This post is part of a series of posts on how to problem-solve and negotiate change the agile way, rather than using traditional goal-setting and productivity techniques. The first post in the series is How to use your whole mind to problem-solve and negotiate change.

The problem-solving and change process

In the previous post I gave you an overview of the four stages in the problem-solving and change process:

1. Specifying the problem.
2. Deciding what you want and determining a solution to your problem.
3. Figuring out how you’ll get what you want and implement your solution.
4. Taking action on your change strategy, implementing your solution, experiencing reality, seeing what works and adapting to improve your results by going back to step 1, where the spiral starts again.

The problem with problems

The problem with problems is that they’re incredibly subjective and slippery things that can be rather hard to pin down and ring-fence. And in school our teachers defined the problems and handed them to us to solve, so most of us haven’t learned how to define a problem. Yet pin-pointing and specifying the problem is probably the most important step in problem-solving.

While your problem remains vague, undefined and generalized, it’ll feel overwhelming and seem like it bleeds into every part of your life and the problem will have much more power over you because you won’t be able to develop a strategy to deal with it. And if you specify the wrong problem, well then all your efforts at solving the problem aren’t really going to help you, because you’re not working on the real problem.

Some problems are obvious, simple and easy to define and that’s great. All you have to do then is ask yourself, “What specifically is the problem and specifically when, where and with whom do I experience the problem?” Often you’ll find that what you had been telling yourself was a big problem is actually a fairly small, manageable problem when you pin-point and ring-fence it.

Unfortunately, most of the time, especially in our highly interconnected world, our problems are more complex than that, and then there are a few things that get in the way and muddy up our thinking when we’re trying to define the problem. Here’s what to look out for:

1. Our minds tend to generalize threats.

In order to be extra cautious, our minds generalize threats. For example, instead of telling yourself, “My ex-boyfriend didn’t respect me,” in order to protect yourself from being mistreated ever again, you might unconsciously generalize it to, “Men don’t respect women.” We all make these sorts of generalizations – it’s just one of the ways that our minds perceive and make sense of the world efficiently. Of course this is a useful strategy to help you be on the alert and extra cautious about this issue, but it also stretches the boundaries of your problem significantly and makes it a much bigger, pervasive problem than it is in reality.

If your problem is just that your ex-boyfriend didn’t respect you, well that’s manageable and pretty easy to deal with and move on, but if your problem is that “all men disrespect all women,” well then that’s a pretty overwhelming problem and it’s a lot harder to figure out where to start and how you’re going to fix it.

Generalizing your problems can feel pretty dis-empowering, scary and hopeless, so it’s important to be aware of and question the generalizations you make, and to challenge yourself to be really specific about the boundaries of the problem

2. Sometimes the real problem is hiding underneath a fake problem.

Good ol’ Dr Freud was one of the first people to figure out how our minds “deny”, “project” or “transfer” problems, as a way to protect ourselves from the anxiety we think we’ll feel if we recognize the truth of a problem. The irony is that the truth always feels liberating, even when it’s a nasty, ugly truth to look at, because the truth relieves us from the effort of maintaining these mental defense strategies.

One of the mental defense strategies we use is to focus our attention and anxiety on something that isn’t the real problem, so that we can avoid dealing with the real problem. It’s a strategy that’s especially common in relationships – you know, like when you’re arguing about the fact that he left the toilet seat up when the real problem is that you feel insecure in the relationship and you’re afraid he might be cheating on you.

Some good questions to help you to unearth the real problem underneath the problem is, “Why is this a problem for me?” and whatever answer you get, ask again, “And why is that a problem for me?” Repeat the question a few times and you’ll hit on the real problem

3. Sometimes we get muddled about problem-ownership.

It’s easy to get into thinking that something is our problem when it’s actually someone else’s problem, or that something should be someone else’s problem, when it’s actually our problem. You own a problem when you’re aware that you’re dissatisfied with something in the situation. Of course the stuff you’re dissatisfied with isn’t necessarily a problem for anyone else, and yet we often assume that if something is a problem for us, it must or should be a problem for other people in the situation. Also, sometimes you both own problems in the situation, but your perspective of what the problem is differs.

Here’s an example: your partner sometimes seems to brag a bit and you worry that other people will think she’s arrogant. Until you speak with your partner about it and find out if they own a problem in this situation, you’re the one who owns the problem, and your problem is that you feel uncomfortable when your partner uses certain behaviors. You might find out that your partner doesn’t own a problem because they’re quite happy with their behavior and the results of it, or you might find out that she also owns a problem but the problem is different to the one you own – perhaps her problem is that she feels insecure around some of your more accomplished friends and feels that you seem more impressed by their accomplishments than hers.

You can’t fix other people’s problems and they can’t fix yours, so make sure you’re owning your own problems before you try to solve any problems. When you get clear about who owns the problem and what their specific definition of the problem is, you can let go of the problems that you don’t own and let other people in your life take ownership of their own problems, and you can stop trying to force other people to take responsibility for fixing your problems. That in itself solves a lot of problems

4.Sometimes it’s really messy and all tangled up.

Sometimes there are a few problems and it’s all become an intertwined spaghetti-like pile of problems and we’ve lost track of where each problem begins and ends. This sort of situation quickly develops when you’re habitually generalizing problems, focusing on fake problems instead of the real problem, and getting muddled about who owns the problems. This allows problems to fester and breed because they’re not being dealt with and in fact you’re often creating more problems in your misguided attempts to deal with the wrong problems, and very soon it can feel like your whole life is just one drama after the next and you have no idea where it all started or which cord to pull to call it quits.

You need to start by stepping a little distance away and becoming the watcher. Stop trying to cope or solve or run and take some time to just watch and notice. As you stand a little distance away, observing your life, look at area of your life and each role you play and begin to describe what you really see. Find some way to record what you see so that its on paper and tangible, rather than being in your head where it can stay intangible, messy and slippery, and gradually begin to unravel the knotty mess, find the strands that matter and begin weeding out the ones that are poisoning your life.

If you have a slippery problem you want to pin down and ring-fence, so that you can start working on solving it, then look out for my next post, where I’ll share a step-by-step process for doing just that. If you’d like to make sure that you don’t miss any posts in this series, then sign up for the blog RSS.

Photo by Matthew Armstrong

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