As I have said before, life is often experienced as a series of problems to manage. Some barriers and goals are easy, some are harder and some are impossible. And, they are relentlessly confronting you and they leave you little rest.

Life presents you with a sequence of hurdles to jump over. Some are high. Some are low. As you know, you successfully clear most of the hurdles in your path. But you cannot jump over a few obstacles because they are too high. And at times you may miss your jump and crash into a few hurdles. This is life.

What Is Resiliency?

For a gratifying life, you must rise up after you fall and find a way to get over the difficult hurdles. This is resilience. You should not give up easily and accept defeat.

As you know from your own personal experience, always succeeding is impossible. Some barriers cannot be surmounted and you will fail at times. Plus, you will always need to practice repeatedly in order to improve your abilities.

Often, when faced with challenges, picking yourself up and bouncing back up is more important than succeeding the first time. Putting in effort to overcome obstacles will build your inner strength. Your ability to rebound and keep trying when faced with a difficult situations is crucial in making progress and feeling fulfilled in life. The more hurdles you struggle with and jump over, the hardier you become.

How Do I Become More Resilient?

At times you may glide over issues easily and don’t even notice or recognize your success in dealing with an obstacle. At other times, you are quite aware of how hard you tried and are robbed of success. In other situations, you get discouraged because you seem to make so little progress. And then of course, there are times when you give up in defeat or you must face the fact that overcoming a particular goal is impossible and you need to accept that reality. Some obstacles and goals just aren’t surmountable. You cannot expect to succeed all the time.

Sometimes you will have difficulty in evaluating where you stand with a challenge. At those times, you must ask yourself to objectively review your situation and ask yourself critical questions such as, “Is this too much for me? Should I continue plunging forward? Is it worth the expenditure of time, effort and money? Can I realistically achieve this goal?” You need to have a positive attitude when you take on obstacles that are in your way and you must also be realistic.

Sometimes you will need to change your goals and modify your strategies or methods to achieve your goals. Being flexible is a valuable inner strength. With impossible barriers, it is wiser to let go and cease a senseless struggle. Then you can learn from your experience, set a new goal and take on another new challenge. Without struggling with problems and challenges, you will not grow or progress, you will lose momentum and get stuck or move backward in your life. Giving up or refusing to take on new challenges can set in motion a type of “slow death”.

Become a Hardy Hurdler.

When problems rise, try to jump over them. Don’t just stop or go around the hurdles in your way. I encourage you to pick your objectives wisely and then put in the effort to achieve them. This is resilience, one of the most vital personal inner characteristics for all of us.

I want all people to become more resilient and to rebound when they are down. And I believe that you can pull your life together and move onward toward personal fulfillment. I am not a dreamer. Becoming more resilient is very possible for you and others.

I’m a backpacker and many times I have worked hard to reach the top of a ridge. From there I can see other mountain ranges far in the distance ahead of me, a whole succession of ridge line silhouettes rising from lower to higher. In order to get to the farthest mountain top, I need to hike up each hill or mountain and then down the other side into the valleys below.  This can go on repeatedly until I reach my destination. Up and down. Up and down.  And it ain’t easy. Because I cannot fly, there is no other way to get there except to keep hiking.

If your problems seem insurmountable, give me a call – 805-448-5053. Perhaps I can guide you over and through some rough terrain.

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Some problems may not be yours alone. A few of your problems might be shared with others or they may necessitate help from others. For instance, solutions could necessitate help from your partner, friends or family members or your employment boss, colleagues or work team members.

Here’s How to Get Others to Join You

Follow These 8 Steps:

1. Solicit the help you need directly from the person who can help.
2. Present the problem and explain how you would like to go about creating a solution.
3. Let them know how and why they are involved and how they can help.
4. Convince them of how they will personally benefit from joining you.
5. Answer their questions and encourage their feedback and suggestions.
6. Identify the roles you both will play.
7. Make an initial plan for how to start.
8. Get a commitment to join in.

Hopefully, they see their personal benefits in helping you, recognize the wisdom in your plan, and commit to joining you.

Couples Have Relationship Problems

Married and unmarried partners often have problems. Usually they work out their issues together but sometimes the problems become more frequent, complex, painful and destructive. At times one partner keeps nagging the other with little response. Or, both partners ignore the issues because they don’t know how to resolve the problems or they believe it will be too painful to try to work on them together. However, if they don’t work on the difficulties together then they may slowly lose their love connection, caring and affection for one another. This is a painful way to live with a partner.

Couple counseling and marital therapy are designed to help partners identify the obstacles between them and to help them remove barriers that hinder their relationship so that they can live with more love and intimacy with one another. This is not always easy but successfully working through problems is very gratifying, relieving and enlivening.

Families Have Problems

There are also problems within families. The issues, conflicts or misunderstandings may exist within the smaller nuclear family or smolder within the larger extended family. These, too, are very painful and cause suffering and resentment. At times issues blow-up and result in increased hurt or estrangement.

Family therapy was developed to assist family members face difficult problems and resolve them. Mental health professionals work with families to help them become more trusting, communicative, supportive and loving.

Business Work Teams Have Problems

Many employees work together to provide leadership, manage processes, solve problems, and create new products and services. Unfortunately, all employees do not function well with one another. When assigned to work teams the productivity may be high or low depending upon interpersonal relationships, level of commitment, leadership effectiveness and team member communication.

Sometimes, a project team’s productivity dwindles, goals are not met, and products and services are not produced or improved. The team gets stuck and discouraged and the business eventually starts losing money.

Many companies hire outside consultants or business coaches to come into their company to assess the team’s problem, create a strategic plan to solve issues, give guidance to the members and become more productive.

Who Can I Turn to When I Get Stuck Solving a Problem with Others?

You can ask for assistance from a number of different types of professionals:

• With relationship problems, you can consult with a couple or marital therapist.
• With family difficulties, you can work with a family therapist or consultant.
• With work team issues, you can engage a business consultant or an executive or work team coach.

As a psychologist I am trained in couple and family therapy as well as executive coaching. I have experience working with couples and families as a therapist and with companies  as a business performance coach or an executive coach. If you need help in one of these areas, give me a call. I will definitely have some suggestions for you and you may want to engage me as the therapist or coach to help you in your particular situation.

Call 805-448-5053 for a brief phone consultation to assess your problem and get some immediate feedback.

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Yes and No. As human beings, we have the uncanny psychological capacity to be very reality oriented and also to blow some problems out of proportion. At times we even create dilemmas where there are none. Sometimes we make up problems in our head. Therefore, some problems are very real while others are distortions or imagined.

What Kind of Problems Do I Face?

There are 2 kinds of problems that humans face.

1. Real life problems in the outer world demand our attention, like financial, social, parenting, automobile, medical, or work and career problems.
2. Real  psychological dilemmas centered within us silently and unconsciously, such as emotional, mental, spiritual, sexual, relationship or self-identity problems.

Why Do I Have a Problem in Solving Problems?

Humans are masters of distortion, exaggeration and imagination. Sometimes, in our head, we embellish or blowout of proportion a problem and magnify the size or importance of it. We are frequently drawn into a confusing world of demands, extremes, dichotomies and paradoxes. And this makes understanding and managing our problems all the more difficult and complex.

We may become very uncomfortable and get caught-up in doubt and uncertainty. We can also be overwhelmed with fear or anxiety when thinking about confronting some types of dilemmas. We get stuck and don’t know what to do. So, we procrastinate and avoid working on the problems areas. That’s why many of us have difficulty solving problems.

Are Problems Inevitable and Inescapable?

Yes. It’s not a “problem” that we have difficulties and obstacles to face and manage. They are inescapable. It’s just a fact of life that we all deal with and try to accept as our human condition. Problems are simply realities, big or small, that we face daily.

Give me a call if you want to consult with me about problem-solving – either personal issues or business concerns. Call 805-448-5053.

And if you want to be notified every time I post a new article, simply click the “Subscribe” link at the bottom of the page. Thanks!

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How can you reach your personal, career or relationship goals if you avoid solving and eliminating natural and inevitable problems that arise? Putting things off until “tomorrow” only works if you focus on them tomorrow. But if you keep putting them off continually, the difficulties will never be resolved. Placing issues and problems in some type of mental waste basket and forgetting about them seldom works out well. Confronting difficulties will bring more success, relief and self-confidence.

Some people allow a number of significant problems to mount up over time. They avoid and procrastinate in solving them. They put these obstacles off into some type of make-believe future. Some people believe and hope that issues will magically go away and disappear without attending to them. There may be many of these problems stored away in some type of imaginary safe container that seals  off and prevents them from being remembered. But they never go silent. They persistently nag at us.

Procrastination and “Unfinished Business”.

Procrastination is a very big problem in the USA and for most people it is a big frustration that plagues them. I refer to this as “unfinished business”. These are barriers and difficult issues that you are not dealing but still feel annoyed by, like incomplete projects, broken promises, unresolved issues, past abuses, slights, put downs, failures, betrayals, misunderstandings,  or losses and violations by others.

The Impact of “Faulty Prioritizing”.

Your passivity may be unintentional and you may want to deal with the issue yet you keep avoiding decisive action and putting it off. Procrastination is form of “faulty prioritizing”. You may prioritize or identify a difficulty to be taken care of yet you come up with excuses to avoid or delay taking action. This is often followed by feelings of guilt and self-criticism. Procrastination damages your self-esteem and self-concept. If you keep it up long enough and procrastinate on a number of important issues, then it is easy to painfully label yourself as a “failure”.

Old lingering issues weigh you down and unconsciously create depression, anxiety, resentment, guilt, shame and seething anger. These problems may be out of mind, but they persist, disturb you inwardly and drain your energy. Some of this unfinished business can linger in you for 10, 20, 30 or more years.

Keep Progressing Forward.

Once a problem is solved, from your original list of prioritized problems, select a new difficulty to solve. Go at it with the same method outlined above. Be sure to choose new obstacles that you will probably be successful at achieving. Over time, you will develop the ability and desire to solve your largest problems.

If you don’t develop good problem-solving skills, then you may get emotionally overwhelmed and stuck. You may feel buried by a large or overwhelming number of issues to attend to and resolve. You must stop the procrastination and become more courageous and action oriented. To be dominated by anxiety, because you fear that you may fail, hurt omeone’s feelings or get injured or take further losses, can become paralyzing and self-defeating.

Keep Working at It.

Periodically, you will confront an issue or a series of issues that stop you dead in your tracks. But most of the time, you slowly work your way out of one problem and move onward toward the next issue in line. To get better and better at problem-solving takes repetitive practice and courage. It is a learned skill. And to improve, you constantly have to keep working at it.

Obviously, some problems are easier to manage and deal with than others. Some are daunting while others are minor routines. A few of the tougher problems will d

Problem-Solving Can Wear You Out.     

This continual process of facing problems, new and old, is stressful and tiresome. Sometimes you will block these persistent demands out of your awareness in order to relax and take a breather. But that strategy won’t work very well for very long. These issues will persist and disturb you mentally. Don’t allow yourself to become too discouraged. At times, take a break in order to reduce your stress and become more clear-headed.

What If I Get Stuck and Can’t Solve My Problems?

Unresolved problems can mount up and bury you psychologically. They usually persist in biting at your ankles, day in and day out, constantly bugging you until you face and deal with them. In fact, some big problems that you refuse to attend to end up wreaking long-term havoc in your life. Even money, distractions and drugs can’t make all of these difficulties vanish. And, new issues always arise and replace solved problems. We don’t live in a problem-free world.

If you are feeling overwhelmed then give me a call – 805-448-5053. I can help you overcome your stress and procrastination.

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Sometimes You Can’t Solve Problems on Your Own.

Most of us have the capacity to solve most of our problems. However, sometimes you don’t have the ability to work it out. So, you ask your friends and loved ones for assistance and advice. You might also ask your physician and minister for help. But this doesn’t always resolve the dilemmas.

So, there are situations in which you may need to turn to a professional problem-solver who has the depth of experience, the psychological knowledge and the specialized ability to help you dig your way out so that you continue moving forward in your life.

That is where mental health specialists like me come in. We are trained to help people resolve difficult challenges and problems. We have experience in dealing with similar issues that you are confronting. Therefore, we know the terrain and have some helpful tools to share with you. Our work is to help clients overcome barriers and work around obstacles. 

Some treatment by psychologists and counselors is relatively rapid in helping you to decrease your issues and symptoms. You may be able to get some quick positive results. That’s what everybody hopes for.

However, some problems are stubborn and take longer to work on to resolve. That is just a human reality. Just because we want an issue to disappear does not mean that it will evaporate. There is no magic like that. Some problems are big and take time, effort and money to resolve.

What If My Problems Are Too Big for Me to Solve Alone?

If you are plagued by personal and/or business problems or they seem too overwhelming for you to handle, then I suggest that you seek out a qualified psychotherapist or coach who can assist you and also help you develop improved problem-solving skills that you can use far into your future.

As a psychologist, I’m a problem-solver. I collaborate with you to work on challenges that you cannot solve on your own. Once the issues are lifted, you go on your way. You can see what problem areas I specialize in by visiting the “What We Treat” navigation button drop down list on this website.

What If I’m Too Ashamed to Ask for Professional Help?

Nowadays, many people turn to mental health professionals like me for help. The old cultural stigma about seeing a psychiatrist or psychologist has significantly decreased over the past 30 years. It is very common to seek assistance with personal problems and there are many professionals to choose from because the demand for our services is high.

Some people feel the stigma of engaging a psychologist. They fear others will judge them as if they are “crazy”. However, seeking assistance with problems is the intelligent and practical thing to do. If you had a medical concern, wouldn’t you consult a physician? If you had a dental problem, wouldn’t you go see your dentist? If your car wasn’t working so well or made some strange sounds, wouldn’t you take it to an auto mechanic? So, you need to over-ride the old unrealistic stigma and ask for help with psychological issues.

Getting Help Is Smart.

Don’t feel alone because you aren’t alone. Seeking out help is a common action to take in the USA. Don’t make excuses to avoid getting help. And please, for your sake, don’t be ashamed of seeking out and requesting the guidance that you need and deserve.

If you’d like help in solving some problems, give me a call – 805-448-5053. We can work on them together.

And if you want to be notified whenever I post a new article, go ahead and click the grey “Subscribe” link at the bottom of this page. Thanks!

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How to Solve Personal Problems

This post will give you a detailed method to use to go about solving your own personal problems. Check it out and then put it to the test!

The goal in solving your personal problems is to chip away at one issue at a time, to successfully work through each problem in an unending sequential series. You must prioritize the issues that you intend to confront and then leverage your focus and problem-solving skills to overcome the different types of challenging obstacles and difficulties you choose to deal with.

6 Steps to Solve Your Problems:

1. Write down a list of problems to deal with.
2. Prioritize the problems from biggest to smallest.
3. Assign each problem a number from highest to lowest priority.
4. Assign some type of attractive reward to give to yourself after solving each problem.
5. Make a new prioritized “working” list to start following and working on.
6. After solving one issue, replace it with a new problem from your prioritized list.

Why Create Rewards for Myself?

Rewards are motivating and keep you working toward the desired goal. They give you something to look forward to. Rewards, or positive reinforcers, soothe the pain of your risk-taking and  hard labors. Match the size of the reward to the size of the problems. If you are working toward solving a big problem, then award yourself a big reward after successfully completing the task. Even if a problem is small, be sure to grant yourself something small when you succeed.

You should always congratulate and reward yourself after achieving something. You probably don’t praise yourself enough but you do deserve to give yourself more positive feedback when you accomplish something that took time, energy, money and/or courage. Give yourself recognition and esteem. Make sure the rewards match the problems to be solved. Avoid over-rewarding and under-rewarding.

Write down these rewards on your list of problems to be solved. Make the rewards visible so that you can refer to them in the future after you have worked to accomplish something. Then when you solve the problem refer to the list and follow through with making the reward to yourself.

How Do I Select Which Problems to Work On?

After making your new prioritized strategic “working list” to start your problem-solving adventure, select those issues to start with that you feel assured that you will successfully solve. Don’t start by tackling your most difficult or highly prioritized issues. The goal is to successively move forward, one success after another. Set yourself up for success because success breeds more success.

Don’t start with the most difficult or pressing problems. You want to move forward and gradually build your problem-solving skills, courage and confidence. Start with easier or moderately easy difficulties. Start with minor issues first to gain self-confidence in your problem-solving skills. This will take decision-making, commitment and persistence.

Be sure to protect yourself from failure when starting this process. Move slowly and keep your expectations as realistic as possible. By successfully moving through one problem after another, based on a chosen list, you are becoming smarter and stronger, hardier and wiser. Plus, you will eliminate problems and feel good about it!

Keep Progressing by Solving Problems One at a Time.

Once a problem is solved, from your original list of prioritized problems, select a new problem to solve. Go at the list with the same method outlined above. Be sure to choose new issues that you will probably be successful at achieving. Over time, you will develop the ability and desire to solve your largest problems.

Reach out now! As a psychologist and business coach, I am in the problem-solving business. Call for more information: 805-448-5053.

If you’d like to be notified when I post a new article, simply click the “Subscribe” link at the bottom of the page. Thanks!

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Life Presents Us with a Series of Endless Hurdles to Jump Over.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t escape this reality. It’s like a truth or a law of human life and this is our relentless predicament here on earth. We are constantly challenged with problems.

We struggle to feed and clothe ourselves, to protect ourselves, to belong, to find love, and to actualize our potential. Only seldom are we fully relaxed and free of difficulties and concerns that face us. We cannot sustain a blessed condition of being or a blissful meditative state of mind for very long. Problems just keep rising.

You experience this daily, don’t you? Some days are better and some are worse. At times we deal with these obstacles very well and we solve them. We clear the path for new issues to arise.

At other times, we hesitate, get overwhelmed and botch it up, thereby creating more problems. Therefore, having good problem-solving skills is very helpful as we meander and maneuver through life.

Problems Are Not All Bad or Negative.

They help us to grow and develop, to expand our horizons. Many problems and concerns are positive challenges. Sometimes they are growth experiences in disguise, opportunities to discover new things. Some demands that we face may actually be gateways to new arenas that we may never have experienced before. Challenges help us develop and mature.

So, don’t dread problems and hope for a passive and boring life because it will never happen. And if it did, then that would be like a slow death.

I want my posts to help you strive for your dreams, overcome obstacles, realize new truths, love more and accept yourself. Take your life on with a new and bold commitment!

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