When we have a problem, it tends to pop up in our mind many times a day. We worry about it and try to figure out what to do. But thinking about our problems is mostly thinking about what might happen in the future: We wonder, "What's going to happen and how will it affect me?" The trouble is, there are no answers to these questions—until there are—no matter how hard we think about them. These answers and the solution to whatever problem we think we have are revealed over time, in the course of life unfolding, and this can't be rushed. We have little influence on the timing of how life unfolds.

The mind doesn't like the fact that we can't always know what to do immediately or how things will work out, and it pushes to know what to do and what will happen before it's possible to know this. Sometimes the mind makes up answers just to know, and then it pretends to know what to do and what will happen. The mind often pushes ahead with its solution based on its assumptions.

Problems are naturally resolved with time. We do what needs to be done as that presents itself. Solutions are often discovered intuitively, as they pop into our mind: We suddenly know what we need to do about a situation. And we may wonder why we didn't see the answer sooner! But that's how it is in life: We don't know until we do. And all of our protests about this and struggling to know can't change this fact. A common example is a health problem: We may live with it for years, and then suddenly we run across some information about it that gives us the solution or explanation we were looking for.

Sometimes we aren't meant to find answers to a problem. A problem may be serving to catalyze our growth or point us in a new direction, and it may take years before the blessing in having had that experience becomes clear. Even if it never becomes clear, we can trust that our so-called problems serve us in some way, if not only to create the suffering that shows us we were the creator of that suffering all along and didn't actually have a problem, except the one we created by thinking about something in a particular way. An example of this is that we may feel our relationship is problematic. We're unhappy and we don't know what to do about it. Then we discover that we are creating our own suffering and a sense of there being a problem by the demands we're making on our partner to be different instead of just accepting him or her and allowing that person and the relationship to be the way it is.

The egoic mind comes up with all sorts of things it doesn't like, and these become problems. But is it really a problem if you don't like something? What if you decided it was okay to not like something? Or if you decided you didn't need to change something just because you didn't like it? That's called acceptance—you accept something you don't like just because you decide to accept it rather than focus on not liking it and making it into a problem. Or what if you decided that you liked it instead of the opposite?

Thinking about our problems doesn't help. It only makes it impossible to enjoy life as it is showing up. And if you look closely, you will also realize that without your thoughts about a situation, there is no problem. All problems are simply defined as such by the mind. What if you didn't listen to the mind's worries, fears, and perspectives on life? Living in the Now is a place of freedom from such thoughts. Life is still handled, problems are still solved, but with much more peace and joy. Life doesn't have to be so hard!