What’s the Problem . . . Really?

What’s the Problem . . . Really?

The trick is not to try and solve a problem before you know what it is. 

Spark – Circ de Soleil - John U. Bacon, Lyn Heward 

Several years ago my family volunteered to help out in the community.  Our task was the get rid of some of the graffiti in the area and make our neighborhood look better.  As we sanded and painted and worked at getting the stuff off, it took us nearly the entire day.  At the end, the words just came through our efforts again like we had done nothing.  I didn’t understand it.  WE were doing our best!  We had even purchased extra grade quality of tools to make sure it was a good job.  It didn’t work.  Then the supervisor came by to check up on us.  “Do you realize that this wall is going to be demolished?”  

“Uh, no.” 

“They are going to put a gate here.”  

He then directed us to another area where the paint went on smoothly and the whole thing was done in thirty minutes.  The paint stuck, the wall was pristine and our efforts were easy to see.  

Too often I think that we face life that way.  We barrel in with enthusiasm and effort and all our education and know-how only to discover we’ve been painting the wrong wall the whole time.  

John Bacon shares that sometimes the reason we don’t succeed, is because we haven’t done our homework.  We haven’t looked from all angles and found out the real problem in our problem.  

Maybe that difficulty in your relationship isn’t that you “just don’t agree about how to raise the kids” but that you don’t feel that your opinion is important to your spouse.  

Perhaps you aren’t just ‘too dumb to understand’, but it is simply a new concept and you haven’t read the latest breakthrough..  

Possibly, it isn’t that there is just a generation gap that you can’t get over, but that your child wants more, not less guidance and input from you.  

Mayhap, it isn’t that your product just isn’t marketable, but that you are trying to market it to the wrong clientele.

Find the right question, and you’ll be much more likely to  find success in anything you attempt.