Aubin Palmer (00:01)
Good morning, power women, or whatever time of day it is for you. I often record podcasts in the morning, so I automatically assume that's when you're listening to it. But I hope wherever you are, whatever you're doing, you are using this moment to slow down, to reflect, to be in your power, because this is always available to you, always in access, and I love to believe I am helping you remember it. It is yours.
and you are stepping into it fully to live and create and be in power. Things are moving really well along for the Power Woman book right now. I am just consumed with that right now because yesterday I got everything submitted that I had to do. So this was from all the writing I did from introduction to author's bio to Amazon.
description, all the parts that I had to create besides just the actual book and actually having read the whole book because like I've shared it as a collection of stories, not just my own from over 50 women of their moments of power. so reading through them and formatting them and working with Kendra John, who has been my graphic designer, formatter and editor for this book has been such an amazing experience. And
Believing and moving forward that this book is coming out soon and it's it's just such a real beautiful process and I cannot wait to share this book with you. So hopefully that Having a book to read as well with lots of stories will be another source of power For you to remember your power to share your power to be in your power And it is summer
who else is having to adjust their schedule and it's the end of summer, well no, end of June. I always think of like the 4th of July means it's the middle of the summer now and it's already like almost the end of June so I'm like whoa, summer is going so fast but it's been so fun. So much time outside, so much sunshine, so much more time with just family and doing fun activities and still running a business and still.
taking care of house and still doing all of it. you know, people have been talking to me recently about the problems they're having with maintaining things for the summer and wanting to do things a different way. And I was thinking about a call I had with a client recently or some things that happened in her business that created problems. And as we coached on it,
we really came to the deeper stuff going on for her of why it was a problem and what was the problem and not just the superficial part but the deeper parts and looking at all the problems and she made the comment I thought problems would go away when I was at this level and that's where we've been coached for a minute because I have good news and bad news for you with problems.
problems never go away. But problems don't really even exist. And so I said this to her and how I titled this episode, there are no problems and problems never go away. And that truth sits in its duality and its true paradox.
that we can accept this and it actually gives you power back to see this truth.
So problems, if they don't exist, then how do they never go away? Well, they're always there because of how we're perceiving the world, what we're choosing to make things mean, our own judgments, our own interpretation of what is going on and what we want things to be like, how we wish things were, how we would do things, how...
things aren't always easy and there is the duality of good and bad in the world always and we get to react and feel whatever we want about that.
But that's how that truth exists of that we create the problem quotation mark by what we interpret it as. And so if we're in a completely neutral Zen state of being, we could say there are no problems. We are creating them with our own minds, but we have human minds. We are not zoned out robots that don't see any problems.
There is a common myth that if you keep growing and if I just get to the next level, the problems will stop.
and maybe the problems that you have right now will stop, but there will be new, bigger problems. And so coming into this acceptance that the problems are there because of how you're seeing the world, your capacity, what you're doing, and that's okay because the problems will never go away. It's not a problem that you have problems is another way to sum up those two conflicting truths, but that they are.
truth in each other.
it's not a problem that you have problems because there are no problems and problems never go away. And really seeing that and accepting that, I feel like I was just taking the edge off and I'm just like, oh, okay, so I have power to look at the problems I have right now and work with them and deal with them in my power, knowing that new problems will come my way that seem
so unsurmountable right now to me and by working with the problems I have now, I am growing my capacity to work with problems, to be in my power, regardless of the problems that come.
So in business, when you're starting your business, the problem might look like, how do I manage an Instagram account? How do I set up payments? Who even wants to listen to me? How do I gain an audience? Those are problems through your perception that you're having to solve. And they're there. And I remember when I started my business, I was like, I can't wait till I'm super successful and all my problems go away. But what my mind was really saying is once,
the current problems go away because I was looking at other people who are ahead of me and had what I wanted and seeing them, ⁓ they don't have these problems, but I had no idea what other problems come away because as your business grows, then you're having to figure out how to serve lots of people and maintain the level of integrity that you want to in delivering what you promise. You're having to figure out how to...
set up taxes for higher amounts of money and do reoccurring tax payments, predictive tax payments, how to hire people and work with people that you're paying, not just people paying you, how to set up systems to maintain the flow of your business but not let it overtake your life. New problems come. The problems never go away. But when you look at it and say, it's not a problem that I have problems, there are no problems.
They're just things I'm always learning how to solve and work with and create. And so a phrase I've heard for this is new level, new devil.
And I love that because it's funny because we think all the devil's all the problems outside of me, but it's really just the fear and worries we have inside of us.
And so we could even reframe it that they're not even problems. They're just things you're figuring out. That feels less dramatic and has less oomph to it, I guess, if you don't have any problems. So you just have to figure things out the rest of your life, the rest of always, especially in running a business. And it makes sense. There's always new things, new offers, new growth, new expansion. So there's new things you're figuring out. And what if they're not a problem?
It just feels so different. And I love examples from life as analogies. And so this example from recently in my life came up where we were just cleaning our garage out for spring. Saying this was May, beginning of May. It's hard to say that it was so recent and so far away already because it was just supposed to be a couple hour project cleaning out the garage.
We moved everything out, swept it out, scrubbed it down, and it looked so perfect that at 3 p.m. we decided to paint it because we hadn't painted it yet. We've had this house for almost nine years, so let's paint it. And we look it up on YouTube, DIY with a spray painter. You can do it in a couple hours. Okay, let's do it. So we go all in. The garage is clean. Let's just solve this problem of it not being painted.
by painting it right now in this opportune time.
when you're doing something for the first time and even if you follow all the steps on YouTube, it might take longer than they said. First problem. And so into the night, we're painting, getting frustrated. We thought we'd be done with the garage, everything back in. It's late middle of the night. Everything is still out in our front yard. We're painting, painting, painting. We rented the spray painter, so it has to be returned within 24 hours and we're just getting it.
and the light of painting at night time was attracting bugs, bugs are getting into the paint. It's just creating new problems, new problems. And see, when I say this story, they sound like problems, right? It's getting frustrating. And so we're running out of paint. We're going back to Home Depot before they close. We get more. And...
We go to bed at like 3 a.m. All of our stuff out on our front lawn. I decided if people steal our stuff, they needed it more than we do. Problem solved. I don't have to figure out how to put this back in my garage tonight because we still needed to clean up. So we wake up Sunday morning and look in the garage and realize we had two different paint colors and we got so mad. How could we have two different paint colors? And we look at the bottles and yep.
We had somehow received two different paint colors and when we went and got more paint, we got more of the wrong color. So it's not a perfect white. It's different shades of white in our, well, it's actually turned into three because we had one tone, two tones, and then when they got mixed at one point. And so there's three different tones of white on the walls. Ugh, we have a problem now. Do we repaint it? Do we get a refund? Do we hire someone else to come fix this?
another problem. The problems are stacking up on each other and it felt so frustrating and we decided to move forward, accept it, finish painting the spots that we had missed and start cleaning up. So we get out the hose, our spraying stuff down. If you've ever painted there was a lot of ⁓ dust it's called where it's just all the residue from the paint in the air.
So there's lots of paint dust. We're sweeping it out. We're spraying it out. We're just getting this garage clean so we can put everything away. And it felt good. We feel like we've made progress. We're good. Okay. We're moving stuff back into the garage. It's dry. Okay. This has been a big problem, but at least we've made some headway on it. We're still feeling pretty frustrated, organizing stuff, getting stuff back in. We just want to get this project done today. And
It's getting into evening. It's turning dark on Sunday and we've just had two days of problems. It started with solutions that we were creating and it's turning into problem, problem, problem. And I sent my daughter to put something away in the basement that we'd had in the garage and she ran upstairs screaming because we had flooded our basement.
and the water, the hose had just been left on with the pressure gun at the top and because of the time of year, a pipe had exploded with freezing and expanding and half of our basement was completely flooded because this pipe broke.
new big problem, right? And seeing this problem was so big and so beyond my capacity to even solve, I snapped and I had no more problems. I learned this truth of saying, ⁓ things are so bad now, I see that this is just.
a problem upon problem upon problem to the point where I'm just not even gonna feel these problems anymore. And so it was so fascinating to watch myself as I zoomed out. The first, most of Saturday I'd been in stress and frustration with the problems. Sunday was very full of problems. And then when things got so bad that the problems were bad, beyond even my control, I was the calmest I had been the whole two days.
because I saw dwelling in these problems wasn't even doing anything. It was actually making things worse. I was getting so frustrated and we were getting so upset about all the little things that things were just getting worse. And so we had to take a deep breath, call emergency plumbing. They come and do restoration. They come and rip the wall, the carpet, the walls up right away so they can get the water out, turn the fans on.
We turned the water off luckily and it was done, but we had to try to fan out the wetness and get it as dry as soon as possible. And then we started the long process of working with insurance and getting all the paperwork done and all the inspections and our basement is still not restored. We're dealing with no carpet and half the walls torn up and half the basement still. We can't even really use it. And it's not a problem. It's just what it is.
because it's just become such a big problem, we don't even see it as a problem anymore. It's just something we're working with and figuring it out. So I share this long but true problem story for you to use as an analogy for your business, whatever is going on, because things are often at this point where we have little thing, little thing, little thing, little thing, and it's just so annoying and it's just such a big problem until things we can see, okay, things have gotten so bad, I either figure this out,
what I can't even do this anymore so being in this energy of problems isn't serving me.
And I love how Eckhart Tolle has said it, there are no problems, only situations. This really just looks at the neutrality of everything going on and how it's our own interpretation and perception that is creating the problem for us. The fear of things not working out, of what it means about us, about people not liking us, about it not making enough money, all these fears.
in our mind are what create the problem for us. And in this example of my garage and basement, you know, it was real and they were problems and we had to solve them because, you we had to get stuff back in the garage and we had to clean up and we had to fix the colors of white that we had on the walls and they were all problem, problem, problem, problem until it was just so much that my mind decided to not hold on to the problems anymore. And as you hear this story, you might say like, I know how to paint and I would never have done that.
Do see how the problems that were for me wouldn't be problems for you because you have a different response, you have a different fear, you have different things going on for you? The same is true in business. Whenever you're facing the different fears, you get to decide what's going on for you. And really seeing this and believing this helps you so much to zoom out and recognize that it's a situation.
and you in your perception are creating the problem.
And so going inward instead of when we have problems and we don't have to get to the point that our basement floods metaphorically in our business to let go of the problems and we can let problems that we're having become a point of growth. I love to say obstacles are often showing us what we need to do to progress. Obstacles is another way of saying problems.
and they're portals to your growth, your self-awareness, your creativity. So you can ask yourself, what is this really showing me about myself, about how I'm perceiving my world right now, my reality, and what can I do in power to solve this problem or to really evolve? What if it's not even solving the problem, but what you need to
move to a new level. And so like we said, when new level, new devil, you solve one problem, you grow, you evolve, and then there's gonna be a new one. And that's okay when we expect that we move forward so much better. So when we release the resistance of it even being a problem, it's just what we live with and grow in as people, as business owners.
in all of life, but especially business. And so we come to our power when we notice things and instead of reacting, is it's just a problem and getting mad, we come inward and just feel, okay, what am I feeling? Why is this a problem for me? What is this situation? What is my perception of it? What am I making this all mean? Is this really true? Is it absolutely true?
and you do that, when you do this, you turn your problems into optional. You turn into, is this how I wanna deal with it? What would serve me better? really seeing, is it serving me to view this situation this way? Because it is creating a problem for me. And instead of seeing it as a problem, seeing it as a situation that I can evolve with, grow.
create better systems, get to the new level that I want to, and it gives you back your power to reframe it and see it how you want to, to really make it not a problem anymore. And so I want you to pause and think about, okay, what is a problem I'm dealing with right now? If it's in your business, great. If it's not, if there's something else going on in your life that really is a big problem right now.
That's okay. Use this as an example because learning to reframe and evolve in problems in any part of life will help you in all the parts of life. So business will help life and life will help business. But think of this problem and first start with asking yourself why is this a problem for me? That ownership of like, why is this a problem for me? So when I'm looking at the garage problem, like, well, it's a problem that my
garage isn't painted because it doesn't look very nice. I want it to be an energetically nice, good environment and it looks like it just got built by the builders. know how garages look before they're painted. I didn't like that, how it looked. didn't create the garage I wanted, so it was a problem for me. And so I wanted to paint it and why was it a problem that we painted so late in the day? Well, we didn't know what we were doing and we had to figure it out. And we made lots of mistakes and it created it.
making it take all night and we didn't know what we were doing and it just created more problems of not doing things the best or efficiently. And so just asking yourself why and like kind of answering these questions this way helps you see what your problem is.
but then you get to ask yourself, is it really true that it's a problem?
And I guess I will, yeah, it's a problem that we're up all night and the garage isn't finished and there's still stuff in our lawn. Why is that a problem? Well, someone steals our stuff, then we don't have anything anymore. Was anyone going to really come steal all your stuff? Is it really a problem if someone steals your stuff? You could buy more stuff. Maybe you didn't need that stuff anyway. You can just help yourself see that it's not as harmful as you might think it is, because at the root of believing it's a problem is a fear.
And so then the next question you ask yourself is why is this a fear for me? What am I fearing? This is going deep into yourself, but giving yourself, oh, I'm afraid people will steal from me. I'm afraid I don't have the money to buy all this stuff again. I'm afraid that people are judging me. I'm afraid that it makes me look bad to my husband because this was my idea. Like kind of saying what the actual fears are validates what's going on inside of you with the problem and helps you to release
and breathe, because then you can question the fears, solve some of the fears like, okay, my husband doesn't really think I'm that stupid, and if he does, it's okay. He knows that I'm doing my best and we'll get through this. If someone steals this, they needed it more than me. Answering those fears helps the problem dissipate in its potency. And then you're reframing it to say, I'd rather learn from this situation and grown it than just fix it immediately, because
fixing it, don't see what I could grow in. I don't grow in my ability to perceive things and be in power. And this helps you actually use problems, obstacles to your advantage. Learning how to solve problems is another saying what business is. And so by doing this with power, you are growing internally and it gives you space to grow externally too.
your ability to solve problems, your capacity matches your capacity, the level you're at. And so there is no problem if you have problems and there are no problems. This is just full of just these paradoxes and letting it just be true and accepting it and moving forward with whatever problem you're dealing with right now just gives you so much more peace and power to move forward to the next level.
So problems will always come. That's part of being alive. That's part of running a business. But you get to decide, are you gonna have drama or peace, resistance or flow?
And you don't have to get to the breaking point like I did with our garage and basement to just let go of the problems. You can recognize it with the first problem that shows up, whatever problem you're dealing with now before it gets to the point your nervous system gives up. But really just learning to be at peace and make progress with the obstacles or problems you have. Make sure you're power woman. You can do anything and then you're not afraid. As I grow, problems will come.
and I'm ready for them. As I get to the next level and there's a new devil, I'm okay, I'm ready for it. I know the process of how to work with my mind, how to not be in resistance but in flow and trust myself more than anything outside that feels like a threat. How powerful is that to say? I trust myself more than anything outside of me that creates a problem or a threat.
That's the real power, that's the real growth you want because the problems will never go away. There always will be problems, but you being in your power and trusting yourself to solve the problems but also not even see them as big problems is how you really grow in your capacity and your ability to do big things. So as you've reflected on your problem as we've gone through this, that's.
really coming up for you right now. I want you to see how you can go inward, shift your perspective about it. And it's so fascinating that when we do this, things we can do differently to solve this problem will come. But when we're just seeing as a problem outside of us that we can't do anything about and give up, then we feel defeated and hopeless. That is not your power energy.
Being in power, you will find solutions and the solutions are there because they're not even problems. They're just things you're gonna do, work with, change, grow in, and it just feels so much easier that it's not even a problem, it's just life. You're moving forward with it, you're growing in it. There's nothing wrong that you have problems and there are no problems. So I hope this has helped you today to really shift this and to really feel your power.
If you know someone that could really, this would really help, maybe if they're in the thick of a problem, approach them first and tell them, hey, I have something that could help you work with these problems. Don't just throw it at them. But we all need this to remember this power we have and that there's nothing wrong with having problems. They never go away. You're good. You're in power. You haven't done anything wrong if you have problems. They serve you. They are good. You are human.
our minds create them and we can work with our minds and be in full power to move forward and accept that there are no problems, but we will always have them and move forward with them. All right, Power Women, have a wonderful week and I will talk to you again next week.
