Problems, they come up all the time . How to improve problem-solving skills is
what we're taking on today at Live On Purpose TV.
Perspective is everything.
The way we look at something matters and it makes a difference. To think about
problems differently, helps us to approach them in a way that is more
productive and actually more efficient. What is this problem? Is it a puzzle to
be solved? Is it a threat that's going to destroy your life? Is it an opportunity
for something creative to happen?
See how we frame the problem is going to change how we look at it.
Now a little bit of brain science will help here,
in fact, let's just take three steps here to improve our problem-solving skills and
the first one has to do with our brain.
Step one, turn brain on.
Okay, now your brain is always on. What part of your brain is
dominant or calling the shots at this point?
We've talked in other videos about
the fight-or-flight response and the fight-or-flight response is your brain's
own defensive mechanism that kicks in automatically anytime there is a threat
or a perceived threat. Doesn't even have to be a real threat, the fight-or-flight
response is a chemical response triggered by our brain and using the
glands in our body which create and store chemicals. The adrenal gland,
for example. It's located right near your pancreas and it creates and stores a
chemical called adrenaline. It's like it's just holding it there for you.
Just in case you need it, made you some, let me know. And then it's just holding it for you.
Until it gets a signal from your brain, the limbic system in your
brain that tells it, "Hey, we got a threat here, there's a
danger!" "Oh, got some stuff for that. Squirt." And it squirts it right into your
bloodstream. That adrenaline has an effect of increasing your
heart rate, for example. It's not just adrenaline, there's cortisol and there's
other chemicals that kick in and flood your system. One of the things that
happens in the brain itself is a decrease in blood flow to the prefrontal
area of your brain, this is the part, folks, that's doing problem-solving.
Oh, that's how this is relevant. Conflict resolution, creativity, empathy, compassion,
a lot of good things are happening up here in the front part of your brain but
it gets shut down. Why? Because your brain loves you, doesn't want you to be
bear chow. For example, a bear is barreling down on you. What are you gonna do?
Sit down and think it through? No, you're going to be toast, right?
Your brain wants to preserve your life and so it kicks you into fight-or-flight mode,
shuts down the thinker so that it doesn't get in the way and allows you to
just get to business with either putting up your dukes or getting the heck out of there.
So notice that your brains just taking care of you but we got this
problem because the part of our brain that does problem-solving gets shut down
when we face a threat. Nothing is wrong with you for doing, it's just how your
brain operates, it's a survival thing. So step one is turn your brain on. What part
of your brain? Prefrontal cortex, the part that's going to do the problem-solving.
We're going to need that if we're going to do effective problem solving.
One of the quick ways to get there is breathing, slow focused breathing. You can
get there through meditation, physical exercise is helpful, tends to reverse
that process in your brain, meditation mindfulness, all of these things can be
helpful and rather than going into detail about any of those, just realize
there's a lot of resources that you can use to do step 1, turn your brain on.
Get back into thinking mode instead of fight-or-flight mode. Now let's move to
to step 2, expand your options. What if you were trying to solve a problem and
you could do either this or that. So an example, one of my clients
was trying to decide what to do with a relationship that he was in and his
thought was either, I can stay with this girl and get married
or I can dump her, we can break up. Well that's not a lot of choices, is it?
If it's either this or that. What if he had three options? What if he had five
options? What if he had 15 options of things that he could do to solve that
problem? The literature suggests that there's an optimal optimal level
somewhere. I can tell you it's not two, it's probably not 50 but having more
options to choose from gives us more possibilities. So how can we do that?
One of the things you might consider whatever problem you're trying to solve,
ask yourself, am i looking at this as an either/or? If you are, you might want to
expand those options. What if I could do both? What if I could do this backwards
or upside down or inverted or in a different order?
These are brainstorming techniques that you can use to look at any particular
thing so if I'm thinking, "Well I need to do this and then that." What if you did
that and then this? Just reverse the order or turn it upside down and see
what it looks like or what if it were in a different color?
You see, we're starting to open up the mind to consider different options.
When we're brainstorming options, it's good to remain open to any possibilities as
crazy as they might seem and some of the craziest ones can bring about some of
the the greatest innovations and in solutions that we didn't even know were
available. So step two is to open up those options, to create more options.
Don't worry about picking one at this point, just create more options.
One of my favorite questions to my clients is, "What do you think your options are?"
This helps me to know how they're thinking about it and usually, if they're tied up in some
anxiety over something, it's because it's an either/or option
and they don't like either choice but they don't have enough information to go
with one of those. We expand those options that opens up some possibilities
and it reduces the anxiety so that we can keep thinking.
Okay, so we've got two steps so far.
Turn your brain on. Oh and by the way, on that one, here's the little
phrase that might help you, "Don't respond until the adrenaline is gone."
We're got that fight-or-flight thing kicking in so we want to turn on the thinking part of
your brain, expand your options so that you have more things to choose from and
now let's go to the third perspective, okay.
For this one, we need begin a little
higher altitude view. In fact, if you can picture this from from the standpoint of
taking off in an airplane, you know, when you take off in an airplane, you're right
down and in the airport and you're right on the runway and you can see the
pavement and you've got trees or buildings or whatever all around you and
they start whizzing past and as you take off, you get a little different
perspective of the ground and within just seconds, you're up at an altitude
that allows you to see things that you didn't even see before. This is all about
perspective. So what if you could picture the problem that you're in and it's
current and it's troubling and it's right in your face right? What if we
could take a little higher altitude perspective of it? What would it look
like from 10,000 feet?
Would it look different? What would it look like from 30,000 feet?
So as you picture just that image of your problem, shrinking into the distance,
Another way to do it is the rule of tens, where you can ask yourself,
Okay, what will this look like in ten minutes? Regardless of which choice I make.
What will this look like in ten days? What will this look like in ten months or ten years?
Just keep multiplying that out and getting enough distance from it.
So with the client that I mentioned, who's dealing with some relationship questions,
one of his questions was, "Should I ask this girl out or not?" Let's use the rule
of ten and see how this looks. What will it look like in ten minutes, whether I
have the courage to ask her out or I don't? Alright, in ten minutes, if I ask
her, I'm going to feel relieved that I asked her and I will either be elated or
deflated, one of those. What if I don't ask her?
Well then I'll in ten minutes, I'll feel probably some regrets that I didn't face
my fear and actually ask her. What will it look like in ten days? Well in this
case, either he's going to be going out on a date with her or not. Okay, what will it
look like in ten months? He will either be in a relationship with her or he will
have since moved past that and let go. What will it look like in ten years?
He may be happily married to this person or she has long since become a distant
memory and it's not even an issue anymore.
So that 10-10-10 kind of an approach helps us to put a perspective on it
that's not so tied up in the motion, the emotions of the moment, which helps us to
do number one which is turn our brain on. So we got the three steps,
turn your brain on, meaning the thinking part of your brain. Expand your options
especially if you're trapped in an either/or kind of a consideration and
then number three is to get the perspective by going up to a higher
altitude to look at this thing or using the rule of ten so that you can see that
it's going to move out in the future and have some impact that separates us
from the emotions of the moment.
Problem solving, you know, take it on.
You're going to have plenty of these things showing up in your life, take it on.
So now you should be an expert at solving problems.
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