Take a News Vacation
August 4, 2021
Be a “Touchstone” for Others
August 18, 2021
Sometimes, when trying to solve a problem, you can hit a wall. The answers or the solutions just aren’t coming to you, no matter how much you think about it. And that can be really frustrating.
One way of dealing with this is to look around your world for some random phrase or idea that you can apply back to the problem that you’re having.
For example, a friend of mine when feeling stuck will pull a random book off the shelf, flip through it, put his finger down randomly on the page and read sentence his finger is on. He’ll try to see how that might relate in some way to the problem or contain a thread that might lead to a solution.
Random thoughts – like an idea, sentence, or phrase – often stimulate new ideas you can relate back to the problem … ideas that you might not have otherwise had.
I do this with the fortunes that come in fortune cookies! One I opened before writing this says,” Walk with a good heart and you will run with success.”
How could we apply that to a problem?
Maybe walking with a good heart means if I can’t figure this out, what if I just think about what my true core values are, what’s in my heart, what would lead me forward if I were sticking to my values.
Pretty good insight from a random fortune!
If you’re feeling stuck with right now, you might apply that — walk with a good heart and you will run with success – and I hope that will help you speed past that problem and keep moving.
The comedian Jim Gaffigan said,” Every fortune should say, ‘You’re about to eat a stale cookie.’”
Whether you eat the cookie or not, I hope that this method is one that you can use to help get unstuck when you have a tricky problem in the future.
Question: What method(s) do you use when you have a problem that needs solving?
