Solving Your Problems Brings Happiness

Today it seems that most people are looking for a quick fix to their problems. It really doesn’t matter what the problem is, they somehow believe that someone out there has a quick, painless, and easy way to fix it. Take these steps and you will lose 20 pounds of fat in a week! Or take some other steps and you will make thousands of dollars in only a few short hours! I realize that most of this is the marketing gurus on Madison Avenue trying their very best to make some company money. Ok, enough hype. Those who are of “sound mind” know that there is no easy way to get much of anything worthwhile in life, right? After all if the answer to any of our problems in life was really easy, nobody would have any problems pretty soon. We could all be perfect, in every way…

So if there aren’t any super easy shortcuts to more of our problems, why is it that so many people think that there are also some shortcuts to happiness? Is happiness something that can be found in just one magical action, as if we can somehow solve all of our problems by taking one step? No, I’m afraid it’s not that easy. Deep down I think most people know this, but nonetheless it seems to be a human trait to constantly seek an easier path. Well, since there isn’t an easy path, either to solving all of our problems or to finding happiness, what should we do? Great question, which I had a “easy” answer! The point I’m trying to make is we have to see the big picture in our lives, rather than trying to dissect one problem at a time. It took me a long time to convince myself of this, but I finally got to a point where I stopped “sweating” the small stuff as they say and just took things in stride. If you can approach everything in your life with a positive, I can do anything attitude, problems are so much smaller! I guess what I’m saying is, make yourself bigger and your problems suddenly seem smaller.

So how do I make myself bigger, you ask? There are several ways to boost your confidence, the best way I’ve found is through self-talk. I have discussed this before, and I go into great detail in my book, but basically it’s just repeating phrases that you want to instill in your mind. Like programming a computer, you can repeat these phrases to yourself over and over and after a certain length of time you will believe them! It’s a crazy notion at first, but it works. Say I want to get better at solving problems – I simply write down a phrase or two like “I handle all my problems with ease”, or “I can solve anything quickly and easily”.

You may not believe it at first, but after repeating this in this morning several times, and especially at night before going to bed, you will soon instill this belief in your mind. This is just one technique to become a better problem-solver, but as I said before there is no one-step, easy answer. Whether your trying to make better use of your time, become better at solving problems at work, or some other generic problem that pops up on a daily basis, we all need to solve problems.

If you want to have more happiness in your life, then being able to solve problems in an efficient way is crucial to that happiness. Problem-solving is a skill which can be learned like anything else, so when you have some crisis in your life, just keep your head, see the big picture, and be confident that you can solve it with ease.

Once you get to a point where most of your problems are smaller than you, you can concentrate more on the things that bring you happiness. Like those goals you wrote down, right? You did write them down…