HOW TO BE HAPPY IN A SCARY WORLD: Chapter 2
You CAN solve your problems...and the world's as well
In this chapter, we'll look at a process that industries, businesses, and even schoolchildren use to solve problems. This process can keep you safe, help you make wise choices, save you money, and free you from making the same mistakes, again and again. You can use it immediately in your own life, but it will also help you in Chapter 3 as we solve the problem of human dysfunction.
If a problem continues, it isn't solved
If you remember anything at all from this chapter, please remember this: If a problem keeps happening, your solution does not work and it's time to try something new.
That's just common sense, yet very few people act accordingly. If we all grasped that one simple fact, Albert Einstein would never have said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” But he did say that, because humans keep trying the very same "solutions" that have not worked in 50,000 years. We've failed to solve ancient evils like war, poverty, addiction, genocide, and homicide. Worse, we're busy inventing new problems we can't fix – including planet-cide, the mass extinction of other species, and better ways to kill as many people as possible in as little time as possible.
We know we're in trouble, so on a global level we've tried to fix these problems with revolutions, democracies, dictatorships, capitalism, socialism, laws, taboos, punishments, social movements, science, wealth, and religions. On the personal level, we try fixes like therapy and brain-altering drugs, marriage and affairs and being single, money and career and children, volunteering with nonprofits and joining cults. Yet despite all these efforts, dysfunction just keeps on steamrolling us flat.
How could the smartest animal on earth be so bad at dealing with life and each other? Well, a case can be made that only about 3% of us are born with the right skills and personality to solve problems well, and the other 97% have no interest in learning it. A case can also be made that the damage a problem creates is so urgent and distracting that all we can see is the mess, not what caused it. And a case can be made that we humans are so determined to believe what we want to be true that we close our eyes to what is true.
Creating a better world and the life we want for ourselves can only happen, I believe, when we discard our long-time delusion that problems are psychological, biological, moral, legal, political, or religious failings. It's time we dealt with what's wrong purely as a problem to be solved.
And the good news is that ANY problem can be fixed. I've seen that at work, and in my own life as well. It may take a helluva lot longer than you want. You may have to work really hard, hang on through the pain and tears, stretch yourself, tap the right resources, and keep going when you think you can't. But here's the thing: since we are the ones who create messes, it follows that we absolutely have it within our power to clean up our mess and stop creating new ones. That applies to both our personal and global problems. All we have to do is figure out where and how the mess creeps in, fix what's gone wrong, and the problem will go away.
So I invite you to leave behind 50,000 years' worth of answers that don't work and venture with me into unmapped, unexplored territory. Let's go on a quest for what's actually wrong with you, me, and the human race. Let's find a universal solution to our problems that works across time, nations, and cultures. We won't settle for anything less than something we can always count on. We won't cling to solutions that fail us when we most need them. We can't afford to bet our lives, or our species' survival, on fixes that only work for most of us, most of the time. We need something that works for everyone, every single time...and in this book, I'll explain what I think that solution is.
If a permanent solution to problems sounds too good to be true, consider this analogy:
A broken bone heals the same way in every member of the human race. The healing follows a natural, universal process that does not vary according to someone's race, gender, religion, intelligence, income, or what century it is. A blood clot forms, and then an internal callus; after that, new bone cells start to grow toward each other, the fracture closes, and the callus is absorbed. That is how human bones heal. Medical science has documented this process, and doctors know that if you set and cast the bone properly, the healing process can proceed.
Given that broken bones heal in the same way, it's certainly possible that broken human minds, hearts, and lives also heal in the same way. All we have to do is figure out how to set and cast our broken selves, so that Nature can work her magic. In order to do that psychic setting and casting, we have to understand exactly where the real problem lies, then put ourselves into alignment so healing will occur.
That's what this book is about: healing yourself in a deep, permanent, transformative way. Healing can't happen until you know what's wrong and do the right preparation...so let's figure out how to end our dysfunction with the help of a new and powerful tool.
THE PROBLEM-SOLVING PROCESS
If you asked 100 people how to be happy in a scary world, you would get 100 different opinions. Not facts – opinions. And those opinions would only be as reliable as that particular person's mental health, past experiences, biases, and personality quirks.
That's why someone else's opinion is not something you can base your own life upon. What works for them could be completely wrong for you. As a Zen koan puts it, "If you are hungry, what good does it do you, if I eat?" No matter how smart, experienced, or caring someone else is, you are the only one who knows how to live your life well.
You need the right tool to do that, though – a reliable guide to answers that work. And fortunately for us all, such a tool exists. Back in the 1940s, a man named Alex Osborn developed what he called the "Creative Problem-Solving Process." Its format and steps have varied over time, and industries have developed versions tailored to their own specific needs, but the ultimate goal remains the same: to identify problems, and implement solutions, through a combination of data, logic, intuition, creativity, and monitoring.
I first encountered a version of Osborn's process in the 1980s, when I was a middle manager at a large hospital. I was given specialized training in a program called Total Quality Management (TQM), so that I could lead a team of employees that would improve our department's performance. Since the Eighties, I've encountered variations of that very same process at several other organizations I've worked for, including a global engineering firm and a small Vermont school district.
Now, why would engineers – who have zero time and patience for things that don't work – continue to use a tool that's almost a century old? Because it prevents mistakes, improves efficiency, protects workers and customers, and boosts the quality of goods and services.
Well, but why on earth would a school district include problem-solving in its curriculum? Again, because it delivers powerful results. Research has found that children who know how to fix what goes wrong in their lives have better mental health than children who can't do that. Problem-solvers are less likely to be depressed – and also less likely to commit suicide – than kids who don't know how to deal with problems and so live in constant helplessness and hopelessness.
A SIMPLE PROCESS
So that's a brief history of the problem-solving process we'll be working with. Now let's look at the process itself, starting with a relatively-simple version of it that's designed for children. You may want to teach this to your own kids, but it's also a great starting point for adults, especially if you don't use logic and analysis as part of your job. (Source: https://www.verywellfamily.com/teach-kids-problem-solving-skills-1095015)
1. Identify the problem. Stating a problem out loud can make a big difference for kids who are feeling stuck. Help the child do this through statements like, "You don't have anyone to play with at recess," or "You aren't sure if you should take the advanced math class."
2. Develop at least five possible solutions. Brainstorm possible ways to solve the problem. Emphasize that all the solutions don't necessarily need to be good ideas (at least not at this point). Help your child develop solutions if they are struggling to come up with ideas. Even a silly answer or far-fetched idea is a possible solution. The key is to help them see that with a little creativity, they can find many different potential solutions.
3. Identify the pros and cons of each solution. Help the child identify potential positive and negative consequences for each potential solution they proposed.
4. Pick a solution. Once your child has evaluated the possible positive and negative outcomes, encourage them to pick one solution.
5. Test it out. Tell them to try their solution and see what happens. If it doesn't work out, they can always try another solution from the list they developed in Step 2.
AN ADVANCED PROCESS
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using the simple version we just covered to solve your problems. But if you want something even more powerful, here's the TQM process I was taught back in the Eighties and still use today:
1. Describe what you think is the problem.
2. Gather facts, statistics, and in-depth research about the problem.
3. Analyze your information to see if the problem's real cause is different from your initial theory (hint: it almost always is).
4. Use your intuition and creativity to brainstorm possible solutions.
5. Evaluate each solution for its cost, for how realistic and achievable it is, and for the impact it will have on you, your family, your co-workers, your community, and the planet.
6. Choose the most promising solution.
7. Implement the solution.
8. Monitor and measure the results, to see if the problem reoccurs.
9. If it doesn't happen again, you have solved the problem.
10. If it does happen again, repeat all steps until the problem stops.
So that's it! Now you know how to solve a problem. And with that process to guide us, let's get some practice.
PROBLEM #1: Attack of the Dandelions
You have a vegetable garden in your back yard, and one day you look outside and see – right near the heirloom tomatoes! – a waving mass of bright yellow flowers, green leaves, and fluffy white seed balls. It's a dandelion, and it's going to steal the nutrients the tomatoes need and take over the garden if you let it. So you grab a pair of garden shears, dash outside, and snip away until there's nothing left but a little stub in the ground. And then you go back inside your house.
So tell me...have you solved your dandelion problem?
You probably don't even need the problem-solving process to know that every minute you just spent snipping was a waste of time – because you went back into the house and left the root of your problem untouched. That little stub that's still in the ground is the dandelion's tap root. It's alive and kicking, and it is going to grow more flowers, leaves, and puffballs unless you go back out there, grab hold of that tap root, and pull it out of the ground.
I love this example because it's exactly what the human race has been doing for 50,000 years. We attack the RESULTS of our problem (the leaves, flowers, and puffballs) while leaving untouched the problem's CAUSE (the tap root). Failing to identify and remove the root of human dysfunction is why you and I still battle the same horrors that defeated our ancestors. War, racism, misogyny, treason, addiction, suicide...those things are leaves, flowers, and puffballs. They rise up into our world from a hidden tap root that's embedded deep in the human heart...and that tap root (as we will see) is fear.
Now let's tackle a harder problem, and this time we'll use the advanced version of the problem-solving process to help us sort it out.
PROBLEM #2: Going Viral
You wake up tomorrow morning feeling tired and off your game. The next day you develop a sore throat, and over the following two days, you start sneezing, you get a stuffy nose, and you develop a mild cough.
So...what's wrong with you, and how can you fix it?
STEP 1: Describe the problem
Well, what we know initially is that you seem to have five different problems: fatigue, a sore throat, a stuffy nose, sneezing, and a cough.
STEP 2: Gather information
In addition to those five problems we've observed, we also know that all your problems developed over the course of four days. And we have access to some very important historical information that's stored in your brain: your knowledge of your own body, and your memories of previous illnesses. Based on your past experiences, we suspect that all five of your problems stem from one common cause: we think you've got a virus – maybe Covid, the flu, or a cold.
With that preliminary problem description in mind, we gather more information.
First you take an in-home Covid test, and the result is negative – ruling that particular virus out. We then do some online research about colds and the flu, and find that colds come on gradually, as yours did, whereas the flu comes on very quickly. We also check symptoms of the flu and colds, and it appears that yours are a strong match for the common cold.
You may say, "Why should I do all that research when I'm already pretty sure it's just a cold?" The answer to that is, what if you're wrong? What if you actually have pneumonia, or Covid? If you don't investigate your problem, you could end up very sick, hospitalized, or even dead. That's how important gathering information is: literally a matter of life and death.
I understand that this step isn't fun, but here's the thing: if you are serious about making your problem go away forever, doing research is absolutely necessary. You've probably heard of GIGO, which stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out. GIGO refers to the fact that a computer can't give you reliable results if you feed it too little data or incorrect data. In that same way, the problem-solving process can't fix what's wrong in your life if you don't thoroughly understand your problem and correctly zero in on its real, true cause.
And in this example, if we didn't do the research I just described, what would the end result be? At best, you'd be treating your five symptoms like they were five separate problems, and nothing you did would help the real, root cause – because all the cough syrup in the world can't cure a cold.
And at worst, you wouldn't know what was wrong with you, and you would probably spread your cold far and wide, including to people whose immune systems can't fight it off. I can't stress this enough: when we don't understand what's really wrong, the choices we make out of ignorance can hurt and even kill people.
STEP 3. Identify the root cause
Back in Step 1 we originally thought you had five different problems. But now we know that you actually have just one problem (a cold) which has one root cause (a virus) that happens to be creating five different symptoms (the viral equivalent of a dandelion's puffballs, leaves, and flowers).
STEP 4: Brainstorm solutions
So OK: we feel confident we know what's wrong. Now, what do we do about it?
As we were researching the cause of our problems – the cold virus – we also learned the solution to it: the human immune system. That's it. Nothing else can repel an invading cold virus. Mother Nature has chosen this as the solution, and science has yet to come up with a way to improve on that. So all you can do is to wait for your immune system to ramp up, roll out, and kick some serious virus butt.
STEP 5: Evaluate each solution for its cost, the impact it will have you, others, and the planet, and for how realistic and achievable it is
Since there's just one solution, this step might not seem necessary. And it wouldn't be, except that there are decisions we have to make when we're sick, and what we do or don't do will impact our family, friends, co-workers, community, and even the planet.
For example, maybe you decide to go see your doctor, just to be extra-sure you've diagnosed your cold correctly. Your doctor might suggest expensive tests and prescription-strength drugs, and those options should be evaluated. You'll need to consider: 1) whether your insurance will cover such things; 2) what side effects the drugs and tests will have on your body; and 3) how the drugs will impact the planet (because taking antibiotics can foster drug-resistant bacteria, and because medicines are excreted in human urine and so end up in rivers and the ocean, where they impact the soil, water quality, and animals that live in and drink those waters).
Another decision you'll need to make is whether to take time off from work or school. Do you get sick leave? If not, can you afford to go without pay for several days while you recover? What impact will your absence have on your organization and its customers? What impact will not taking time off have on your health and family?
Still another decision is whether to expose others to your cold or not. You'll have to weigh the positives and negatives of staying home from work or school against the risk and harm of infecting your co-workers, boss, friends, and customers. And if you decide you have to continue to work or attend school, you also have to decide whether to wear a mask or not.
As I hope these decisions show, even though we know the solution is out of our hands, we still have decisions to make that can have major consequences and so must be evaluated. And we need to examine our options not just in terms of ourselves, but holistically. That's why the problem-solving process reminds us to think past our own personal, short-term good and do what's right for the long-term good of all.
STEP 6: Choose the most-promising solution
Again, you've got no choice when it comes to the actual solution. Just some hard choices on cold-related questions, as we just saw.
STEP 7: Implement the solution
The good news is that by the time you know you're sick, the solution is already happening. Your phagocytes – a type of white blood cell – have correctly identified your problem and are busy solving it. They're attaching themselves to the virus particles, tearing the particles apart, ingesting some of the contents to fuel their own work, discarding what they can't use, and then moving on to kill the next particle.
Notice what phagocytes do NOT do, though? They do not try to fix your symptoms. Even though you are coughing, sneezing, and exhausted, they just ignore that and home in on what's really wrong.
And thus we see that one tiny little blood cell can easily do what our massive, highly-evolved, multi-celled brains can't. Mother Nature tells phagocytes how to figure out what's wrong and hammer away at it until it's fixed...whereas our big ol' brains had to invent a process that helps the brain stay focused on the cause instead of haring off after its symptoms.
STEP 8) Monitor to see if the problem reoccurs.
This step can be a bit tricky, but the basic principle here is that you never assume your solution worked. You have to monitor for a while, so you can know for sure.
Sometimes monitoring can be fairly simple. With a cold, for example, you either continue to experience symptoms or they go away. With war, if one war ends but more wars break out, you definitely have not solved your war problem.
Most problems are complex enough, though, that you will probably have to get creative about how to monitor them. There's no one, surefire method that works for every problem – no universal metric that applies to all issues (although comparing before-and-after comes close).
A further challenge with monitoring is that it requires uncommon skills. I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of people don't routinely work with data and metrics, which can make monitoring tough. Anyone can learn this, but if you find it a struggle, try investing in a book on problem-solving. Or you can do some online research on how to measure progress, or (even better) ask for advice from the most logical person you know, especially if they use metrics in their job.
I'll share one quick example before we move on:
You're the principal of an elementary school whose students sometimes have to be isolated when they threaten and bully others. That's not a solution. The same kids keep disrupting class and harming students and teachers. So you decide to convert your present isolation room into a special "sensory room." You add exercise equipment, learning activities, and soothing things like rocking chairs and aromatherapy – which experts say is therapeutic.
How can you know if this great idea actually works? (Stop and brainstorm that a moment before you read on.)
One promising measurement is to compare the total number of incidents BEFORE the room is remodeled with how many incidents happen AFTER the room is remodeled.
Another option is to monitor individual students. Maybe Billy Jones is typically removed from class 12 times a month and spends 24 hours total in the isolation room. But after the room is remodeled, you find that Billy only needs to be in the room 2 times a month for 3 hours total.
Another metric might be to compare the grades of disruptive students before and after the new room is introduced, to see if the room is helping troubled children learn better.
And another option is a before-and-after survey of problem students and their teachers, to assess the level of trust and positive attitudes before the room is remodeled versus after it has been in use for a while.
Again, if monitoring seems alien, just know that's completely normal and don't be discouraged. Keep learning, keeping trying, and ask for help when you need it.
STEP 9: If the problem stops, it's solved
This step is pretty self-explanatory. If your ongoing metrics show that the problem has not happened again, it's solved. Well done!
STEP 10: If the problem continues, return to Step 1 and repeat the full problem-solving process
Did I hear you groan? Are you saying, "What? We did all this work, but we might have to do it all over again?" Yes. And I get how frustrating and discouraging that is.
In fact, there's only one thing worse than going through the problem-solving process repeatedly – and that's the destruction the problem will continue to cause if you don't solve it.
It may be less demoralizing if you remind yourself that you learned a lot from your first effort. You have not failed! On the contrary, you've ruled out one solution that doesn't work and can cross it off your list of options. Besides, as Thomas Edison once said, "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." So keep going. Keep trying. You CAN do it.
WHY WOULD MY SOLUTION FAIL?
The problem-solving process itself is solid and reliable, and when it's done right, it works beautifully. But we humans make mistakes easily and often. We miss important information, leap to conclusions, and choose the wrong solutions, especially while we're first learning. So here are some errors to avoid when you're problem-solving:
Don't give up too soon. If you're seeing progress, don't assume that your solution is wrong. It could just need some more time, so keep it in place and continue to monitor to see if the problem stops.
Dig deep enough in your research to correctly identify the problem. It's all too easy for us to assume we already know exactly what's wrong, and then do too little research during the information-gathering step.
Brainstorm without limits. Sometimes we miss the solution because we censor ourselves or ignore our intuition. And sometimes we miss it because we're afraid to dream big, or we cling to what we've always been told is right and true.
Carefully evaluate impact. Remember: whatever changes you make will affect not just you, but also other people, your community, and the planet. Pick the wrong fix, and it's all too easy to cause more problems than you solve.
Pick your solution for the right reasons. Sometimes our first choice just is not the best choice. We might go with cheap and/or fast, for example, or avoid a solution that just seems like too much work. As a general rule, I choose the fix that's most likely to succeed. I don't care what it costs or how hard it will be, because over time the right fix is nearly always the cheapest, easiest, and safest solution.
At this point, let's pause for an exercise. If you're the kind of person who likes to apply what you've just read to yourself, here are some things you can do:
WHICH CANS ARE YOU KICKING DOWN THE ROAD?
Humans tend to just live with their problems, or settle for partial solutions, because it seems so much easier to kick the can on down the road. So take a moment to think about (and ideally write down) at least three problems in your life that you're just living with.
Maybe you tolerate those things because you don't think you can fix them. Maybe they seem normal, and you think you should just accept them like everyone else does. Or maybe you just don't feel like you have enough time or energy to deal with them.
Once you've made your list, keep it somewhere where you can find it, because we'll refer to it again later.
The second part of this exercise is to choose one problem on your list and try to solve it this week. You can approach it using either of the two versions of the problem-solving process we've looked at, and it does not matter whether you do the process perfectly or not. What counts is that you get some immediate practice at fixing your troubles, and that you start to form the vitally healthy habit of saying to yourself: