As I wrote in an earlier post, it is surprising how often it is that someone who is searching for a solution is unclear as to what precisely the problem is. Since a solution is a mechanism for solving a specific problem, seeking a solution without first being quite clear what the problem is, is a futile mission.
Suppose you told me that your problem is ‘unhappiness’ and that you are seeking a solution for this problem.
I would most likely respond that unhappiness is not in itself the problem. Your unhappiness is a symptom of a problem. And not until we uncover and identify that underlying problem can we consider designing a solution for it.
Let me give you a real-life example relating to unhappiness:
Zara, a social worker, was unhappy. Indeed, things were so bad that there were days when she wasn’t able to go to work. When I asked what was making her unhappy, she said she wasn’t quite sure. I asked if, when she looked back, she could identify a time when the unhappiness had started. She said it had been somewhere round the middle of the previous year. I wondered then, if there had been a significant event in her life sometime during the first half of that year. As it turned out, there had been: she had got married.
Her marriage was fine, she reassured me (or tried to). But my gut feeling was that it wasn’t – and the fact that some days she wasn’t able to go to work had raised alarm bells in my mind. When I probed further, she hesitatingly admitted that all in her marriage was not quite rosy. She came from a conservative family and had scarcely known her now-husband before they got married. We were now getting closer to the underlying problem. I had a gut suspicion that the reason for her not being able to go to work some days had something to do with domestic abuse. Zara told me that she had felt she couldn’t admit to the unhappiness in her marriage and to the emotional abuse and physical violence her husband had been subjecting her to – neither to herself nor to her parents – partly because she felt she couldn’t admit to a failed marriage, and partly because, coming from a conservative family, she feared her parents wouldn’t allow her back into their home.
As things turned out, her parents, on hearing how unhappy their daughter was and then hearing the reason for her unhappiness, not only welcomed her back home but were anxious for her to leave her husband without delay.
Identifying a problem and defining it very clearly is fundamental to efficient problem solving. As you will know, if you have read my list of “Pearls of Wisdom” here, it is my belief (one born out of experience) that within every person (well, almost every person!) is wisdom – and that that wisdom can be harnessed to enable them not only to uncover and identify hidden, underlying problems, but also to devise the best solutions to those problems. The solutions that you yourself devise and which are based on your innate wisdom, rather than those imposed by other people, are in my experience the effective ones.
Too often, what inhibits us in our problem-solving efforts is our fear of confronting the problem, because, once we have confronted the problem, we have to face up to it and deal with it. And dealing with it may, on occasion, involve life-changing decisions – as was the case with Zara. But resolving a problem and making the changes in your life that free yourself from it allow you to move forward and, ultimately, to enjoy new horizons.
My role is not to identify your problem for you nor to devise a solution for it, but to inspire you in harnessing your own wisdom and resourcefulness while you define your problem clearly and devise a solution for it. Send me a message and let’s do it!
You can read about my approach to counselling, mentoring and life-coaching here.
