I prided myself as a great problem solver when a casual talk with a friend opened my eyes to another possibility — to be more than just a problem solver.
I was on the phone with a friend and after an hour-long catch-up, I made the remark to wrap up the conversation, “I am glad we found the solution to my problem.”
This friend of mine is a coach, and she opened her coaching practice recently after eighteen months of wilderness. My remark led to a full-blown coaching session with her in which she probed me to examine my thinking.
“Rather than focusing on solving the problem, think about what you really want. How and when won’t be the questions when you know what you really want,” she said.
She was right.
Problem-solving gives us only a limited range of possibilities.
Her advice reminded me of something I read in Robert Fritz’s book The Path Of Least Resistance.
When you focus on solving a problem, you can’t help inheriting the assumptions baked into it.
The focus limits you to a very narrow range of outcomes, all of them leading towards, ‘I want this problem to go away.’
When you take action to lessen a problem, you have less of a problem — so, of course, you are less motivated to keep addressing it.
Let’s say, we resolve to make some improvement — in our life, our relationships, our finances, and our community — it works for a while, but then it fizzles out, and we resume our old ways.
We blame a lack of self-discipline or conclude that circumstances were against us.
But there’s a more intriguing explanation for this sort of defeat.
What if ‘solving the problem’ was the reason we cannot solve the problem?
Fritz suggests:
Instead of focusing on the problem, ask yourself, what do you want to create?
If we focus on creating rather than problem-solving, we will feel less discouraged by the discrepancy between what we want and what we think we ought to do.
That is the dilemma we all go through more than we like. We face predicaments arising from contradictions, variance, inconsistencies, and expectations.
According to Fritz:
Creators have a higher ability to tolerate discrepancies than most others. This is because discrepancy is the stock in the trade of the creator.
When you create, you become a player of forces, such as — contrasts, opposites, similarities, differences, time, balance, and so on. To the creator, all these forces are useful.
When there is more discrepancy, there is more force to work with.
If there is less, there is more momentum as you move toward the final creation of the result.
Creating is no problem and problem-solving is not creating.
When choosing what to create, you do not choose what you do not want. You choose what you want.
A creator’s motivation is different. Their motivation is for their creation to exist.
A creator creates to bring the creation into being.
A creator creates regardless of his emotions.
For creators, emotions are not the centerpiece of their lives, they do not pander to them. They create what they create, not in reaction to their emotions, but independently of them.
They can create on days filled with the depths of despair. They can create on days filled with the heights of joy.
As a creator, you become a river, going through life and taking the path of least resistance.
More of life should be approached as creation rather than problem-solving.
Decide what you want, take stock of your reality, and then take the necessary actions to invent the outcome you seek.
My friend’s advice changed my whole outlook. I no longer focus on problems, but stay tuned to what I want. What I really, really want. Once I figure that out, the ‘how’ and ‘when’ take care of themselves.