Creative Problem Solving

Creativity is a matter of perspective. It is the ability to look at the ordinary and see the extra-ordinary. When face with problems, we can take the low road of pain, frustration, and unhappiness or we can take the high road of information, value, and happiness. Your chose.

Learn to develop your creativity. Work puzzles. Engage in something artistic like paints or clay. Turn on the music and do impression dancing. Play games or rhymes or tongue-twisters with a child. Rearrange furniture. Prepare an exotic cru sine. Go camping. Make do. Giving freedom to your innate creativity lends itself to solutions.

Live life in pencil. There is usually more than one answer to a problem, or at least many sections to the overall answer. You are continually choosing from many possibilities. Try, fail, learn and try again. Brainstorm and come up with many possibilities, then focus on the most plausible without ruling out the absurd. Photo Journalist Dewitt Jones of National Geographic uses 400 rolls of film and 14,000 pictures taken per assignment with the results of 30 photos per issue.

Ask pertinent questions. Reframe problems into possibilities.
* what factors/causes/variables are we ignoring?
* what information do you still need?
* whom do you need to consult?
* for clarity, define the problem in writing
* what is the worst that could happen?
* what good could come even if the worst happened?

Do not be afraid to make mistakes. Lighten up; a mistake is a behavior that does not get what you want. Break the pattern. If you continue in a habit long enough, it becomes organized behavior performed by habit and never improved. Summons the courage to make the tough decisions.

Train your techniques. Until you own your new behavior, when pressure comes, you revert to the old pattern. Set up a safe environment in which to change and to practice. Practice becomes permanent as you practice correctly. Remember, you are always practicing. That is how habits are formed – or broken.

Accept problems as a passage of life. Once you realize that life is difficult, you transcend the difficulty and can creatively concentrate on problem solving.

Mona Dunkin is a Motivational Speaker, Corporate Trainer and Personal Success Coach.

When Reality Sets In

While reading to my granddaughter she suddenly exclaimed, “Nana, you have something on your face.” She said it looked like pencil marks between my eyebrows.

After unsuccessful attempts to wipe it off, I looked in the mirror. It was not pencil marks. It was wrinkles. Deep ones.

Long ago I came to peaceful terms with the reality of death. I know that each of us has been allotted only so many days on this earth, I guess I just never expected to look like I was aging.
Since the announcement of those first wrinkles, others have joined the ranks. I’m okay with that and gracefully settle into being a senior adult.

The way one perceives life becomes his reality – only it may not actually be real. The reality is that all of us alive at this moment are aging and have benchmarks to verify it. That does not discount one’s viability as a human being with infinite worth and value.

A current mantra is “Fifty is the new thirty.” Does that mean that thirty is the new ten?

On the front of a birthday card was the question: “What is the difference in a 40-year-old and a 4- year-old?” Answer: “The 4-year-old wants to grow up.” Is this inferring that a 40-plus often remains childish by adopting the immature foot-stomping stance of Peter Pan?

Is our society so obsessed with youth, that, despite advancing years, the population convinces itself that aging is bad? Wisdom does not necessarily come with advancing years. Humility is acceptance of one’s humanness including positives and negatives, strengths and limitations, abilities and diminishing facilities. I suggest humility and wisdom are akin.

Wisdom comes when we release childhood misconceptions for adult realities. Life does not stand still. We are growing or dying, enlarging or shrinking, maturing or reverting to juvenile behavior. To resist changing makes growth difficult, if not impossible.

How freeing to embrace another tomorrow with anticipation of acquired wisdom. Live life so the spirit stays young. Take care of the package and embrace the reality of aging.

Once, on CBS’s Sunday Morning, Anthony Mason talked with rocker Tom Petty about his many accomplishments, life and the future. Mason mentioned Petty’s apparent ease with the encroachment of the Big 6-0 birthday. Tom Petty accepts the reality of aging with his philosophy of: “If you’re not getting older, you’re dead.”

Good insight. Let us live while we are alive, wrinkles and all.

Need a speaker? For all your training needs think of Mona Dunkin and Solution Principles. 254-749-6594 or monadunkin@gmail.com

Overcoming Self-Sabotage

Rather than doing what contributes to your success, how many times do you engage in busy self-sabotaging activities” Low priority things like checking your e-mails? Or paper shuffling?

Look behind the procrastination and ask yourself: “What if I actually do what will benefit me and it does not work? Have you really lost anything in pursuing this achievement? Will you be further down the road and more prepared for future endeavors? What may you learn in the process?” 

Also ask yourself: “What if I actually do what will benefit me and it does work?  What if that one dreaded phone call energizes me? What if those few minutes of planning really does shave-off on execution time? What if getting out of my door opens others doors for me?”

What if? And why not?

What are you afraid of?  Failure to get honest with our fears produces self-sabotaging acts. Fear stunts our growth: small moments filled with fear keeps up from becoming large.

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” 

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32^nd US President

President Roosevelt beautifully articulated the paralysis that cowardly lurks behind our unidentified, shadowy trepidations. When we firmly believe that fear truly is false-evidence-appearing-real, we can get behind that apprehension and shed light on it. 

Light dispels darkness. Make an enlightened a conscious choice: 1) bravely go forward and conquer – or at least advance - or 2) give you full permission to just not do it.

Either way, make an honest, on-purpose, conscious, deliberate decision. 

What’s holding you back? Whose permission do you think you need to proceed? Are you conflicted over being both a business mogul and a parent? Are you stressed over getting an education and starting a blog? What if you could be both/and rather than either/or? What if you could focus your energy in a few select venues and still remain stable?

When you decide that you are enough, then you really can do it all. When you decide that you are enough you get to be a fantastic partner and a great parent and an astute business person and a community activist and a loving involved family member and …

A decision is the alternative to self-sabotaging stagnation. When you engage fully in love, creativity or work, the cowardly Milquetoast fear remains in the shadows.

Need a Life Coach?  Contact Mona at 254-749-6594 or mona@monadunkin.com   

 

Growing Up

“I’m afraid to grow up.” This was Laura’s pronouncement to her mom following a hurtful disagreement with a classmate (Little House on the Prairie).

Ma, in her wisdom replied, “I guess nobody grows up all the way. There is a little girl inside every woman, and there is a little woman inside every girl. As you put some distance to this hurt, you can look back and find some humor in it.”

Here are some thoughts on growing up, regardless of our chronological age.

Be authentic. Do not try to be someone you are not. Success is not dependent on who we are as much as on what we do with who we are. Trying to be different in order to try to live up to another’s expectations can be exhausting as well as come across as being fake. It also can lead to failure as well as internal conflict.

Set goals in keeping with your personal values. Goals are those things that motivate us to continue to move forward; they should never clash with one’s core values. Every decision has consequences. Live life so that you are comfortable with the outcome of your choices. Harmony in interpersonal relationships results in limited chaos or second-guessing.

Be responsible for your own actions. Responsibility is having the ability to control how you respond. Be proactive rather than reactive. Do not allow outside circumstances dictate your decisions or you’ll find yourself heading to the burnout trap. When reverses and lapses occur, rethink and keep moving toward being your authentic self.

Make time for your. Set an appointment with you and honor it just as you would any other important meeting. You need sufficient hours for your own relaxation and the things that you enjoy. Avoid the propensity to take care of everyone and everything while neglecting your own needs.

Celebrate successes. Catch yourself doing “the right thing” and acknowledge your maturity. Those times you held your tongue rather than lashing out. When you acknowledged another’s personality differences rather than passing judgment. When you chose to listen and empathize rather than assume.

Learn from failures. Robert F. Kennedy said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” There is no shame in failing or making mistakes. Do not dwell on setbacks; learn from them and move on. Everyone has baggage. The goal is to jettison your ego-imposed guilt so you can grow.

As we acknowledge our humanness and put distance to the hurt or embarrassment or disappointment, “you can look back and find some humor in it.” That is emotional maturity.

An Uncertain Future

We are living in perilous times. The news is filled with tornadoes, tsunamis, rampant fires and earthquakes, not to mention homeland violence and worldwide wars. Truth is, all of us are facing an uncertain future. With coverage of disasters we now know that we don’t know what tomorrow holds.

Good fear, bad fear. Sometimes fear is a good place to start. Healthy fear causes one to think about what to do next; to plan ahead. It also forces us to let go of false securities and come to terms with what really matters in life.

What you cannot control. The list of things one cannot control is long and includes: the weather, another person, the past, time, the economy and how my favored team plays. What things might you have tried to control that have proven futile?

What you can control. The only thing within your control is you and your response to things/people that you cannot control. Things over which you have control includes your words, your attitudes, your facial expressions, your actions, your thoughts, your choices, your dress, your esteem, your feelings, your schedule, what you spend, where you go and with whom you associate.

Did I say you could control your feelings? Yes, you can control your feelings, but it starts with controlling your thoughts and actions. It is easier to think and act yourself into feeling differently than it is to feel yourself into thinking and acting differently.

Go with gratitude. You also control your perception of life and situations. You will never forget what you have lost; be thankful for what you have left. Even if the remains of a tragedy are slim, you have your life. You have blessed memories of those lost. You have a change to start over anew and afresh. You have talents and abilities to employ. You have love to share and experience to give.

Have compassion for you and for others. George Washington Carver shared how to develop empathy: “How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong, because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”

Do not allow circumstances to beat you down. Allow difficulties to be your tutor to learn life lessons. Have faith in God and trust things to work out. Faith and trust go hand in hand. Faith strives to bring to pass what has not happened yet. Trust rests in the end results. Have faith in yourself, but not too much as to cause it to be a liability.

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