We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations”
~Charles R. Swindol
If it is not today or tomorrow, you can pretty much guarantee that the day after you will be faced with some sort of problem either at home or work. It is important for us to realize that problems can be a daily challenge. When they happen at work we should always be ready to jump in to help solve them as a team as soon as possible.
“Such is life” is what my grandfather use to say when problems would arise. My grandfather had been through some tough times coming to America as an immigrant and dealing with the struggles that came with it. But as his grandchildren were growing up he would always smile and laugh when problems came up and then he would start coming up with ideas to remedy the problem.
Since we know that there is no getting away from problems and difficult situations maybe we should try to do as my grandfather did and take care of the situation at hand as soon as possible. How my grandfather handled problems, was what we call today “creative thinking.” He would talk out loud about the many different possibilities of fixing the problem and what the outcome might be.
Creative thinking is the ability to imagine or invent something new or coming up with new ideas by changing existing ones or merging a few ideas together.
When you do this with others in your family or at work you are expanding the limits of what possibilities there are to solve the issue. Not only is this great but it can be exhilarating when you see what you have come up with.
Here are the four basic steps to creative problem solving;
1. The first is being able to define what the problem is so that everyone understands it or if it is just you, that you really know what the problem is.
2. The next step is to come up with as many solutions as you (and others) can think of. Write them down and don’t try to analyze them yet, just get the ideas out and down on paper.
3. Once this is done then you can go through them keeping the ones that may be possibilities or possibly even a combination of a couple of them.
4. Lastly you need to make a choice of what solution makes the best sense to resolving the problem and take action on it.
Creative thinking does take practice, but the more you do it the better you will get and the easier it will be. The sky is the limit to what you can come up with to help you make decisions about those “great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations”
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