"When you do it for love, you have already won."
—SUNRISE
We all need love
We have already touched upon the importance of emotions when getting the full perspective on a problem and in choosing the right solution. While good problem solving does require, at some point, the separation of emotions from fact and in seeking creative solutions, no one can truly and completely leave out the emotions out of any problem-solving activity despite what some world leaders might say. The reality is, you need to have good emotions in check for you to empathise with others and what they are going through, as well as find the best solutions that will help everyone to be happy. Because that is the ultimate aim of all problem-solving: to see that everyone is happy, right? So why leave out the emotions completely from all good problem=solving work? In fact, good problem solving requires an understanding of the emotions people go through when experiencing a problem, and again when seeking a solution. The aim of all such emotions and in solving problems is to help people to see a solution that makes them happy. We want people to feel positive by the solution we implement for the benefit of everyone. We don't want them to think, "OMG! This solution is sh*t and I am not enjoying this". All it will do is see fewer people using the solution, or change the solution in a way you least expect, such as using graffitti to change the environment as a way of expressing a different solution. Therefore, it is essential that we acknowledge those emotions prior to solving a problem, and again when choosing the right solution.
If one had to sum up the essence of everything we have learned about the importance of emotions in problem-solving, it is simply the fact that we should all show love to one another. Because, in the end, this is what will help to bring out the love from others in return.
We all need love
Loving people for who they are is probably the first critical step before we even acknowledge a problem. That is how we learn to accept one another and all our differences. And, it begins the process of getting everyone in a receptive state to listen and be willing to learn of new ways of doing things in order to reach a more balanced solution. See the beauty of life and its diversity. By showing love to all, we are literally giving permission for others to shine and be who they are, to develop their unseen and potential gifts so they can apply them and help others in return, and to give them the confidence to change and be a better and more loving person through the things they achieve for everyone.
In terms of our work, what we do should ultimately involve some kind of problem-solving for people, whether it is through a product or service. At other times, it is merely to share in the gifts we have.
Of course, it isn't just the people that we must solve problems for. All living things are deserving of our love too (even those that want to eat us alive called the predators — they are the ones who probably lack the most love and certainly at a time when plant-based foods had swindled significantly for whatever reason had occurred in the environment causing widespread starvation to many animals, and so some animals had learned of another solution to help deal with this food-shortage problem). We need to provide simple and effective solutions in the environment such as a stable, secure and comfortable places called a home and a source of reliable food within a natural self-sustaining environment if all living things are to grow, breed i a sustainable way, and be happy.
A healthy environment reflects your love
The key to knowing whether we have solved all the critical needy problems related to our survival is how we treat our environment. Generally, the more you look after the environment and keep it productive, clean and natural with all recycling systems in place, the more the environment will look after you and everyone else. Not just in the fact that you will receive oxygen from the plants to breathe in. There are many other benefits. For example, you need tall trees and shrubs to reduce the amount of radiation reaching the ground. In that way, you can enjoy cooler conditions on the ground in the summer time, reduce evaporation of freshwater supplies, and help you to live longer. As another example, if we keep the oceans clean of plastics, you are not quietly introducing certain types of plastic toxins into the body from the fish you may eat. In that way, you are more likely to live longer. Performing these kinds of tasks in the environment reflects our understanding of the principle of love for other people. How well we look after the environment shows exactly how much we love the living things that must exist on the planet.
If we are smart enough, a well looked after environment will also provide everyone with all the food and water in any quantity you require, either very cheaply or freely depending your needs. Certainly we don't need law enforcement officers to send young children to jail for stealing an apple. If he/she is hungry, not having enough money should be prevent people from having what they need to survive and grow. If we truly understand the principle of love, both the environment and the people themselves will be looked after and done appropriately to ensure problems are kept to the absolute minimum.
The benefits of a well-maintained environment cannot be stressed enough. For example, having enough trees would solve climate change. In other words, the rains will become more regular and gentle in a cooler environment. The plants will grow more happily and absorb the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere more efficiently knowing there is easier access to fresh water. Fresh water builds up, and before you know it, you have plenty of water to grow all the food for society and ll the living things needed to keep the ecology in balance. You want to take an extra long shower? No problems. The sign of a good environment is that you don't have to pay for the fresh water, nor do you have to worry about how much is going down the drain, or people nagging you like you see in the Armed forces for using the tiniest amount of water for cleaning yourself.
That is the goal of showing our love when it comes to rebuilding a healthy and self-replenishing environment. If there is plenty for everyone and without costing anything, then you will know you have achieve the love people are seeking.
Consequences of not showing love
Otherwise, a lack of love, especially by way of limited or no food and water, creates more problems for people and all living things. Push it to the extreme in our lack of love and hunger develops, and eventually the individuals must do something to solve it (and many of them will not sit down and die as some R-wing people might want). People will fight before they die. Whether it is by stealing food or the money to buy the food, and/or later get into organised crime to make enough money to enjoy life, sometimes the solution found by these affected individuals may not always be the right one even if it means hurting other people just to get to the goal of eliminating hunger and be happy again. Eventually there will be civil unrest or war in the place where enough people have to fight to survive, or else they will create a new society that solves all the problems in a radical and dramatic way. Perhaps by developing a new socialist system. Hopefully it will be based on love. But sometimes it can create a different set of social problems. So long as people are learning and changing to find the right solution, there is no reason why the right, balanced solution cannot be found. So long as we do not leave it too late, there should be time to find this balanced solution.
In essence, if people show love by ending the war and providing a safe and secure home for people, improving the environment, and accepting people as deserving of our love and able to contribute in their own unique ways, all previous and new problems by others will be quickly eliminated.
If the lack of love is more to do with how people are unable to see themselves as valuable members of society, then that in itself can create problems. Basically these people will often do things to try to balance the situation by making themselves feel important to the point where they can go the opposite extreme and falsely make themselves more important than anyone else, and even try to become and claim they are God should they decide to establish a cult group and fool others to follow them and make them see their greater importance. Or they will bully others so they can temporarily get that feeling of greater importance. This extends to creating scams as a means of generating wealth by fooling others into giving their money only to see that they receive nothing in return. Or what about those who feel they must plunder the natural resources in order to get that feeling of self-importance back again (such as becoming a dictator or ruthless business operator and hence rich and powerful). Yet deep down all this is done because these people are lacking in love for themselves and from others in a genuine sense as a result of not being treated and receiving the love they should have received when they were younger. Usually a father who didn't receive love either. So, for these people, discriminating others and treating them badly or to make obscene profits just to make themselves feel better and look more important is not unusual in this circumstance.
In summary, we should not be surprised by how people behave in a world lacking in love. The problems these people create comes in different forms, but the solution to all of them involves merely to bring back the love: whether to solve the problems such as providing food and water, or simply to accept and love people for who they are and what they can contribute.
It is natural for people to seek the love they need. We all deserve to be loved. Love can be as as simple as helping a sick person, or providing clean and healthy foods and water for sustenance.
We all seek love throughout history
Throughout history, and even today, we are all trying to survive, and so get that feeling of importance again through happiness. It is a regular activity. No matter how balanced we think we are, it is like a curved convex hard surface on a marble trying to sit on top and stay balanced. Let it go for long enough and eventually the ball will move away from the balanced position. We must constantly strive to push the ball back to balance. Likewise, we all want to get that feeling of love and will do anything to have it. From time-to-time we will feel the love disappear and soon we seek to find that love again, such as eating some food. It is normal. Yet the way we have created our society, it seems love does not come easily. We have to work at it, often much more than is necessary. We virtually have to prove ourselves to others that we are deserving of such love when in reality we are already there and we should already be loved whether we are aware of it or not. We just don't know it. We can't see it, because the faith we should see in people that we will all achieve greatness is not apparent in those that believe we must work hard and prove our worth. Sometimes people need to be giving of their love more freely for others to see it, and so create a better society. Certainly one of the best ways to show this love is to solve the problems people find themselves in. The other way, is just being nice and loving of others for who they are.
How to love the individual
At the individual level, you must use your emotions and visualisation skills to see how other people (or living things) feel about what's happening to them when a problem occurs. We call this showing empathy. The world is not always about being rational, or even being totally creative (although you do need a bit of both to solve problems so long as the emotions are there for the solutions to be valued and seen as the right ones). You need to engage the emotions first to see how people feel about a certain situation before tackling the problem and solving it. Ask yourself, is there any form of negative emotions that could arise from this situation (which could be caused by your own actions)? Then acknowledge it. Then ask, Why? What is causing it? What are the specifics leading to the negative emotions. What actions or thinking is causing the harm? Can you actually see the problem through the eyes of the individual? What does it feel like? Once you acknowledge the problem, you are ready to problem solve.
Remember, before you can ever apply the rational and creative sides of the brain to solve the problem, make sure the feelings and the specifics of what's causing those feelings and hence seen as a problem are fully acknowledged. In that way, you will say to other people that you are genuinely listening and do see the problems they are facing. Feel what others feel and you will be on their side in seeing the problem from their perspective.
Once you have the empathy to see the situation clearly and can feel the emotions in the affected people, you will understand why it is so important to love people by solving the problem (and so reduce the costs to society in dealing with the problem in a permanent sense). Then helping people to find a solution will become a natural thing to do. For example, true love always requires that you help people to be free from survival-based problems (i.e., the constant struggle to find food and water). You learn to grow the food and gather the fresh water, and you give the surplus with all your heart to those who need it. By doing so you effectively stop the creation of a host of other problems stemming from people who are fighting to stay alive. Furthermore, fully fed individual can quickly focus on the more meaningful and grander things in life, as well as giving him/her a belief that what they can reach for is achievable and will be of great benefit to everyone.
Next, we show love to the individual by providing him/her with the tools needed to solve problems. Solving the problems for them can be a great gift, but the biggest gift is often in the providing of the tools and education that helps others to solve the problems for themselves. You are a tool just as much as anything you provide. Some people like to help. This is perfectly fine. Or it may be the fact that the tools we need are more to do with gathering knowledge via education, or skills development. Or maybe providing contraception freely can solve many problems for the women who might be caught up in unfortunate circumstances. Then the source of the problem can be tackled more easily.
Sometimes the cost of some essential tools can be expensive. So we must find tools that are cheap and effective or else we must ensure individuals are paid adequately from the jobs they do for society, no matter how menial or basic the jobs might seem (there should always be a minimum wage that people can survive on and properly grow as a healthy individual) so they can afford the tools they need to solve problems. Or else at some point a new world order must commence to ensure every individual have the essential tools they need to survive and everything else provided at the communal level (to be borrowed at various times) or provided freely and permanently when a certain amount of work or effort has been provided to the new world order society. In that way, everyone has a chance to achieve something great.
And when it comes to finding and implementing a solution using the tools available to the individuals, you may need to provide adequate free time for the individual to think, find the solutions, or work out how to use the tools and see how the solutions will help solve the problems. Everyone should have ample time to be on our own or with the help of others to achieve whatever it is we believe we can do within our lifetime and not just the current problem at hand.
These are just a few of the simple things to show we truly love the individual. Because in the endwe know that when individuals are loved, great things will be achieved, more than just simply surviving. We do not have to force people to do great things for society. We just have to show faith and the love for people will result in great things happening for society. This has always been how things worked with humans.
Do not be afraid to use one's emotions
In a L-brain society that values rational thinking, it seems our emotions have taken a backward step. Problem-solving and making decisions is often thought of as best made when rational thinking is made the primary, if not only, tool at our disposal. The most common place we see this is in the business world. Yet to be a truly effective problem-solver with solutions that are long-term, permanent and supportive of the widest number of people, you need your emotions. Seriously, how would you know whether a product or service will make people happy? You have to use your emotions to see whether a product or service is truly helping people and ultimately is bringing genuine happiness to those who use the product or service. At some point you need to have those empathy skills to know what you are doing and selling is helping people to be happy. You can try to avoid our emotions, but it is amazing how the best products and solutions come when people in the business world apply some emotions to the problem. It is a bit like computers. You can either given them something unintuitive and complicated to use, or you can given them a Apple Mac. Which is easier? What is making the people happier? Why? It doesn't take a genius to understand why. Actually, as humans it is too hard to avoid emotions completely from all our thinking. It does not matter if there are people who seem cold and calculating on the surface. Deep down, and assuming they are normal people, they would still have to wrestle with the emotions at some point. We are human. It is natural. And where the solution to a problem involves people, it is essential to use your emotions (unless your business is on the verge of collapse and you need any kind of quick fix solution that doesn't properly care for its customers or workers except to grab the customers' money and not pay the workers a decent wage).
Not even the Department of Defence where soldiers and commanding officers can deny their own emotions to some extent. They are often seen as and thought to regularly suspend their emotions and feelings when finding and implementing very direct and harmful solutions when dealing with an enemy, or when saving the lives of men and women on the front line. yet even then, these people cannot completely ignore emotions when humans are involved. There will always be an active part within the brains of people in Defence telling them that they must look after people, whether innocent civilians caught up in war, or colleagues working in the armed forces or on the battlefield. Even the enemy can sometimes be seen by soldiers as like looking at their own brothers or sisters. Why? Because we realise at some point that everyone are seeking the same things of surviving and being happy. Everyone has feelings. They are only doing this because they are told to do it or else something drastic will happen to them back home. But if they had a choice, they wouldn't do it. Just like if you had a choice, wouldn't you prefer your leaders to come up with better and more imaginative solutions to avoid war in the first place? Of course you would. You are human like everyone else. It is just that the tools you are given are achieving the wrong type of goal. All we can do is use the guns and other weapons to solve an immediate problem of survival and reducing enough the numbers to help achieve a narrow-minded goal of winning the war. It is a desperate and quick-fix solution designed by world leaders who do not have the imagination to come up with more original solutions for helping people on both sides. People in power just want to retain a certain way of life and are not willing to compromise or move to a new and more balanced position. As a result, other people are forced to fight on the orders of these dysfunctional leaders in order to retain this certain way of life. To truly solve a problem, you must understand what we are achieving in life. And does achieving it mean we must kill others? Or can we not use our differences and unique points-of-view in a positive way to solve all our problems? And do we need unimaginative leaders running the show if we can see for ourselves what needs to be done? At the end of the day, solving problems properly requires that we must take into account everything, including the emotions of everyone involved (and dare we say it even the enemy as well — as much as some people may hate to do so).
NOTE: The true mark of love comes when we learn to love our enemy. This will tell us how far we have come as human beings on this planet. Because through love there can be no enemies. We are all solutions just waiting to come to fruition.