What's There To Figure Out?
I've been wrestling with something lately that's transformed how I approach pretty much everything. And it starts with this question: What if all our "figuring out" is actually getting in our way?
Look, I'm a professional overthinker. My brain's default setting is analyze-plan-predict-prevent mode. For years, I've believed that if I could just think through every angle of a problem, I could control the outcome. A + B = C. Find your passion. Figure out your life purpose. Make a five-year plan.
Sound familiar?
But here's the revelation that's been cracking me open: These aren't bad ideas—they're just focused on the wrong part of the journey.
I've started calling this the "outcomes-based vs. process-based" dilemma. We're collectively obsessed with outcomes. The promotion. The relationship. The achievement. The answer. We worship at the altar of results while treating how we get there as merely a means to an end.
And yet, despite all my figuring out, I keep facing the same core struggles year after year. Different scenarios, same patterns. Different jobs, same frustrations. Different relationships, same disconnections.
So what gives?
The DBT Breakthrough
My recent therapy dive into Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) has been blowing my mind with three fundamental principles:
All things are interconnected (nothing exists in isolation)
Change is constant and inevitable (the only permanence is impermanence)
Opposites can be integrated (it's not either/or, it's both/and)
These aren't just nice ideas—they're revolutionary when you actually start living them. They've sparked a profound shift in my approach: moving from being the judge of my experiences to becoming their observer.
What does this look like practically?
Instead of obsessively analyzing why I procrastinate, I simply notice that I am procrastinating, then respond with curiosity rather than self-flagellation.
Rather than trying to figure out all the reasons behind my anxiety, I notice the sensation in my body, breathe with it, and ask what it might be trying to protect me from.
When faced with uncertainty, I'm practicing staying with the discomfort rather than rushing to answers I'm not ready to live.
The Prison of Processing
Let's be honest about what our obsessive mental processing really is: it's our insecurity masquerading as control. It's our fear disguised as rationality.
There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting safety and predictability—these are basic human needs. But when we're relatively safe and stable, this same protective mechanism becomes our prison. We end up clutching our illusions of control so tightly that our knuckles turn white.
We're staring at the hamster wheel of our thoughts while convincing ourselves we're making progress.
We're still in the cage while telling ourselves we're free.
Liberation Through Presence
So how do we stop this exhausting cycle of figuring it all out?
First, we notice it. The awareness itself creates space where none existed before.
Then, through deep breath and stillness (yes, this means meditation or some form of present-moment practice), we start accepting reality as we experience it rather than as we think it should be.
As we surrender to the constant flow of change, we begin recognizing how truly interconnected everything is. The artificial boundaries between ourselves and the world start dissolving. Nothing is truly separate, and when we believe it is, we create suffering.
This isn't about moral righteousness or perfection. It's about being true to ourselves—who we are, where we are, as we are. What once felt like security in having all the answers transforms into something far more liberating: becoming the question itself.
When Rilke wrote about "loving the questions themselves like locked rooms," he wasn't offering poetic platitudes. He was describing a radical way of being that trades the illusion of certainty for the aliveness of presence.
What might open up in your life if you loosened your grip on figuring it all out? What energy might be freed up if you shifted from judge to observer? What questions might you finally allow yourself to live rather than solve?
Questions:
What mental process has the tightest grip on you right now?
How might you shift your focus from changing outcomes to observing your process?
What terrifies you most about not knowing?
How can this present moment be enough until there's no longer a need for "if only"?
Quote "I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." - Ranier Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet