face a problem
that you feel you can solve. But what does it
look like to solve the problem too soon and to
not take in what the problem is here to show
you or teach you. Now, just to extend the metaphor
(03:55):
in storytelling, when you resolve a problem too soon, your
reader loses interest, your reader loses engagement. It would be
like if you were sitting in a movie theater watching
a romantic comedy and twenty minutes into the film, the
couple gets together and they go shopping at the mall.
That is an example that I learned from one of
my mentors, Donald Miller, who uses that example a lot
of times when he's teaching brands how to develop their
(04:17):
narrative works. So if you were in a theater and
you were watching a romantic comedy and the couple gets
together and then they go shopping at the mall, you'd
be like boring, Okay, moving on, I'm going to leave
the theater and go on about my regular life. The
beauty of stories is that they suck us in to
the tension of a problem and we go on this
crazy roller coaster ride with the character. We live vicariously
(04:38):
through the hero of the story, the main character of
the story, and we experience the tension with them, and
we also experience the resolution with them, and we don't
want that resolution to come too quickly, mostly because and
I write about this and write your story, mostly because
the tension is where all of the transformation comes from.
And that's really what we're in it for in a story.
(05:00):
We're in it for the transformation. We want to experience
the transformation of the main character with the main character.
That's why we pick up fiction books and read them.
That's why we pick up I mean nonfiction too. It's
why we go to the movie theater, It's why we
engage with a great reel on Instagram. It's how any
brand who catches you with a beautiful ad or really
(05:22):
compelling at a funny ad. It's how any brand gets
your attention and keeps you engaged from the beginning of
the ad to the end of the ad. It's how
great brands get you to make a purchase. It is
the way of the human brain, the way of the
human being. We are drawn in by stories. We want
to experience that tension and resolution, and yet in our lives,
(05:42):
for some reason, we have this sense that when a
problem pops up. Maybe we don't all maybe I have
this sense. I think a lot of us do, But
for sure I do have this sense that when a
problem pops up, my job is to figure out a
way to resolve it immediately. And I just started seeing
this connection in the past couple of weeks and thinking
about what storytelling might have to teach us about resolving
(06:02):
problems too soon in our lives. If you're new here
and you haven't listened to any other episodes, let's say
this is the first episode that you're ever listening to,
you could go back and catch up on a few
of the old episodes that share way more about this
story that I'm going to just zip past really quickly.
But if you've been around for a while, you know
that my husband and I made a big business investment.
We felt like, absolutely and utterly compelled to do this
(06:27):
thing that we were so excited about, and everything crashed
and burned. It didn't go the way that we thought
it were going it was going to go. We lost everything,
and we've been kind of picking up the pieces of
that loss over the course of the last several months.
Everything really fell apart last May, and so it was
like four years of work and then a big crash
and burn, and we've been trying to figure out how
(06:48):
to pick up and move forward from here. Now, this
is one of those times in my life where I
have faced a problem that I don't know how to solve.
I feel like because of my privilege, because of my background,
my education, my feeling fairly well resourced in my life,
most of the time, in most aspects of my life,
I have been able to resolve problems fairly, easily and quickly.
(07:12):
I think this is true for a lot of us
who live in the first world, and especially if you
have white skin, especially if you are a male, as
little as we want to talk about it. Having those
privileges gives us the sense that we have control and
power over our lives, and that when a problem presents itself,
we can just go and solve it fairly quickly. And
so I've moved through the world with that type of confidence.
(07:33):
I mean, I have faced a handful of problems I
couldn't solve in my life. I went through a divorce
and that was a time of great helplessness in my life.
It was not the way that I saw things going,
and it was extremely painful and frustrating. But you know,
even that problem, I feel like I kind of put
my mind to it and my heart to it, and
I moved through it and I was able to find
(07:53):
my way on the other side. And now my life
is so much better for having had that experience. And
this this season that I've been living through, where I'm
facing a physical, tangible problem that I do not know
how to solve, has been really confronting for me and
incredibly depressing. And I actually I've talked about this to
my therapist and to a few close friends as what
(08:15):
I have called my second deconstruction. It's almost like I
had my first deconstruction where I left the Christian Church
and had to sort of rethink, like what's my worldview.
This was happening when I was going through my divorce
because I was married to a pastor and we planted
a church together, and then when that all fell apart,
I was like, Oh, the world is not how I
thought it was. It doesn't work the way that I
thought it did. These beliefs and ideas that I've had
(08:38):
about the world are no longer congruent to how I
want to live my life, and so I had to
rethink and rebuild my world from the ground up. And
this season that I'm living through, I've been calling it
my second deconstruction because it feels like the worldview that
I put back together was you know, same same but different.
You know, it was different in a lot of ways
(08:58):
and more open in many ways and more accepting, and
also like it had some similarities to the old way,
which I think is kind of normal. I think if
you've been through an experience like this where you've like
you know, left either your small hometown or maybe not
a small hometown, but you've left sort of like you're
moved away from your nuclear family and gone out into
(09:21):
the world to have new experiences and discover new things
about yourself. You've also had what I would consider a deconstruction.
Maybe you're not calling it that, but you have gone like, Okay,
I have to figure out for myself the way the
world works and what I believe about people and our
people you know, mostly good, and how does the world operate?
And who am I inside of the world. And you're
answering all those questions for yourself, and we have to
(09:43):
re answer those questions a handful of times throughout our life. Well,
I've been going through this period of time where I
feel like I'm re answering those questions for myself again.
And one of the things that I've been bumping up
against is every other time in my life when I
have come up against an issue or a problem, I've
always felt pretty resourced to solve it. Almost always, in
almost every issue of my life, I have felt like, Okay, yeah,
(10:06):
there's this problem in front of me, but listen, I've
got support, I have family who loves me, I have
good friends. I feel really connected. I feel, you know,
materially resourced, Like I've got skills and I'm creative and
I can go get a job, and I've worked every
job under the sun, you know, I've worked like service jobs.
I'm not saying like I've always had these like great
(10:26):
high paying white collar jobs or something. But I've always
felt like, even if the ground fell out from underneath
of me, like i could go bartend or something, and
I'm going to be able to take care of myself.
And this period of time that I've been walking through
has really challenged that feeling that no matter what happens,
I'm going to be able to resolve the problem that's
in front of me. Because I've been faced with this
(10:46):
problem that feels unresolvable. It's the first time in my life,
I think, I think I can say that confidently, the
first time that I have faced a physical problem that
feels unresolvable. It's nothing that you do ali is going
to fix this problem. So now what and what I'm
finding is that leaning into the problem. I mean, I've
done a fair my own fair share of panicking around
(11:07):
the problem and just kind of like throwing everything that
I could at it, you know, the old analogy of
like throwing the spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
I have done so much of that, and my husband
and I together we've like like run around like chickens
with our heads cut off, trying to figure out how
to resolve the problem. And one of the gifts of
this time is that as none of those solutions have worked,
(11:28):
we've been forced to do something that we never had
to do before. It's almost like our privilege was blocking
us from this deep work like this deep almost like
spiritual transformation work. The juice of the story, like the
richness of the story, is in the tension. It's in
the part of the story before the problem gets resolved,
(11:50):
because as soon as the problem gets resolved, everybody checks
out and goes about business as usual. And so in
the part of the story where the problem is not solved,
this is where all the good, juicy transformation happens. And
(12:11):
we have been forced in a way that we've never
been forced before, to go deeper into the problem and
to let the problem teach us what it is here
to teach us. And I'm telling you this is uncomfortable,
it's horrible, it's scary, it's deeply unsettling. It's vulnerable in
a way that I've never experienced vulnerability before. And it
(12:33):
has made me think so many times about that passage
from scripture that I learned growing up, about how it's
easier for a camel to pass through the eye of
a needle than it is for a rich man to
get into heaven, get into the kingdom of Heaven. And
what I've realized is, I think what that ancient text
is trying to say is that when you are resourced
enough to quote unquote solve problems quickly and easily, when
(12:58):
you're privileged enough that you live in a way world,
you live in a like a universe where you think,
any problem that comes my way, I'm resourced to solve it.
When you live in that way, you never have to
come face to face with your own vulnerability. And all
of these stories, all of these people are coming into
my path right now who are also mirroring this back
(13:21):
to me, showing me that you know, sometimes you're diagnosed
with disease, or with with cancer, or with something an
illness that no matter what you do, you don't know
how to resolve this problem. And I think I have
been drawn in my life, over various points in my
life to different spiritual teachers who talk about, you know,
(13:43):
how human beings are so powerful and more powerful than
we know that we can access that power, that we
can manifest our realities that we can And this is
all kind of Second Deconstruction stuff. But if you go
back to my Christian days, it's the same, same but different.
It's you know, like, pray to Jesus and Jesus will
come and save you, and you're in dwelled with the
Holy Spirit and you have as much power as Jesus had,
(14:06):
and same ideas. It's like, no matter what is in
front of you, you have the power to resolve the problem.
So what happens when we bump into a problem that
we actually don't have the power to resolve, Then we're
forced to go deeper into the human condition. Then we're
forced to surrender to the problem. Then we're forced to
(14:26):
sit in the tension and to wait for a problem
that may never be resolved, for a problem that may
stay in perpetuity. And I think that's a terrifying concept
for so many of us. And I also think it's
such an important concept inside of this world that we're
living in because since twenty twenty, things have gotten progressively
(14:46):
more chaotic, progressively messier, progressively more confusing, and in the
chaos and the confusion of all of that. I think
that we're using an old operating system as human beings,
where we're like, well, and maybe only in the Western world,
I don't know if this extends beyond that, but for sure,
(15:07):
in the world that I'm familiar with, we're using an
operating system that says like, oh, we are resourced to
solve this problem. We can figure this out. All we
have to do is X, Y, and Z. Let me
come up with a plan, let me have a strategy,
let me put a program in place, let me get
more organized, let me be more productive, let me be
more efficient. And we're using old programming to come at
(15:29):
a new situation that's totally new. It's never existed before.
It's extremely chaotic and confusing and messy, and the old
programming is in direct contradiction. It's like, yeah, no, your
productivity and efficiency is not going to work here. Your strategy,
your three part system is not going to apply here.
(15:52):
And I think for those of us who are paying attention,
it's all coming unraveled. We're realizing like, oh my god,
we are facing we are up against problems that we
do not know how to solve. We do not have
the resources to solve these problems. Now, I want to
make sure that I'm really clear that I'm not saying
that we shouldn't solve problems we do know how to solve.
(16:14):
If there's a problem in front of you that you
are resourced to solve by all means, please solve it.
And if there are collectively problems that are in front
of us that we do know how to solve by
all means, we should for sure solve them. But I
think if we're honest with ourselves, many of us are
beginning to face problems that are out of our control,
that are out of our scope of capability. And for
(16:38):
us to pretend like we're resourced enough to solve those
problems when we are absolutely not is just blasphemy. It's
just complete denialism. And my eyes are being open to this,
and so I'm watching it happen not only in my
own life but all around me, and so many spiritual
teachers kind of like bump up against this, and so
many the way that we talk about, you know, whether
(16:59):
it's like Christian spirituality or whether it's manifestation or whatever
kind of spiritual practices you're into, just start to notice
if there are ways. I'm not saying there's anything wrong
with any of these spiritual practices or with solving a
problem when it's solvable. All I'm saying is, notice the
ways in which your current framework of spirituality puts you
(17:20):
in control of a situation that, in reality, you are
not in control of. And for us to pretend that
we are in control when we are absolutely not in
control as just utter delusion. And I think that there's
like a thin line between what many of us are
calling spirituality and delusion. And I'm not saying that to
be spiritualist to be delusional at all. I think that
(17:43):
there just is a crossover. And you know, again, like
bringing that old programming to the new world gets a
little tricky. You realize, like, oh, my programming needs an upgrade.
I can no longer operate under that old programming before.
And if I continue to attach myself to that old
programming so tightly that I'm unwilling to let it go,
(18:04):
then I inevitably become delusional in this new world. And
I have one hundred percent, for sure and guilty of
carrying that delusion with me, because it is easier to
be delusional than it is to be honest in a
time like this, at least in my little world. I
don't know if it feels that way to you, but
it feels that way to me in my little world.
Sometimes facing the truth of what's really going on for
(18:26):
me in my own little world is too painful, and
so the choice that I make at certain points is
to instead be delusional, is to instead say a miracle
is coming. You know, maybe a miracle is coming. I'm
not saying that it's not. But notice the difference between
believing a miracle is coming to anesticize you from the
(18:47):
pain of facing your present moment, or believing a miracle
is coming because you truly understand what a miracle is.
A miracle, Marian Williamson says, is sometimes a shift in circumstance,
but more often it's a shift in perspective. And this
is what's happening for us right now. I believe as
a collective, our entire consciousness is being upgraded. And it's
(19:09):
by that I just mean the old programming that doesn't
work anymore is falling apart underneath of our feet, and
we're being required to upgrade the software system to a
new type of program to something that's going to work
on the computer that we have in front of us.
You know, the old programming is not working anymore, and
for us to attach ourselves to that old programming and
(19:30):
refuse to let it go is delusional. So this shift
in perspective that Marian Williamson talks about that is the miracle,
is happening right now. But you know what this is,
This goes right back to what I was saying before.
That shift in perspective only happens when we stay in
the tension of the story and don't resolve the problem
too soon. So as a collective and as individuals, the
(19:54):
problems that are in our lives, when we're just like, oh,
no problem, I can solve this problem. I'll throw one
hundred bucks at it. Or I can sell this. I
know someone who can fix it. I'll give them a call.
When we don't stay in the tension of the problem,
or when we too quickly come up with like a
the only word I can think of is like a
thin solution. It's like not really a rich solution with depth.
(20:16):
It's like a thin band aid kind of a solution
band aid on cancer. It's like I'm going to slap
this on, because then I'll feel like the problem is
solved and I don't have to really face it or
deal with it anymore. And when we do that, we
miss out on what the tension of the story was
trying to show us and teach us. The character, the
main character of the story only transforms because of the tension,
and they have to stay in the tension to the
(20:37):
end of the story, or the viewer, the reader, the
person paying attention, loses interest. So carry that metaphor all
the way into your personal life, your personal world right now,
think of a problem that you're facing that feels unsolvable.
(21:00):
If you don't feel like you have an unsolvable problem
in your life right now, I would say it's likely
because you're living in an environment in a culture. I
am too. Many of us are too. So this is
no shade or shame at all. But we are living
in an environment, in a culture where we get to
be very insulated from the truth of what is taking
(21:21):
place around us, so many of us are not paying
very close attention. That might sound a little confrontational. I'm
not saying it at you. I'm saying it as a
culture as a whole. In the Western World, in the
first World, in the United States of America, at the
very least, I'll throw us under the bus. In the
United States of America, we have such resource, such privilege,
(21:43):
We are so well resourced that we aren't forced in
a way to face the unsolvable problems of the world
around us. And so you know, to open your eyes
and pay attention, and you'll see there's a war happening
in the Middle East where people are dying every day,
and you maybe you have a strong opinion about that
on kind of one side or the other. There are
(22:04):
two sides of the issue that have really strong opinions
about how that problem should be solved. Again, the transformation
happens when we don't jump immediately to a solution, but
when we lean into the tension of the problem. And
I'm not saying that we shouldn't like find solutions where
we can find them. I'm not saying we shouldn't enact solutions.
(22:24):
I'm saying it's a problem that we can't quickly jump
to a solution, that the solution quote unquote solution is
actually found in leaning into the tension of the problem
and experiencing the transformation that is available for us there,
but most of us are just not doing that because
it's too painful, it's too vulnerable, and we don't have
to to be honest. Like you know, we just live
(22:47):
in our own private little realities over here where most
of the problems we face on a daily basis can
just be solved with a credit card. And again, so
going back to that ancient text that says it's easier
for a camel to pass through the eye of a
needle than it is for a rich man to enter
the kingdom of heaven. I think a big piece of
that is that when you are rich, quote unquote rich,
and you may not think of yourself as rich. I
(23:08):
definitely don't feel rich right now in my life, but
I am in so many ways rich. And when you
can pull out a credit card and solve a problem,
you aren't forced to go deeper into the tension of
the problem. I know that's a lot. Here is what
I want you to get from this episode. What would
it look like for you to go deeper into the
tension of a problem in your life right now? I
(23:28):
want you to take a minute and think about a
problem that is in front of you that feels unsolvable,
and maybe it's a personal problem. Maybe you have a
relationship in your life that feels like there's just no
way that this relationship could ever you know, be peaceful,
or there's just no way that I could ever get
what I need out of this relationship. Maybe you have
(23:50):
a job that you think like, or maybe it's with
your purpose, your career for example, maybe you think like, yeah,
there's just no way that I could ever ever live
out my purpose and make money doing it, or whatever
whatever it is for you, or maybe it's money. Maybe
you're you know, this is what it has been for us.
It feels like, you know, we made this set of
(24:12):
choices that were our choices, and we are not victims
in this, but now we're up against this impossible block
that feels like we'll never get past it. Whatever it
is for you, just take it. And maybe it's not
a personal problem for you. Maybe for you, maybe it
is the war in the Middle East. Maybe you watch
what's taking place there and something about it just kind
of tugs at your heart, and your heart is like
(24:34):
crying out for the human suffering that's happening on the
other side of the world. Maybe it's the fires in
La for you, maybe it's another social issue altogether. Maybe
it's global warming, maybe it's I don't know, whatever it
is for you, Or maybe you're hiding a secret and
you think, yeah, there's just never a world where I
could be honest about who I am to the people
(24:55):
who love me and that they would still love me.
Maybe you're just holding that back, thinking that's just an
impot possible problem that could never in a million years
be solved. There's nothing that we could do that would
fix that problem. So take a minute to think about
just one problem for you that feels unsolvable and ask
yourself what would it look like to live into the
tension of the problem, to let the problem exist, Like,
(25:18):
maybe just start for a minute with being really honest
with yourself about the problem and the bigness of it,
the depth of it, the pain that it's caused you,
the reality of what has taken place. This would be
an amazing writing assignment, by the way, and a great
start to a story because stories always start with problems.
(25:39):
We enter into the story at the point of highest tension.
So if that calls to you, maybe turn this into
a piece of writing. Maybe pull out a piece of
paper or pull out your computer and write about a
problem in your life that feels unsolvable, that feels too
big for you to solve, and it would take an
absolute miracle. And I'm not saying I don't believe in miracles.
I think that we are radically wrong in our culture
(26:00):
about what a miracle looks like. We think the miracle
is the immediate solving of the problem, and I think
sometimes the miracle is in the problem. There are so
many other stories that I would love to share. They're
not mine to share, but I do want to say
all of these people have been coming across my path
who are in a place where they're facing a problem
(26:21):
that they cannot solve. And I will tell you that
the most inspiring people the people who I am choosing
inside of this reconstruction that I'm in. My therapist has
said to me, like, I think you need to find
new role models. You know, people who you really admire.
And I'll tell you these people are not necessarily names
that you would recognize, but they're just everyday people who
(26:42):
you'd love if you met them, who are going through
unsolvable problems in their lives, are up against an unsolvable
problem and who have chosen to live into the tension
of the problem, and have chosen to let the problem
humble them, and let the problem rip them apart, and
let the problem show them their own humanity, and let
(27:03):
the problem reveal their depth, and let the problem teach them,
and let their problem, yeah, be their greatest teacher. These
people are heroes in my book, and their heroes because
of their ability to let the miracle unfold in the
way miracles do. I do believe in miracles. I just
(27:25):
think that we're radically wrong in our culture about what
a miracle looks like. And when you're wrong about what
a miracle looks like, what ends up happening is your
faith falls apart because you think, oh, I waited on
a miracle and the miracle never came. Well, what if
the miracle did come and you just missed it. What
if we just missed it. What if we're all missing
the miracle that's right in front of us because we
were wrong about what miracles really looked like. So consider
(27:49):
the problem in your life that is unsolvable. Ask yourself
what it would look like to lean into the tension
of that problem, to let the tension of the problem
teach you and show you everything that it has to
show you. There's a quote that I put in my
book called Indestructible by David Foster Wallace. He says, the
truth will set you free, but not until it's done
with you, which is a great example of this kind
(28:09):
of system upgrade that I'm talking about that I went
through in twenty fifteen when I went through my divorce.
That I you know, I had always believe the truth
will set you free. That's in scripture, and it was
something I was taught my whole life, and so I
had always believed that. And then when my marriage fell apart,
and when I really started to see the truth of
what had been going on, it felt like the truth
(28:30):
was so confronting and upsetting that how could it possibly
be truth? That the truth will set you free. Well,
then I saw this quote, the truth will set you free,
but not until it's done with you, and it was like, oh,
system upgrade, Okay, the truth is having its way with
me right now, which is extremely uncomfortable but is part
of the process. And so we're going through a similar
system upgrade right now. I really believe that, and system
(28:52):
upgrades are always incredibly uncomfortable and extremely confronting. And so
if you're feeling that, then I I believe you. I'm
here with you, I'm in it too. This is not
for the faint of heart. And we have two choices.
You can either live in delusion, and you know, the
delusion can look very spiritual. The delusion can be like
(29:14):
a miracle is coming, Jesus is in control. While those
things are true. You know, God is in control, a
miracle is coming, while those things I do actually believe
both of those things are very true. And also they
can serve as a tool for a nesticizing the pain
(29:34):
instead of inviting us to confront the truth, inviting us
to confront what is right in front of us, to
really live in the tension of the problem, and to
really let the problem show us what it's trying to
show us. So, if you're not feeling any of this,
if you're just like, what's this lady talking about and
you're still listening, then wow, I'm impressed that you're still listening.
But if you're just kind of feeling like, no, life's
(29:56):
pretty good, I'm happy things are going great, then ignore me,
move along, you know, move on, No need to like
force an awakening or an evolution that is not ready
to happen yet. I believe it all happens, and it's
right time, and it invites us when it is the time.
But if you are in it, if you're in it
and you're feeling the pain right now, then just know
that you're not alone, you're not crazy, you are not
(30:16):
making this up. You are a truth teller and you're
a seeker and that's why you're seeing clearly right now.
And I'm in it with you. I believe in you,
and I believe in the strength that you are going
to gain from living in this tension. And I'll see
you next week on the Right Story podcast
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