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Day 25: The Final Breakthrough – How to Solve Problems Quickly and Effectively
Listen. After all that we've done and all we've worked on together, what's it really going to take to succeed? One final ability, and that is the ability to handle the inevitable problems that will come up when you start making major progress towards any goal. That is, I don't care how much skill you have, how much ability you have, how great things are flowing, problems are going to come up. And the reason is, problems are part of life. They're part of what allow us to grow and expand and become somebody. Our life would be pretty darn boring without problems. In fact, we wouldn't get to know who we really are.
So today, as we near the end of this personal power program, it's appropriate we just take a few minutes on this day to at least talk about the basic foundation of how to handle problems. How do we deal with those inevitable things that come up that we did not expect to get in the way of your ability to really succeed? And the solutions are simple. And this tape will be brief because in problem solving, the most important thing that I could share with you and have you please remember for a lifetime is this: Learn to spend eighty percent of your time on the solution and only twenty percent of your time on the problem.
Gosh, if you did only that alone and you listened to nothing else I said on this idea of how to solve problems, you'd change your whole life. Because inevitably, what makes little problems into big monsters is spending all your time going over and over and over what the problem is. You don't need to do that. You just gotta identify what's the challenge and what do I need to do to turn this thing around. And remember the power of questions. If you keep asking yourself, "Why do these problems always come up for me? How come this always happens? Why is this happening now?" Those kinds of questions will whip you into an emotional frenzy because again, they're endless loop questions. They will not solve your problem.
Problem solving comes by controlling your focus, expecting an answer, knowing what you want in terms of change, trying something, noticing whether it works or not, and simply changing your approach until you get the result that you want. That's all you've got to do to solve problems.
Now, it's true, we've come full circle. In the first tape, we talked about this ultimate success formula, and we talked about that you could speed up the process of getting what you want, including solving problems, simply by using role models. Hey, if I've got a problem, the first thing I try to do is ask myself, "How can I turn this around? What's the quickest way I can turn this around? What's the fastest way I can turn this around? And maybe even have fun doing it? Or how can I learn from this while I quickly turn it around and have fun during the process?" Remember, your brain can answer any challenge, any problem, if you just ask an effective question of yourself. And where your resources are not enough, there are plenty of people that have already gone through whatever problem you're going through and give you solutions if you'll just model them. In other words, human experience, even though we're unique, the challenges that we experience in our lives, in relationships, in business, in friendships, and parenting, and economics, and managing our physical body, those problems are common, and the solutions are also common. So finding a role model is a way to speed up the process of solving problems, finding out from them what they did, doing the same things, getting the same kinds of solutions.
The thing that stops most people from being able to handle their problems is an emotional state known as overwhelm. If you get yourself in a state of overwhelm, then what's going to happen is your inherent ability to deal with virtually any problem gets squashed. So how do we stay out of overwhelm? Answer: Learn to do two things. One, learn to associate in your mind massive pain to being overwhelmed. In other words, teach your brain to go into a state of overwhelm is much more painful than to deal with the problem. If you'll do that, your brain will do anything to stay out of overwhelm. In addition, teach your brain the pleasure that it gets by solving problems. Because the truth is, in life, some of the greatest satisfaction you'll ever have is from taking on a massive challenge where it looked like there's no way to turn around and pulling it off.
One of the outcomes that I'm most proud of in my life came out of one of my most painful experiences. I turned my company around from $758,000 in debt from a guy who embezzled a quarter of a million. You can't believe the sense of satisfaction and confidence that comes when you've been able to systematically, every day, handle virtually every problem that a business can have and turn it around. It transforms your belief about what you're truly capable of as a human being and creates an unbelievable sense of pride of accomplishment. I mean, it's incredible.
So again, the most important aspect of solving a problem is: One, manage your own state. You've got to stay out of overwhelm. You've got to stay resourceful, no matter what the situation is or how tough it may seem. Remember, you've had challenges before. You've had things that looked impossible before, and you've turned them around. So be willing to trust yourself, to have faith that you can find a way. But the way is not going to be found by you giving up or by you becoming overwhelmed.
Two: Make sure your focus immediately is define the problem explicitly and in writing on a piece of paper, and spend no more than twenty percent of your time to solve the problem on describing what the problem is. The rest of the time's gotta be on the solution.
Three: Come up with your best plan to handle the challenge as quickly as possible and act upon it. Do not wait. Remember, momentum carries with it power, and inertia binds you to stagnation.
Once you've taken action, keep your eyes and ears open. Pay attention.
Step four: Notice what you're getting from your present actions. Are you getting closer to the solution, or are you just creating more of a challenge for yourself? You've got to develop that sensory acuity to pay attention and notice the impact.
Step five: If what you're trying isn't working, change your approach. Develop the kind of flexibility that allows you to solve virtually any challenge that can come up. One way to do that is learn to ask yourself the question, "What would happen if?" "What would happen if I tried this?" "What would happen if I tried that?" Too many people, when trying to solve problems, say, "Oh, we couldn't do this. We couldn't do that. Somebody makes a suggestion. Now, that'll never work." Instead of shutting off possibility, open yourself to any solution by asking yourself the question, "What would happen if?" "What would happen if we did try that approach?" "What would happen if we tried something we'd never tried before?" "What happened if we tried this thing that seems to be silly?" By asking the question, "What would happen if?" you create new possibilities, more flexibility, and therefore a greater chance of getting the result that you want.
Six: Remember, you've got role models all around you. No matter how difficult your problem is, other people have probably already experienced it. Go to those people and get some of their answers of how to turn things around.
Seven: Key element to handling problems: Change your entire belief about what problems are. See, a lot of people think of problems. In fact, myself, quite honestly, other than this tape, I usually call them challenges. I call them problems here to hook you, to grab you, because so many people look at them as problems. For me, my immediate reframe to virtually anything that happens is, "This is a challenge, and I love a challenge." Problems, they're okay. Solving problems, that feels pretty good. But taking on a challenge, to me, that's inspirational. And remember, we've got to realize that the words we use create states in us. So you might want to change "problems" to "challenges" for yourself and just realize that's what they really are. They're an opportunity for you to expand and grow.
I have to tell you that in my life, I'd heard people growing up say things at times like, "Well, you know, this challenge will really help you to grow." And I thought, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, big deal." But in reality, as I look at the most difficult situations in my life, the biggest "quote unquote" problems, the biggest challenges have caused me to grow the most. Out of necessity, they have helped me to create the level of skill and ability that have shaped my life well beyond anything that I would have dreamed of before.
In fact, a friend shared with me years ago a metaphor about problems that really changed my view of them so that they weren't something to avoid, but rather than something to take advantage of when they came up. He took out a piece of paper one time and drew a little tiny X in the middle of it and said, "This is you. This is you as a being." And then he drew a circle around it. He said, "You see the circle? And it took up maybe a third of the page." I said, "Yeah." He said, "This represents your influence. He said, anything that fits within the circle represents the things that you can easily handle in your life. Things like maybe balancing your checkbook, managing some of the people in your office, getting yourself to follow through on simple tasks." He said, "Now, take a look at this. Everything outside the circle represents all the things that you have not learned to master yet, the things that aren't within your range of comfort to be able to deal with." He said, "For some people, maybe for you, balancing your checkbook is actually outside your circle."
He said, "But here's the bottom line. He said, what happens in life is you're just floating along and all of a sudden, just outside your circle here, just slightly outside, maybe an inch out, wamo comes in one of these big giant X's called a problem." And he said, "What happens is it smacks the side of your circle and wakes you up a little bit. And your brain says, 'I gotta go deal with this.' So you rush out to the edge of that circle to deal with this quote-unquote problem." But then you hit the edge of your circle, you hit your outer limits, the limits of your comfort zone. He said, "What happens is most people retreat. It's pretty uncomfortable being out on the edge like that. So they smack against their own barriers and they come right back inside again. They try and pretend that it's not there." But the problem is, if you leave that problem out there, you know what happens? Within a very short period of time, on the other side of your circle, bam, there's another one of those problems. Maybe not the exact same thing, but one of a similar type and quality. Have you ever noticed that? It's like you don't handle one, also another one pops up. And sure enough, what happens? You run out to the edge of the circle, you hit the edge of your present ability or your present comfort level, and you get a little scared, and you pull back. What happens? You still haven't handled that problem. So, wamo, another edge of your circle, there's another one that shows up. Now, this keeps happening until you get enough pain that one day you smack through your barrier, you go all the way at the edge, and you break through, and you learn to handle that problem.
Well, when that occurs, and as he drew it on the piece of paper, it was an interesting metaphor. He said, "Now take a look. What's happened? You've extended the edge of your influence, of your ability to deal with things in life. And when you've extended out this additional inch," he said, "watch what happens. Your whole circle, your whole beingness gets larger." He demonstrated for me as drawing what he meant. He drew a line from the center of the circle breaking through the edge of the circle out to one of those little problems. And now, once it was handled, he said, "The whole circle gets bigger." Now, that situation that used to be beyond your limits is within your reach. In other words, you're bigger, you're better, and you're not able to deal with this problem, but anything now that was an inch beyond your reach is also within your reach. You're able to deal with it as well. He said, "As soon as you're feeling really good about that, guess what happens?" And I said, "What?" He said, "Another bam hits you, and there's another problem about two inches outside of your circle." He said, "If you don't deal with it, pretty soon, bam, another one." He said, "But eventually, you break through. You handle that problem, and your circle expands." He said, "That is the purpose of living. The purpose of your being is to expand." And he said, "The purpose of problems is to cause you to expand. Without them, you'd stay where you are."
In fact, he told me that in its original root, the word "problem" actually means "to throw forth." Now, think about that. "To throw forth." What does that imply? Implies that you and I throw forth the very problems that we experience in our life so we'll continually expand and grow. Hey, I don't know if this is really true, but it might be a fun and useful way of looking at problems where now you say, "Hey, I threw this thing out here so I can expand and grow like crazy, so I can deal with more, so I can become more as a human being." I think it's a more useful way of looking at problems rather than thinking in life that you're going to solve your problems and then someday there won't be any. I don't care who you are, what's happening, there's going to be more because their purpose in life is to cause us to grow. And if we're not growing, we're not going to be happy anyway.
So let me offer you one final thing in this tape, and that's maybe the best element of things we've talked about thus far, and that is this: We've talked about the fact that what we focus on is what we get, and that questions, the quality of the questions we ask ourselves, basically determines the quality of our life. A long time ago, I realized that problems were going to be coming up on an ongoing basis if I was going to deal with a large number of people and expect to do a lot in my life. So I decided to develop a series of questions that I could use to take myself from feeling like I had a problem that was overwhelming me into a place of creating solutions. So I've developed five questions, and I call them my problem-solving questions. And you might want to jot these down, even stop the tape one after another and make sure you get them down in your notes.
By applying these five questions for myself, at least, I've been able to deal with things that used to absolutely devastate me and actually turn them around into something I really began to enjoy. And presenting to you these five problem-solving questions, I want you to know they can work for really big problems or for small ones. One thing is important to remember is this: Small problems seem big, very often, don't they? So dealing with this, the size of a problem doesn't matter. This system will work for anything.
Let me give you a simple example. I remember one time I came back from a seminar tour where I'd done approximately 25 seminars in about 27, 28 days. And to say the least, I was a bit physically burnt out. And I came back and I felt like I'd not really had any space or time. And I don't know if you've ever been in that place, but that's where I was. And I came home and found a hundred messages, just under a hundred to be accurate, that I personally was supposed to respond to. That was not all the hundreds of calls that had come in that other people handled for me. These were people that had to speak to me personally. Now, you talk about stress. When I saw this list and thought, "I'm only going to be home for about 48 hours, and this is what I've got to do on top of everything else," I went nuts. I started to feel angry inside. Why? I asked myself lousy questions. Questions like, "How come I have to do this? How come I never have any space? I don't have any time at all." Pretty soon, I whipped myself into a real good frenzy.
Now, the bottom line is, I realized that's not going to support my life. Fortunately, though, now I have a system for dealing with it. And anytime I start to get upset, anytime I start to get hooked by a problem, these are the five questions I ask.
Question number one: What's great about this? Well, my first response is, "Nothing." So then I modify the question and say, "Well, what could be great about this?" And what I do is make myself answer the question. So, "What could be great about this?" And I thought, "Well, what could be great is, you know, if I really think about it, three or four or five years ago, I probably would have begged to have people like this calling and wanting to talk to me personally, especially a hundred. I mean, my gosh, these are movers and shakers, and they've got to talk to me and nobody else. They need decisions from me that can make a major difference." That's pretty darn exciting. That began to change my state immediately.
My second question that I ask is: What's not perfect yet? Now, take a good listen to that. "What's not perfect yet?" Remember, we talked about presuppositions earlier when we talked about questions. What does that question presuppose? The answer is pretty simple: It presupposes that it's going to be perfect. That's kind of nice, isn't it? Isn't that different than "What's the problem?" It changes your state immediately. So I said, "What's not perfect yet?" My answer was, "Well, what's not perfect yet is, even though I've got all these great people calling me, I don't have quite enough time for my own personal life."
Third question: What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it? Again, "What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it?" Now, again, listen to the presupposition here. "What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it?" presupposes that I'm one, willing to do something about it, and that I can. Those are pretty good ways to look at the world. And so, what happens is it gets me to focus on some solutions. So my brain said, "What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it?" I thought, "Well, I'm willing to find a way to make the calls because these people deserve to have an answer, and I'm willing to change my schedule in my life so that I have more time for myself. I'm the one responsible, and I can create it."
Question four: What am I willing to no longer do in order to have things the way I want them? Well, when I thought about that, I thought, "Well, I'm willing to no longer complain about the situation when I'm the one who set it up. I'm willing to no longer put myself in a position where I have to answer all of these calls. I'm going to develop a different strategy where more of these people can be handled by someone else."
And finally, the fifth question, probably the most important one out of the list: How can I do what's necessary to get this job done and enjoy the process? Critical question. Because what happened when I asked it to myself? As I said, "How can I get this job done? How can I return all these calls and enjoy the process?" My brain immediately got an answer because I asked a good question. My brain said, "Hey, you own a jacuzzi. You haven't been in the thing for six months. Why don't you take the telephone outside? Take your computer with you. Turn on the jacuzzi. Get in and make your calls from there and be a true Californian." That's exactly what I did, and I had a blast. I sat up there and called people and said, "Hey, how you doing? I'm calling you from my jacuzzi. What are you doing? Working for a living?" And I harassed people and teased them and absolutely had fun. I made all the calls. In fact, I wanted more. I made it through all of them. Couldn't reach a lot of people, so I started looking to see if there's anybody else to call.
See, here's the key: You and I have the resources in our lives to figure out how to enjoy anything. The problem is, we don't ask the right questions. I took myself from a place of absolute overwhelm to a place of getting the job done and enjoying it through asking five questions. It'll work for virtually anything.
So here's your assignment for today. Jot down the five problem-solving questions. Here they are: Number one: What's great about this? Or what's good about this? If your brain goes, "Nothing," say, "Well, what could be great about it?" Question two: What's not perfect yet? Presupposing it's going to be perfect. Question three: What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it? Question four: What am I willing to no longer do in order to make things the way I want them? And question number five: How can I do what's necessary to get this job done and enjoy the process?
Write down these five questions. You can play back the tape if you didn't get them down. And then what I want you to do is very simple. I want you to pull a problem out of your life, something that's a challenge right now, and I want you to run yourself through these five questions and write down the answers. Don't just answer them verbally. I think you'll find by the end, you'll not only have solved your problem, but you may have created a new opportunity for a lot more fun. Play with your problems. Enjoy them and grow from them.
I look forward to being with you again tomorrow. Till then, live with passion.
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