Problem Solving blog

I would like to think that people who cheat never win but it’s usually only when they get caught that we find out what they have been up to.  Cheating is indeed a what of life for some people.  When you are honest it pays fairly at least for a while… until you are exposed to corruption.  Would you take a bribe?  I would love to think that people who cut corners, take money, rip off people and stab people in the back would pay for it.  But ultimately it’s unfair to say that cheaters never prosper… they often do and wind up owning large corporations.  Those of us who have a sense of fair play don’t always wind up where we should.  Sometimes we wind up dead or in jail!  Life is pretty far from fair.   A sense of fairness and justice it’s a good thing but it’s a misconception to say that cheaters NEVER prosper.  They often do… with devastating results.

For many years in my short life I felt I had to measure up to the expectations of others.  I have run my life largely in the shadow of what others thought I should be and live in the expectations of other people’s feelings.  Can I say that I think that’s a fairly crappy way to live?  If you spend time thinking and worrying about what others think I can assure you that they don’t care as much as you think they do.  Herein lies the paradox:

You think they care and they don’t because they only care when they are so shallow they have nothing else to do but backstab you!

Even then you get a passing mention in the conversation.  So what am I saying?  Be yourself because the mask you put on will end up owning you.  Be you.  All the time.  I learned recently that it doesn’t matter what other people think if I don’t care what other people think.  So, we need to cultivate thinking patterns that are built on models of personal acceptance.  Self-hatred only means misery… and life is too short to give a damn about stupid things like that.

I did this recently and it’s finally beginning to work

People where paying out on me for something and I was getting mad.  The next day after I had blown up and thrown stuff and broken things… it hit me.  If I can begin to accept myself, with all my limitations and say I am happy with that… then I will no longer care what others think because I know I am good enough.

My new saying is…

I’m adequate!  I am adequate, good enough and filled with flaws.  Why is this such a good way to be?  Well, I  know I have limitations and I need help in this area.  I know where to go when I need help in certain areas and I take it because I know I need it.  Also, embracing your flaws means you recognise weakness and strength in yourself.  You can learn to love those weaknesses as much as your strengths because it’s you.  I think we were made with flaws to remind us we need other people and God in our lives.  This is a good thing for when you are weak then you are strong.

When it comes to you… you need to be happy with yourself.  So you are flawed… who isn’t?  You have problems… who doesn’t?  What does it matter that you have failed… everybody fails at something.  Nobody I have ever met past or present is a model of perfection.  I know many fractured people who I accept have flaws and limitations just like me.   I think when you begin to accept yourself and make a habit of thinking how adequate you are (even if you are not) it begins the road to development.  It allows you to begin ton build better inner images of yourself and not built on the expectations of others who really don’t know you like you know you. 

* This picture comes courtesy of  the you say blog

Hello reader!

My forum is down at the moment for maintenance.  When I get the time it will be re-upped again.  It shouldn’t take me too long to fix it.  Though I am very busy with work at the moment and who isn’t?

I was reading the bible the other day when something I hadn’t seen before smacked me in the chops. Jesus was talking to his disciples about unforgiveness in Luke 17. Jesus told them that if a brother comes to you seven times in day and sins against then asks for forgiveness you should forgive him each time. The disciples were amazed by this because they asked for more faith. What Jesus says next always bothered me. He said that if you had faith as a mustard seed you would say to this mulberry tree be uprooted and be planted in the sea and it would obey you.  I had glossed over that many times.  This time however I read the bit about being a servant underneath and was even more perplexed.  Then it struck me.  Jesus is saying that faith (or an expressed belief) needs to be replaced by another expressed belief in order for the previous belief to be ‘removed and cast into the sea.  I would one belief dissolves the other and removes it’s potency because it stops the previous one from existing.   That is, you get rid of old beliefs by replacing them with new ones that are more powerful.

As you find ways to remove old beliefs about your life, circumstances and so on… it’s like the old beliefs were never there.  Indeed you can make yourself believe anything if you lie to yourself often enough can’t you?  You can change memories, change habits, change how you feel… by having your beliefs changed.  Yet the how is the part we want isn’t it?  How and/or can we change our beliefs?  What I think Jesus might have been saying was this: You can forgive if you believe you can because that belief will enable you to act.  Love is a powerful emotion… use it!  Use what you have and you might just be surprised at what follows.  

I have made a new page up the top right hand corner called services. At this stage it’s an on-going project. But there is one service available. I have a basic forum with on-going seminars and tools for $49.95 a month. You can access these via the link in the services tab. If you want to learn more about it click here.

The reason for this is simple… I am dedicated to reaching my full potential. I do not want to die with the music still in me… I am 2/3 of the way towards reaching a place where I believe I am doing what I can do to put my stuff out there… the rest, as they say, is up to God.

I hope you check it out… any questions just ask me.

Recently I set my policy students the task of picking five ways of thinking to structure an ill-defined policy. One of those ways I chose was the ‘picturing’ technique which visualises a problem and it’s relationships. In essence, nobody really picked that option out of 38 students. In a more recent event I asked one of my students to think systemically about a problem. She said she couldn’t do it because it took her out of comfort zone. I had never been confronted with a problem like this before so I was unsure how to handle it. I showed her a basic mapping technique (concept mapping) and she was ok after that. It did get me thinking though… why do people have a hard time visualising concepts?

My argument: people have abandoned pictures in western education

I have watched my eldest daughter draw inventive pictures and create masterpieces only to have that ‘educated’ out of her by the end of grade three. When asked to visualise anything she really struggles now compared with several years ago. Further, the inability of people to apply their imagination to problems, offering new and innovative solutions is somehow linked to the ability to picture things.  During school I felt myself drifting out the window imagining something else while the teacher was talking. I often remember being interrupted by the teacher who would say something like, “Luke stop daydreaming and focus on your work.” Ahh but what great adventures I had staring out that window. I fought crime, solved problems and created new and better realities. Alas, it’s take then best part of 25 years to realise that those methods instilled in me at such an early age have limited my capacity to imagine.

Restoring the capacity to imagine

Reading dulls the mind. Already by now most of you have stopped at this point in the article. Which makes that last sentence somewhat redundant. Let me give you a little test. Imagine you are sitting as a passenger in your car. Can you see the glove box? What about the windscreen? What’s happening as you imagine yourself in this setting? If you can’t do this then you were like me you had lost your capacity to imagine. Here’s a snippet from something I wrote (from this site which I never get time to update) a while ago:

Eunice looked into the small room where her sleeping daughter lay tightly strapped to a bed. Given that she had lost her husband to schizophrenia, she wondered why she hadn’t seen this coming.

Now you are doing it. You are seeing a girl strapped to a bed. You are picturing a mental ward… whatever YOUR perception of that is likely to be. You have seen clothing, pictures on the wall, the room and so on. Why can’t we apply this same thinking to our problems, businesses or other stuff?

My challenge to you

I want you to do something.  I am going to do this too so don’t worry.  Woah man… no it’s not like that.  Take a specific area of your life and begin to apply your imagination to it.  See what you come up with.  Let me finish with the story I began at the start of this post.  The student in question still looked a little puzzled after I used the concept mapping technique so I asked her to use her imagination.  I asked her to think what would it be like IF she could think this way?  How would it feel? What connections would you see?  What steps would you take?  This got her passed the “can’t do it bit” and she actually did a very good job in the end.

The imagination is probably the most underrated part of our brains.  It can take us places our logic can only follow… it can picture for us new realities and if you believe in positive (intentional) spirituality it can even effect reality!  So why not give it a go and let me know how it works out?

In life sometimes you find yourself facing failure. You may have tried your hand at something, had really high expectations and it just didn’t work out. It may be a marriage, a job, a business venture a partnership … you just never know what life can throw you sometimes. You can however begin to move forward out of the darkness by making some tough choices.

If nobody cares about you… care about yourself

Hating yourself for your mistakes is not helpful. As a matter of fact it’s dangerous. When you decide to take responsibility for your failure and own up to it… then yes it’s a time for understanding the failure and dealing with it. However, you don’t dwell on it and remind yourself of it. When through poor decisions or just bad circumstances you wind up in a ditch the first thing you must do is recognise that you may have been a dumbass but that does not exclude you from the race. It doesn’t mean you will win next time either. What it does mean is that you have to accept the fact that you tried. As I have said before… the problem with society is that we place such a high premium on success that we deride people who fail. As I have heard Edward Debono say, “There is no word in the English language which says perfectly acceptable venture that for reasons outside of the control of the individual went poorly!” Accept that you made a mistake but don’t hate yourself for it. Learn the day to day activity of forgiving yourself by remembering all the good things you have.

Look for the good in your situation

I know of people who have had kidney failure and lost everything during the recovery process. People have lost children and spouses. Is there any good to be gained out of that horrible situation? No there isn’t. What you can do over time however is begin to build an inner picture of your life that is worth something. When that cloud begins to settle in, why not think about the wonderful times you had with this person. When people die we miss them terribly and this is good because we should. However, as our heart begins to heal we need to fill our lives once again with positives and focus on what’s good. You may be having problems with money… you may not have a home. Are you breathing with the aid of a machine? How about your legs… do they still work? When you begin to focus on what you have instead of what you have lost… the good things you carry around with you that you take for granted have a new weight of importance.

Darkness breeds even more darkness

When the cloud settles in you begin to think a certain way. After a little while you begin to act that way. Soon, you are saying and doing things you didn’t think you would ever do. Darkness comes to all of us in one way or another. If we allow it to settle in our soul it will make a castle that fortifies and begins to rule our lives. We cannot be like that can we? Dark thoughts are the root system of the tree that poisons your soul. You must take those thoughts captive and replace them with more positive intentions. Easier said than done? Yes in the beginning. However, as you begin to practice you will find it easier. It’s so easy to be a critic. To pick on the efforts of others and drag them down. The internet is rife with examples of people picking on others from the safe proximity of the screenface (Thanks Alison ). What’s hard is to encourage people, to set them on their way and be a light to them.

Tragedy comes to all of us at some point. We should feel the pain of it and yes it should effect us. If it doesn’t then we are not humans. It’s what we do about that pain over time that counts. It’s the day to day thinking and acting that helps us to be what we eventually become. Remember, dark clouds are for a season, yet when the rain passes they disappear. Don’t let the dark clouds hang around you … for too long.