Category: Problem Solving

Remember from a few days ago when I said, if it can go wrong it will?

Well today I got a flat tire while driving.

I was 16 minutes away from home, 35 minutes from my mechanic, an hour out from changing it myself, and several hours out from getting the car towed/fixed/back on the road.

None of these were convenient options.

…When is getting a flat tire ever convenient though, eh?

Very fortunately for me, just as I was rolling up my sleeves to change it myself… I saw a car shop just down the road.

I slowly drove there and they very kindly got me patched up and back on the road within 30 minutes.

It couldn’t have been a more ideal situation for a thing gone wrong.

This is a rarity, though.

Usually, things only continue to complicate after the initial inconvenience. Which is why I’m suggesting, yet again, you meditate on solutions to things that could very possibly go wrong in your life. Some starter ideas:

• Flat tire with no cell reception… do you know how to change it yourself?
• Lost your phone and all the information on it… do you have a backup?
• Your basement flooded… are really important items stored off the ground?
• A pipe burst and water is spewing everywhere… do you know where the main shutoff is?
• Somebody breaks into your home and steals the five most valuable things laying out in the open… do you have a safe?

While it might feel inconvenient or unpleasant to reflect on this now… imagine how much more inconvenient and unpleasant it’ll be when you have to figure it out after the fact.

I’ve been using this new floss lately that rips every… single… time.

It’s so incredibly frustrating.

At first, my thinking was that it was me… and that it was I who needed to treat the floss more nicely.

After all, floss is supposed to be designed specifically not to rip, eh?

Welp, not this floss.

…Must’ve missed that kind of important step in the design process.

Fast forward a few more flosses and ripping became the unavoidable pattern—regardless of how careful I was in navigating the crowded spaces between my teeth.

My first attempt to make this awful experience less awful was to treat it like a game: will today be the day I make it all the way through my mouth without a single rip?!

And once I realized that game was impossible to win, rather than revert back to pure frustration… I came up with another idea… one that’s been working ever since:

I started expecting it to happen.

Which, doesn’t sound like a revolutionary mindset change, but here’s what it did:

• It evaporated my frustration because I was no longer surprised.
• It gave me the new strategy of starting off with extra long pieces of floss so I could finish without having to re-pull and re-wrap my fingers (sometimes multiple times).
• Which, by and by, allowed me to get the job done in less time.

If there’s a similar situation in your life that, no matter what you do or how you do it, it still seems to result in the same incredibly frustrating outcome…

Maybe simply expecting it to happen… and planning for that… is an option worth exploring moving forward?

“How can I remove 3,000+ infected files from my websites?”

…Has been the focal point of my thinking over the past two days.

The options that I keep rotating between are:

• Option 1: Hire a web developer.
• Option 2: $199 to clean each website then $249 to protect each for the next year.
• Option 3: Learn how to remove malware myself.

…None of the options looked good. And the longer my websites were down, the greater the penalty would end up being.

Until it occurred to me… reinstall the backup.

Rather than try to remove each and every line of infected code… or hiring someone else to do it… I could simply reinstall a backup version of my website from a week or two ago with the hopes of it being a pre-malware infected version.

…And let the overlay of the fresh code wipe out the malware altogether.

Which isn’t only a solid strategy for malware infected websites… but, for malware infected minds, too.

Hear me out…

What if, instead of focusing the majority of your thinking on the 3,000+ problems in your life (mind)… what if you simply found a way to revert yourself to a point in time when those problems didn’t exist?

What if you focused all of your time/energy/attention on doing what you used to do when you were feeling your happiest? On reconnecting with the people who made you feel your best? On engaging back into the communities where you felt your most seen and heard?

What if… instead of obsessing on the problem… you tried obsessing on possible solutions and doing more of what you remember giving you solutions in the past?

…And without missing a beat, life throws a curveball my way two days after the launch of my new guide and breaks my website.

Hopefully it’s fixed by the time you read this, but when you click on that above link, at the time of this writing, you get the dreaded “404 error message.” And not only on that page… but on EVERY PAGE OF MY WEBSITE (except the homepage).

Which means, of course, that everybody who tries to “Learn More” about the guide from all of the sharing I’ve done, will be met with a 404 error page instead.

…And then likely click away and forget about it altogether.

Not to mention all the people who were hoping to read one of my blogs, collected quotes, or short stories who will be met with the same.

And it is in this state of frustration that I am reminded of two timeless lessons:

(1) Expect curveballs — especially when you least want them. That way, if they don’t come, it’ll be cause for celebration! And if they do, well… you were expecting them

(2) Relax — I did what I could do. I contacted my IT team. They got to work on it. And they’re going to send me updates. There’s nothing else I can do (short of learn the entire inner workings of a website and try to fix this issue myself—a task requiring hundreds if not thousands of hours of learning). And while updates every 12-24 hours sounds awfully long, it pales in comparison to that alternative.

Curveballs never come at good times.

But, it’s always a good time to practice adjusting to the curveballs that are thrown.

This is your reoccurring reminder that there is no escaping problems in life.

Problems only get to be exchanged and/or upgraded.

So, the next time you find yourself complaining about a problem, ask yourself:

• “What kinds of problems would I rather be solving?”
• “What kinds of problems make me feel equal parts challenged and excited at the prospect of solving them?”
• “How can I reverse engineer my way towards those problems and start exchanging some of my current ones for those ones?”

Those who live more fulfilled and enjoyable lives don’t live that way because of fewer problems per se—they live that way because of more aligned problems.

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P.s. You might also like this 2-minute piece I published: The Problem With The Problem-Free Life

One of the best things a teacher can do for a student isn’t give them answers—it’s to spark a curiosity around a good question.

Answers represent outside-in information. Questions elicit inside-out information. The two are not the same.

Copy and paste an answer into your life and it won’t be long before you hit another wall that’ll require new outside information.

Start a fire inside that’s curious enough about answering a good question and watch as walls are continuously burned down time and again.

The caveat here is centered around the idea of the question being “good.” Just any question won’t do. In fact, some questions suck and may even have the opposite of the desired effect.

For example, if somebody asked me how they can lose 30 pounds in 30 days—I’d tell them their question sucks. There are things I could tell them that might help with that, but that doesn’t make me a good teacher.

What would make me a good (better) teacher is reframing the question (in this instance).

Depending on who I’m speaking with, I might reframe the question to, “Why do you feel like you need to lose 30 pounds in 30 days?” And let that lead them down a path of introspective work around identity and self-worth. Or “What’s something you feel like you can do for 30 years, that’ll make you feel healthier/ happier?” And let them chew on the idea of making lifestyle changes that are free of finish lines. And so forth.

With that, I leave you with two questions: (1) What’s the primary question you’re trying to answer in your life now? (2) Is there a better question?

I lost my voice yesterday.

And while it was fun “retracing my steps” and “looking all over the school” with some of my young students who were trying to help me “find” it—losing your voice isn’t fun business.

Especially not when your voice is such an integral part of your business. Which is why today, I’m thankful for it. It really is funny how you don’t think to appreciate a thing until it’s gone. I’m fairly confident this wouldn’t have made it to my 15 day list if this hadn’t happened.

None-the-less, here we are. And here I am, bracing myself for an upcoming series of Martial Arts graduation ceremonies, classes, and coaching sessions that require a functioning voice box (and a damn loud one at that). And a question I’ve been reflecting on that has guided me in many challenging situations before is, “What good can come from this?”

…And you know what’s funny about reflecting on that question? You tend to find good things buried inside even crappy situations. Because the reality is—I’m not getting it back today. No sense dwelling on that. But, letting my mind dwell in the realm of creative solutions can be helpful for sure.

And what I’m now seeing are excellent opportunities for team members and students to step up—not only to help me out, but to help themselves out by building skills inside higher pressure situations that they don’t normally get to step into.

So you know what I’m going to do today?

…Let those who are willing step into them.