how to solve life problems

Life Potential

13 common life problems and how to handle them.

In life, we encounter problems as we breathe. But it doesn’t get to us until we feel a major impact, and that’s when it becomes a source of concern, hurt, or sorrow.

Life problems, depending on their magnitude, can be clogs in the wheel of progress, and we may not be able to attain our full potential if we don’t learn to place our problems in the proper perspectives as suggested in Robert Schuller’s Tough Times Never Last .

In this article, I have identified some common areas where you will most likely face daily life problems as you make progress towards reaching your full life potential. I have also suggested practical approaches in handling, managing, and solving such problems.

But before we dive into the most common problems in life, you may want to first identify your greatest challenge in life at the moment — what aspects of life should you focus on improving first?

To do that, you can take the Life Assessment . It’s a free assessment that will give you an overview of all your life aspects, and help you understand your current obstacles better. Just take the assessment now and then go into my solutions below.

Discover How to Overcome Real Life Problems

When you’re facing life problems, it’s easy to feel like you’re the only one going through adversity. However, you are not alone. Here’s a list of problems in life that people face.

1. Financial Crisis

Difficulties in life are normal. We live in an uncertain world and a financial crisis may come at different stages of life. While you should always anticipate and prepare for a financial crisis , it may still catch you off guard or the magnitude may be far more than any preparation you have made over the years.

It could be that you lost your job or a major investment, got slammed with a lawsuit that threatens your savings, or have your livelihood be affected by a major disaster. So what do you do when you are in a financial mess?

To overcome a financial crisis , you will have to come to terms with the crisis. Acknowledge and accept the situation and begin recovery by setting your financial priorities right.

When dealing with real world problems examples, the next thing to do is to identify the cause of the crisis. If it’s due to a job loss, then your effort should be directed at getting a new job. If it is having multiple debts, look for ways to consolidate your debt so that your monthly debt repayment can be consolidated into one instead of being burdened with multiple payments.

You can also sell some of your assets to raise money to save the situation, or look for a better job if you are earning less at your current job. Don’t hesitate to ask for help from family and friends if you need to.

2. Health Crisis

Another major problem that might come up in your life is a health crisis. This is not far-fetched because our body systems work round-the-clock, even when we are sleeping. As a result of this, and if you don’t maintain routine health habits , health deterioration might begin to set in. Things might even get serious if you don’t attend to it early.

Just like other human problems in daily life, the first thing to do is to consider lifestyle changes. This includes cutting down on junks, eating healthy diets, exercising, breathing fresh air, taking some sun, etc.

Apart from lifestyle changes, you have to seek quality medical help and make sure you get different opinions about the state of your health so you can get the best affordable care.

3. Relationship, Marriage, and Family

There may not be anything as sweet as love and family life, but it can also be the source of pain for some. Human imperfections in a relationship can cause a major crisis in life. This has been a stumbling block to many on their path to fulfillment.

The best thing to do is to prevent relationship problems from happening, but if they do happen, you need to face reality and begin to take steps towards addressing them. This is one of the most common life problems so simply do your best to keep the lines of communication open as this can help in strengthening your struggling relationship . Talk about the challenges with your partner and look for common grounds.

You can also arrange to see a counselor together or read books that address the specific challenges you are facing. The worst thing you can do is to end a relationship and that’s only when you have exhausted all other options.

4. Workplace

The workplace is supposed to be a place where we dutifully render the services for which we’ve been hired.

However, it is not impossible to face animosity at work—dealing with toxic people who would rather not see any good in what you do. It might be caused by differences in background, attitudes, and unhealthy competition that can result in personal conflicts . This can create undue stress and reduce productivity.

When facing the most common problems in life like this, be as professional as possible when dealing with toxic people. Be kind and show understanding, and try to avoid personal confrontation.

You can even try to reach out to the persons and invite them over for a coffee and get to understand their worldview. This can help you to connect with them at their level so that you can avoid unnecessary stress for yourself.

5. Career Pressure

In your quest to become more successful, you will likely encounter work-related pressure. Such can come when trying to stabilize your career or climb the career ladder. It can also come as a result of overworking and having no life . Career pressure is one of the most common life problems.

Sometimes, it may be that the promotion you are working hard to get is not coming or positions you are qualified for are being offered to others. The pressure can get more intense when you find that most of your colleagues are moving ahead of you.

Check to find if you have personal or attitudinal problems. Some attitudinal problems can put you at a disadvantaged end. It may be poor communication, poor personal grooming, or poor relationship and networking skills. If it is any of these problems, then work on improving yourself in those areas.

You can also observe your colleagues who are succeeding and take note of what they are doing differently.

6. Unfair Treatment

We are in a world where some people often think they have some privileges over others and may want to exercise this thinking and treat others unfairly. If you find yourself in an environment where you are being oppressed or treated badly because of your race, gender, or current status, this can make you feel really bad and can also affect your psyche and productivity.

There is the temptation to decry your treatment, defend yourself, and demand a change immediately, but you should really wait for the right opportunity to do that.

When the time is right, reach out directly to the person or authority involved, and make it private. Meanwhile, you should be factual about the instances of your unfair treatments. Don’t just say that you are being treated badly; give several undeniable instances.

Once you’ve made your grievances known politely, keep being you. If things don’t change, you can cocoon yourself in that environment. If you have an option to leave, you can do so as well.

7. Emptiness and Boredom

When you are in a rut, everything becomes normal, dull, unproductive, and yet difficult to change. This can lead to feelings of emptiness and boredom. This may not seem like a serious life problem, but it can have a great impact on your life.

To overcome boredom and emptiness, break out of your routines, and deliberately create a new experience for yourself. If you can’t leave your job to find a new one, start doing other things that reflect your true passion. Sometimes, the things that give us the needed drive in life are not our day jobs.

8. Confusion

Confusion is described as a change in mental status in which a person is not able to think with their usual level of clarity. [1] . It is inherent in forgetfulness and lack of concentration.

This is one of the most pressing real life problems today. It can be caused by different things including medical and environmental factors. It can also be due to the experience of a loss, a heartbreak, or abuse.

Don’t allow the situation to deteriorate into something more serious. Try to snap out of whatever experiences you have had that are causing confusion. Seek medical help if necessary or talk to a psychologist.

9. Friendship Problems

We need friends in our lives to rob minds and hang out together and even help us when we run into trouble. But many people have found themselves in serious trouble as a result of the company of friends they keep. They’ve experienced jealousy, backstabbing, and betrayal of trust. Some friends have even used the information freely provided in times of friendship to betray trust.

Don’t open up on everything to friends. Keep some information only to yourself. If you notice that a friend is working against you, confront them with the truth. Limit your interaction with them or get rid of such toxic friends completely.

10. Haunting Past

We all have pasts, and we might have done some crazy stuff in the past before we began to live a more civilized and decent life. But sometimes, the past comes back haunting. It’s even worse when life problems of the past haunt you back and become problems of the present.

It may be that what you have done is now striking your conscience, keeping you awake at night. Or someone who knows about it is trying to use it against you, and it is standing in the way of your progress.

Be true to yourself and forgive yourself. If it is an issue with another person, you can reach out to the person to settle with them. If it is a secret that is now being leaked out, own up to it, take responsibility, and move on.

11. Safety and Security

You may find yourself in an environment where there have been unexplained murder, gun violence, police brutality, insurgencies, and other life-threatening situations. This can make you feel like you might be the next victim. What should you do in this situation?

Ensure that you watch where you go and keep your home secure. You can also get involved in a neighborhood community watch to collectively find solutions to the threat. If the situation persists, you can move to a more secure location.

12. Failure

Failure is one of the most common real life problems. It can bring disappointment and can also slow the pace of progress. But failure is also part of life, and we have to learn to deal with it. But what do you do when an experience of failure weighs you down?

You can read a book or biography to get inspired by other people’s success stories.

No one loves to grief but we can’t totally shield ourselves from it. The loss of a loved one is painful and, if not properly handled , can lead to an emotional breakdown.

Take your time to express emotions. You can also pen an emotional tribute to the individual. Writing can help us bring out the feelings that cannot be expressed otherwise, and it helps us breathe a sigh of relief.

You can also cope with your grief by helping them to realize some of their unfulfilled dreams or do something in their honor. Lastly, while you think about your loss, you will still have to move on, accepting the fact that life is transient.

The Bottom Line

Problems are what make life worth living. They help us adapt to become tougher as we adapt to different situations. Always remember that whatever life problems you are facing have solutions or, at least, a manageable approach.

Therefore, never allow real life problems to stop you from fulfilling your true potential in life.

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How to Face Problems in Your Life

Last Updated: June 24, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Trudi Griffin, LPC, MS . Trudi Griffin is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Wisconsin specializing in Addictions and Mental Health. She provides therapy to people who struggle with addictions, mental health, and trauma in community health settings and private practice. She received her MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Marquette University in 2011. There are 10 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 282,156 times.

Having problems in your life can feel overwhelming and it may be that the last thing you want to do is face them. Fortunately though, dealing and coping with problems is a well-studied area and there are many cognitive, emotional, and behavioral steps that can be taken to effectively face your problems head on.

Accepting and Understanding the Problem

• If you don’t think you have a problem, but everyone tells you there is a problem, try to see if there is truth to it.
• If you are having trouble admitting you have a problem, you might be in denial. For example, if you don’t want to accept that a close family member is involved with drugs, you might come up with other excuses for her behavior.
• While denial can be useful at times by protecting your mental health, it can in other cases lead you away from dealing with the problem head on. [2] X Research source
• In fact, avoidance often exacerbates the problem and doesn’t provide any lasting relief. Avoiding your problem will continue to create a cycle of stress for you as it will always be weighing on the back of your mind.
• That said, sometimes a little escapism can be healthy. If you find yourself overwhelmed and stressed out, take a break! Watch a TV show or read a book, or engage in some other hobby you enjoy. You could even just zone out and let your mind wander! [3] X Research source

• You can avoid catastrophizing by being cognizant of when you are doing it. This requires that you monitor your own thoughts and try to check them for accuracy.
• You can monitor your thoughts by remembering to think about them and by asking yourself if someone else had that thought, would you think they were being accurate?

• If you think you know when the problem started, think about events that happened at that time. The root cause might be related to it. For example, if your grades started slipping in school after your father moved away, maybe you’re having a hard time adjusting to this change.

• For example, your problem might be that you don’t manage to make it to school on time. By changing a few habits or making different transportation arrangements, this can be changed.
• Some things can’t be changed, such as a permanent disability or the death of a loved one, but you can learn to live with it and thrive in the wake of it. Also keep in mind that people often think negative events will make them feel worse and worse for longer than they actually do.
• Telling yourself this isn’t the end of the world doesn’t mean your problem is not really a problem or is insignificant. It just helps you internalize that your problems are not insurmountable.

• Dealing with problems and solving them can make you more competent and also more empathetic toward others who have their own problems.

Expressing That You Have a Problem

• For example, if your problem is that you don't have enough money, you could write that down. You could also write down the implications of that problem to drive home the point and motivate you to solve it. An implication of not having enough money might be that you are stressed out and that you can't enjoy the kinds of things that you would like to.
• If the problem isn't something private, put the list somewhere you see it so you don't forget to act on it. For example, you might put it on your fridge.

• If you’re going to talk to someone else who has the same problem, you will need to be tactful. Let her know that you just want to learn so you can solve it, too.

• It’s okay to feel upset, angry, worried so long as you know that being upset, angry or worried won’t help solve the problem. You will have to take action to solve the problem. Still, these emotions can help you realize you have a problem, as well as suggest its source.
• Some ways to calm down when you're feeling upset include: focusing on your breathing, count to 10 (or higher if you need to), gently talk yourself down (tell yourself "it's going to be alright," or "take it easy."). Try going for a walk or run or listening to calming music. [10] X Trustworthy Source Greater Good Magazine Journal published by UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, which uses scientific research to promote happier living Go to source

• To find a mental health professional, try this website: https://locator.apa.org/

Finding Solutions

• Consider talking to people who have been through something similar or are professionals in the subject related to your problem.
• For example, if your problem is academic related, talk to your teacher about it or another student who has already done the subject or course you’re having difficulty with.
• Understanding how problems come to be might help you face them better. Refocusing your attention on solving the problem will help decrease unproductive emotional tendencies such as guilt and anxiety, which can stymie problem solving skills and capabilities.

• Make sure that when you seek out advice, it's from a licensed professional in their field, which proves they have the skills needed to help you with your particular problem.
• There are people who might claim to be an expert. If they are lacking the right credentials, chances are they aren't.

• Try asking them how they coped with and solved the problem you share. You may find yourself so wrapped up in your problem that an obvious solution evades you, but it may not evade others. [12] X Research source

• Consider the anatomy of the problem. Usually a problem is not just one problem alone - it has consequences and affects other areas of your life. Which part of the problem do you think you should address first?
• For example, if your problem is that you never get to go on vacation, sub-problems may be that it is difficult for you to get time off of work, and it is difficult for you to save money to be able to afford a vacation.
• You could address these sub-problems separately: You could cut back on eating out while simultaneously talking to your boss about how you are burnt out and could use a week off, and make a case that you would ultimately be more productive in the long run if allowed to recuperate.

• Whether the solution will, in fact, solve your problem.
• How efficient the solution is in terms of the time and other resources it will require.
• How you might feel it you choose that solution relative to another solution.
• What the costs and benefits of the solution are.
• Whether this solution has worked for others in the past.

• As you engage in your plan, reward yourself for your small successes so you are more likely to stick with it when the going gets tough!
• Resist the temptation to avoid your problems if your plans don’t work. Remember not to catastrophize –just because one solution didn't solve the problem, that doesn't mean there isn't another method to solve your problem.

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• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/headshrinkers-guide-the-galaxy/201412/7-strategies-face-lifes-challenges
• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/denial
• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200903/devoted-distraction?collection=95944
• ↑ http://psychcentral.com/lib/15-small-steps-you-can-take-today-to-improve-anxiety-symptoms/
• ↑ http://www.anxietybc.com/sites/default/files/ProblemSolving.pdf
• ↑ https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/talking-through-problems
• ↑ https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/four_ways_to_calm_your_mind_in_stressful_times
• ↑ https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/finding-a-therapist-who-can-help-you-heal.htm
• ↑ http://psychcentral.com/lib/therapists-spill-14-ways-to-get-through-tough-times/
• ↑ https://au.reachout.com/articles/a-step-by-step-guide-to-problem-solving

About This Article

Medical Disclaimer

The content of this article is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, examination, diagnosis, or treatment. You should always contact your doctor or other qualified healthcare professional before starting, changing, or stopping any kind of health treatment.

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Dealing with a problem in your life can feel overwhelming, but by accepting that you have a problem and finding a solution, you can manage it effectively. Accept that the problem exists, since ignoring or avoiding it will not make it go away. Research your problem so you can understand it better, which will help you come up with solutions. You could also try speaking to someone who has dealt with the same issue or contacting an expert with relevant experience. Make a step-by-step plan of how you're going to tackle your problem, which will help you break it down into manageable goals. As you achieve each step, reward yourself so you feel encouraged to keep going. For example, if your problem is that you struggle to focus on your work, take an evening to relax or watch your favorite show when you complete an important task. For tips from our co-author on how to avoid catastrophizing your problem, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to Deal With Different Problems in Life

Last Updated: April 8, 2021 References

This article was co-authored by Leah Morris . Leah Morris is a Life and Relationship Transition coach and the owner of Life Remade, a holistic personal coaching service. With over three years as a professional coach, she specializes in guiding people as they move through both short-term and long-term life transitions. Leah holds a BA in Organizational Communication from California State University, Chico and is a certified Transformational Life Coach through the Southwest Institute for Healing Arts. There are 18 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 117,878 times.

Money, relationships, family, health, school, careers. Problems can and will pop up in nearly every area of life. The longer you live, the more obstacles you must overcome. Learning to handle life's problems effectively is an essential skill that can have a drastic effect on your health and happiness. Building solid problem-solving strategies and coping skills can help you manage when life throws its punches.

Developing Problem-Solving Skills

• For example, you are short on money for the bills. Find out the source of the problem. Why are you short this month? It could be you need to find a better paying job to account for a rise in expenses, pick up more hours at work, or stop spending needlessly on entertainment.

• For example, if you are short on money, your objective would be to make extra money or increase your income in some way.

• For example, if you are hoping to increase the income in your household, you can pare this goal down to saving $100 first. Then, your goal might be to double that amount, and so forth. This is much more feasible than setting a goal to just save $500 right off the bat.

• The variables to increase your income could be working more hours, searching for a better paying job, or decreasing other expenses to free up more income.

• Perhaps, you cannot find a new job or increase your work hours right now. Therefore, the only option available to you would be finding ways to cut back on other expenses.

Stocking Your Coping Toolbox

• Weight gain or loss
• Difficulty breathing
• Sleep problems
• Changes in appetite

• A hobby can be anything that you enjoy doing. Try reading, writing, sports, hiking, canoeing, skating, painting, gardening, etc. There are endless possibilities for finding something you like to do and doing it regularly.

• Do something relaxing like stretching, listening to soothing music, taking a long, hot bath, or getting a massage. [11] X Research source

• Try progressive muscle by sitting quietly and comfortably in a chair or on a cushion. Move slowly through each muscle group in your body, tensing and releasing the different muscles. Start with your toes. Tense them for 5 seconds and take notice of how this feels. Next, release the tension and simply remain in the relaxed state for about 30 seconds before moving on to a new muscle group.

Coping with Interpersonal Issues

• Aim to listen for understanding rather than responding. You probably spend most of your time listening thinking up what you are going to say next. Take the time to really hear what the other person is saying in your daily interactions. This leaves less room for misunderstandings.
• Purposely go out of your way to shatter stereotypes. Do you have an unsupported opinion about a certain individual or group? Make an effort to meet, talk to, and get to know this individual(s) and see if your opinion changes.
• Learn more about the world by reading, watching films or documentaries, and visiting museums that educate you about people from different walks of life.

• An "I" statement starts by expressing a feeling, explaining the why behind the feeling, and offering a practical solution. An "I" statement might include the following: "I feel unappreciated when you drop tasks on me at the last minute. It would be great if you could try to give me advanced notice next time."

• Constantly judging, nagging, or shaming others for their wrongness while emphasizing your rightness doesn't do anyone any good. [18] X Research source Remember, "a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still". Trying to change others only frustrates you (and them).
• Focus on working on your own faults instead of expending so much energy on others. [19] X Research source

• Apologies express remorse, admit responsibility, make amends, and strive to prevent the same mistake from happening in the future.
• An example of an apology could be "I apologize for not being respectful of your free time. I will do the work myself this time, and next time I will be sure to give you a heads up to check that you are available."

Having a Healthy Outlook

• Grab a sheet of paper and list all of the accomplishments, values, and positive qualities about yourself you can think of. Also, call a close friend or family member who knows you well. Ask this person to help you identify your strengths.
• If you have trouble figuring out your strengths, take a free online assessment like the VIA Character Strengths Assessment. [22] X Research source
• After you have identified your strengths, learn to channel them effectively in your life. Review each strengths and figure out ways that you already use this strength in your life. Then, brainstorm additional ways you can use this strength to your advantage. [23] X Research source

• Start a gratitude journal by writing out a few things that went well during each day.
• Say "thank you" more.
• Write gratitude letters to your family, friends, and acquaintances who have been a help to you in some way.
• Transform your language to use these words more "gifts", "fortunate", "blessings", and "abundance".

Expert Q&A

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• ↑ http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/problem-solving-skills.htm
• ↑ https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress-management/art-20044502
• ↑ http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/problem-solving/overview/overview.html
• ↑ http://familydoctor.org/familydoctor/en/prevention-wellness/emotional-wellbeing/mental-health/stress-how-to-cope-better-with-lifes-challenges.html
• ↑ http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/social-support/art-20044445?pg=2
• ↑ http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/conditions/stress-coping-everyday-problems
• ↑ Leah Morris. Life Coach. Expert Interview. 19 June 2020.
• ↑ http://psychcentral.com/lib/12-ways-to-shut-off-your-brain-before-bedtime/
• ↑ http://www.stress.org.uk/exercise.aspx
• ↑ http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/relaxation-technique/art-20045368?pg=2
• ↑ http://time.com/3562863/5-ways-to-be-more-empathetic/
• ↑ http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/six_habits_of_highly_empathic_people1
• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-wise-brain/201410/accept-them-they-are
• ↑ http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/11/14/you-can-only-change-yourself/
• ↑ https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/how-to-apologize.htm
• ↑ http://www.viacharacter.org/www
• ↑ http://www.actionforhappiness.org/take-action/find-your-strengths-and-focus-on-using-them
• ↑ http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/ten_ways_to_become_more_grateful1/

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Problem-Solving Strategies and Obstacles

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Sean is a fact-checker and researcher with experience in sociology, field research, and data analytics.

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From deciding what to eat for dinner to considering whether it's the right time to buy a house, problem-solving is a large part of our daily lives. Learn some of the problem-solving strategies that exist and how to use them in real life, along with ways to overcome obstacles that are making it harder to resolve the issues you face.

What Is Problem-Solving?

In cognitive psychology , the term 'problem-solving' refers to the mental process that people go through to discover, analyze, and solve problems.

A problem exists when there is a goal that we want to achieve but the process by which we will achieve it is not obvious to us. Put another way, there is something that we want to occur in our life, yet we are not immediately certain how to make it happen.

Maybe you want a better relationship with your spouse or another family member but you're not sure how to improve it. Or you want to start a business but are unsure what steps to take. Problem-solving helps you figure out how to achieve these desires.

The problem-solving process involves:

• Discovery of the problem
• Deciding to tackle the issue
• Seeking to understand the problem more fully
• Researching available options or solutions
• Taking action to resolve the issue

Before problem-solving can occur, it is important to first understand the exact nature of the problem itself. If your understanding of the issue is faulty, your attempts to resolve it will also be incorrect or flawed.

Problem-Solving Mental Processes

Several mental processes are at work during problem-solving. Among them are:

• Perceptually recognizing the problem
• Representing the problem in memory
• Considering relevant information that applies to the problem
• Identifying different aspects of the problem
• Labeling and describing the problem

Problem-Solving Strategies

There are many ways to go about solving a problem. Some of these strategies might be used on their own, or you may decide to employ multiple approaches when working to figure out and fix a problem.

An algorithm is a step-by-step procedure that, by following certain "rules" produces a solution. Algorithms are commonly used in mathematics to solve division or multiplication problems. But they can be used in other fields as well.

In psychology, algorithms can be used to help identify individuals with a greater risk of mental health issues. For instance, research suggests that certain algorithms might help us recognize children with an elevated risk of suicide or self-harm.

One benefit of algorithms is that they guarantee an accurate answer. However, they aren't always the best approach to problem-solving, in part because detecting patterns can be incredibly time-consuming.

There are also concerns when machine learning is involved—also known as artificial intelligence (AI)—such as whether they can accurately predict human behaviors.

Heuristics are shortcut strategies that people can use to solve a problem at hand. These "rule of thumb" approaches allow you to simplify complex problems, reducing the total number of possible solutions to a more manageable set.

If you find yourself sitting in a traffic jam, for example, you may quickly consider other routes, taking one to get moving once again. When shopping for a new car, you might think back to a prior experience when negotiating got you a lower price, then employ the same tactics.

While heuristics may be helpful when facing smaller issues, major decisions shouldn't necessarily be made using a shortcut approach. Heuristics also don't guarantee an effective solution, such as when trying to drive around a traffic jam only to find yourself on an equally crowded route.

Trial and Error

A trial-and-error approach to problem-solving involves trying a number of potential solutions to a particular issue, then ruling out those that do not work. If you're not sure whether to buy a shirt in blue or green, for instance, you may try on each before deciding which one to purchase.

This can be a good strategy to use if you have a limited number of solutions available. But if there are many different choices available, narrowing down the possible options using another problem-solving technique can be helpful before attempting trial and error.

In some cases, the solution to a problem can appear as a sudden insight. You are facing an issue in a relationship or your career when, out of nowhere, the solution appears in your mind and you know exactly what to do.

Insight can occur when the problem in front of you is similar to an issue that you've dealt with in the past. Although, you may not recognize what is occurring since the underlying mental processes that lead to insight often happen outside of conscious awareness .

Research indicates that insight is most likely to occur during times when you are alone—such as when going on a walk by yourself, when you're in the shower, or when lying in bed after waking up.

How to Apply Problem-Solving Strategies in Real Life

If you're facing a problem, you can implement one or more of these strategies to find a potential solution. Here's how to use them in real life:

• Create a flow chart . If you have time, you can take advantage of the algorithm approach to problem-solving by sitting down and making a flow chart of each potential solution, its consequences, and what happens next.
• Recall your past experiences . When a problem needs to be solved fairly quickly, heuristics may be a better approach. Think back to when you faced a similar issue, then use your knowledge and experience to choose the best option possible.
• Start trying potential solutions . If your options are limited, start trying them one by one to see which solution is best for achieving your desired goal. If a particular solution doesn't work, move on to the next.
• Take some time alone . Since insight is often achieved when you're alone, carve out time to be by yourself for a while. The answer to your problem may come to you, seemingly out of the blue, if you spend some time away from others.

Obstacles to Problem-Solving

Problem-solving is not a flawless process as there are a number of obstacles that can interfere with our ability to solve a problem quickly and efficiently. These obstacles include:

• Assumptions: When dealing with a problem, people can make assumptions about the constraints and obstacles that prevent certain solutions. Thus, they may not even try some potential options.
• Functional fixedness : This term refers to the tendency to view problems only in their customary manner. Functional fixedness prevents people from fully seeing all of the different options that might be available to find a solution.
• Irrelevant or misleading information: When trying to solve a problem, it's important to distinguish between information that is relevant to the issue and irrelevant data that can lead to faulty solutions. The more complex the problem, the easier it is to focus on misleading or irrelevant information.
• Mental set: A mental set is a tendency to only use solutions that have worked in the past rather than looking for alternative ideas. A mental set can work as a heuristic, making it a useful problem-solving tool. However, mental sets can also lead to inflexibility, making it more difficult to find effective solutions.

How to Improve Your Problem-Solving Skills

In the end, if your goal is to become a better problem-solver, it's helpful to remember that this is a process. Thus, if you want to improve your problem-solving skills, following these steps can help lead you to your solution:

• Recognize that a problem exists . If you are facing a problem, there are generally signs. For instance, if you have a mental illness , you may experience excessive fear or sadness, mood changes, and changes in sleeping or eating habits. Recognizing these signs can help you realize that an issue exists.
• Decide to solve the problem . Make a conscious decision to solve the issue at hand. Commit to yourself that you will go through the steps necessary to find a solution.
• Seek to fully understand the issue . Analyze the problem you face, looking at it from all sides. If your problem is relationship-related, for instance, ask yourself how the other person may be interpreting the issue. You might also consider how your actions might be contributing to the situation.
• Research potential options . Using the problem-solving strategies mentioned, research potential solutions. Make a list of options, then consider each one individually. What are some pros and cons of taking the available routes? What would you need to do to make them happen?
• Take action . Select the best solution possible and take action. Action is one of the steps required for change . So, go through the motions needed to resolve the issue.
• Try another option, if needed . If the solution you chose didn't work, don't give up. Either go through the problem-solving process again or simply try another option.

You can find a way to solve your problems as long as you keep working toward this goal—even if the best solution is simply to let go because no other good solution exists.

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Dunbar K. Problem solving . A Companion to Cognitive Science . 2017. doi:10.1002/9781405164535.ch20

Stewart SL, Celebre A, Hirdes JP, Poss JW. Risk of suicide and self-harm in kids: The development of an algorithm to identify high-risk individuals within the children's mental health system . Child Psychiat Human Develop . 2020;51:913-924. doi:10.1007/s10578-020-00968-9

Rosenbusch H, Soldner F, Evans AM, Zeelenberg M. Supervised machine learning methods in psychology: A practical introduction with annotated R code . Soc Personal Psychol Compass . 2021;15(2):e12579. doi:10.1111/spc3.12579

Mishra S. Decision-making under risk: Integrating perspectives from biology, economics, and psychology . Personal Soc Psychol Rev . 2014;18(3):280-307. doi:10.1177/1088868314530517

Csikszentmihalyi M, Sawyer K. Creative insight: The social dimension of a solitary moment . In: The Systems Model of Creativity . 2015:73-98. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9085-7_7

Chrysikou EG, Motyka K, Nigro C, Yang SI, Thompson-Schill SL. Functional fixedness in creative thinking tasks depends on stimulus modality .  Psychol Aesthet Creat Arts . 2016;10(4):425‐435. doi:10.1037/aca0000050

Huang F, Tang S, Hu Z. Unconditional perseveration of the short-term mental set in chunk decomposition .  Front Psychol . 2018;9:2568. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02568

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

The 10 Most Common Life Problems and How to Deal with Them

This is life; you face problems every day no matter how perfect you think you and your life are. Problems are there and they aren’t going anywhere unless you face them and solve them. Acknowledging your problems, solving them, and getting on with your life is better than making it all a big deal. Your problems shouldn’t become the source of sorrow, hurt, and grief for you.

While getting on with our life, we may encounter plenty of barriers and issues that might distract us from our real path. Sometimes we don’t have our full potential to deal with the issues but if we know what we are dealing with, we can do better. Once you have a clear perspective of what problems you have in your life, you can deal with them in a better way. So getting  Nebula psychic advice you can change your life for the better and avoid problems in the future.

Most common problems in life

Here are some of the most common problems that each of us is bound to face no matter where we are headed or what we are doing. Let’s take a look at those issues.

1. Health Crisis

There comes a time in your life when you are not healthy. It might be something minor or something big and intense. Either way, it is common to have health issues because as our body works around the clock, it does fall once in a while to get the whole system working once again. The thing about health crisis is if you don’t deal with it at the right time, it might get worse resulting in many other problems. So, if you have any health issue going on, get to it and make yourself healthy once again instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.

2. Workplace Issues

Of course, everyone gets to work when the time and opportunity are there. But, this is the time when you come to realise if you can manage teamwork and professional relationships or not. The workplace is the place where you are supposed to fulfil your duties for which you have been hired. However, it is possible to face certain issues that you might not be ready for. You can get surprised and frustrated at the start because of these issues but the best thing to do is to face those issues and resolve them right away. It is the wisest thing instead of leaving the workplace.

3. Emptiness

Now and then, your life becomes dull, unproductive, and you feel like there is nothing you can change. This leads to the emptiness which doesn’t seem like a big issue but it has a big impact on your life. Though career-oriented people don’t care about their wellness and the adventurous part of life deeply it is affecting them and it affects their career also. If you want to deal with this boredom and emptiness, break out of your routine and do something unusual to bring out the light in you.

4. Friendship Issues

We need friends in our life to get together, share sorrows and happiness, and just get along with life. Friends are the brightest part of life but sometimes this relationship ends up giving you a lot of trouble. There is backstabbing, jealousy, betrayal, and a lot of similar things that ruin a friendship and thus it affects the whole life. The best solution to this is to never open up with friends at first. Know who you are dealing with and then move forward with the friendships. Limit your interactions with friends who are toxic and unhealthy for you.

When you are moving forward, achieving your goals, moving on with your career, you are bound to face failures but it doesn’t mean that you can’t move forward. Failures are meant to teach you a lot of things and make you a better person for the future. Learn to deal with the failure and you will have the ability to deal with every barrier that might come across.

6. Financial Crisis

This world and life are uncertain, and the financial crisis can come at every stage of life. No matter how much you are ready for the bad times, the financial crisis can catch you off-guard. You can get frustrated and all stressed out because of the crisis that might have hit you. You might have lost your job, lost your investment, or have a downfall in the business world. The best way to deal with this is to accept that it has happened. Once you accept it, you can deal with it. Identify where things have gone wrong and from where can you start to get back on your feet.

7. Career Pressure

When you are on the path to being successful, you will face work-related issues. Along with those issues, you might have the difficulty in getting on with your career. Thousands of issues can arise such as not getting the promotion you worked so hard for, not getting the job you applied so wishfully for, and so on. To deal with these issues, identify the issues that might be within you such as personal issues or attitudinal problems. Work on yourself and get back on your feet and try again.

8. Unfair Treatment

This world is full of people who are unjust and unfair when they get in power. You are lucky if you haven’t faced anything like that, but you are bound to face such people when you step outside. This unfair treatment shouldn’t be the cause of your issues or breakdown. So, deal with this as it comes and doesn’t take it seriously. If you are good, you will get the success you deserve.

9. Inner Peace

You can be successful in life, doing things you love but still, there is something that doesn’t feel like you. The inner peace you seek might not be there for you yet and it stresses you out. It happens to everyone once in a while and it is no big deal. You just have to find a way to feel different and to achieve that inner peace you are looking for.

10. Mental Health Issues

This doesn’t mean serious disorders and diseases. These are the minor issues that we usually ignore and do not deal with because we think they don’t make sense. We are too busy with improving our lives that we forget that mental stress and anxiety are serious issues and you should seek help as soon as possible.

Look around your life and see if you are having these problems in your life. Every once in a while, people face these problems but if you can identify the issues at the time, you can deal with them in a better way.

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15 Most Common Life Problems — And How To Solve Every Single One Of Them

Problems are forever and we can't avoid them — but we can solve them..

• Tim Denning

Last updated on May 10, 2023

All of our problems are the same. Problems are forever and we can’t avoid them.

You’ll wake up tomorrow and have problems with breakfast. You’ll jump on the train and read a problem in your email inbox. You’ll get to the office and get a problem smack bang in your pretty face!

But the typical problems we face can be solved .

RELATED: Why We *Need* Something To Look Forward To, According To Science

Here are the 15 most common problems in life and how to solve each one:

1. you didn’t reach your goal..

Just because you set a goal doesn’t mean you’re going to get it. Many of life’s toughest goals take lots of attempts. Some of the goals I missed are:

• Dream careers
• Girls I wanted to date
• Saving enough money to build a school in Laos
• Reaching 100k followers on LinkedIn

People who talk about success and personal development also don’t reach their goals. The best feeling about reaching a goal is the journey it took to get there. If all your goals were easy, then you’d feel nothing at the end of the process.

Solution: Take the goal you didn’t achieve and try a different approach.

Doing the same thing over and over to achieve your goal is the definition of insanity. Your heroes miss their goals too. What makes them stand out is that they don’t give up. The fun of goal-setting is knowing that you’ll fail.

2. Someone criticized you.

If you want to make a dent in this world, then the critics will come out of the closet. The bigger your aspirations are, the more you’ll be criticized. The number of critics you have is in direct proportion to your success.

I had an entire blog post written about me saying how stupid I was. It felt like crap on day one. By day seven I’d made peace with the criticism and kept writing.

Solution: You can’t please everybody that you meet in life. When you speak on a stage, for example, 25% of people will like you, 25% won’t know who you are and 50% of people will think you’re a jerk even though you’ve probably done nothing wrong.

Critics are not all bad. You can learn things about yourself from them too. The solution is to learn from criticism, not be afraid of it.

3. Your career got messed up.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a happy-go-lucky office worker, your career is going to get messed up at some point.

The definition of business is this: Moving from one problem to another and making money in the meantime to fuel your mission. Business is really just problem-solving.

• Redundancy could right-hook you in the face.
• The business you founded could go backward and even bankrupt.
• Your career skills could become outdated.
• You could get fired for making a mistake.

Your career is going to get messed up. Things you can never predict in your career are going to happen.

Solution: See career challenges for what they are: an opportunity to try something different.

If your career never got messed up, then you’d probably stay in your comfort zone for your entire life and never try something different. The solution is to see your career getting messed up as a chance to grow.

Getting made redundant could be the one reality that makes you want to create your own startup. Having a customer leave could decrease your workload and create space for clients who won’t drain your time and make you no money.

RELATED: People With These 7 Personality Traits Have What It Takes To Survive (Pretty Much) Anything

4. You have financial troubles.

That crazy little thing called money will let you down at some point. I’ve personally been rich and poor multiple times.

Upon reflection, the time I’ve been the happiest has been when I’ve had the least amount of money. Countless studies have shown that money isn’t what your life’s about . As humans, we seek meaning, love, and our own version of happiness. Money won’t give you any of those human needs.

That doesn’t mean money doesn’t matter; it just means that it shouldn’t be your main focus or something you obsess over.

Solution: The solution to financial problems is to see them as a gift and choose a meaning for your life instead.

Lack of money is a gift. When you don’t have money, you become resourceful and creative at the same time. Lack of money helps you decide on what matters and what doesn’t.

If things get really bad, then you’ll likely prioritize feeding your family over buying another useless car that will never make you happy. You’ll take joy in the simple things in life.

5. You’re unhealthy.

Our health has become a real problem. We wonder why we feel tired, sick, and get headaches. We’ll all experience health challenges at some point in our life. How many health challenges we experience in our younger years will come down to food and exercise.

The strategies for being healthy haven’t changed. There’s no mystery around being healthy, it’s just that we’ve become lazy. Convenience powered by apps has overtaken our ability to do basic tasks and not binge-watch Netflix every night.

Solution: Take ownership.

Quit feeling sick and do something about it. Have some blood tests. Change your diet to be more plant-based. Drink more water . Get to the gym three times a week for 30 minutes. Stand up from your desk every now and then so you’re not sitting for the whole day and messing your spine/neck up.

Whatever you do, take ownership of your health and quit being ignorant.

6. A relationship ended.

There’s less than 1% of people who met "The One," lived happily ever after, and never experienced a breakup. Even that 1% will have that relationship end at some point when either side passes away.

For the majority of us who don’t strike gold the first time around, we’re going to have to deal with breakups and the trials and tribulations of romance.

• We’ll probably find ourselves in a toxic relationship for too long.
• We’ll probably get cheated on at least once.
• We’ll probably have our hearts smashed into a million pieces when we discover that someone ‘No longer loves us anymore.’

These are the realities of the human condition and our need to reproduce and keep our species alive.

Solution: Finding love is about understanding what love is not. You need relationships to end to find out what love really is.

All breakups suck in the beginning until you grow and move on. Then, the solution to this problem is to find yourself.

Once you find yourself, the heart will be ready for love again. How you move forward from there is up to you. You can try the good old fashion nightclub scene. You could go to Meetups. Or, you could start swiping left and right on a few dating apps.

Have your heart broken — just don’t let it stay that way.

7. You made yourself look like a jerk.

This one is an ugly truth for me. I’ve embarrassed myself more times than I’ve had protein and veggies for dinner. Here are a few just for laughs (and your entertainment):

• There was the time I tried to pretend I could be the Wolf of Wall Street and got laughed out of the interview due to not being able to explain derivatives.
• There was the time I thought this girl liked me and tried to hug her while we were walking only to have her hate my guts.
• There was the time I went out with friends and threw up on my friend’s couch after having a single shot of tequila.
• There was the time I did my first public speaking gig and messed up a speech about my own life which I’d rehearsed over 100 times.

We could talk for days about how I’ve embarrassed myself over the years. We could even compare epic fails to see whose are worse. This is not a game though. We’re all going to go into situations with the best of intentions or all the experience in the world and still screw up.

Solution: Embarrassing yourself is a sign of courage. Courage is what is found in leaders and those who are doers.

Embarrassing yourself is an acceptance that you might fail in the short term. Those who fail in the short term will eventually win in the long term with practice.

The opposite of embarrassing yourself is perfection. That’s a life where you think too highly of yourself and you spend your entire day trying to impress everybody to eventually impress nobody. Making an idiot of yourself is perfectly fine. What’s not fine is being perfect.

RELATED: How To Keep A Positive Attitude In A Negative World

8. Someone messed your stuff up.

Car, home, or insert other material possession that doesn’t matter — none of these material things that got messed up are joining you in the afterlife. You can’t bury the Bentley with you so you can drive around with your great, great, great grandpa and do burnouts in the afterlife.

The stuff that is going to get messed up doesn’t matter.

Solution: What matters is that you don’t get messed up. What matters is that you take care of yourself so you can take care of others.

Maybe when your junk gets messed up, you’ll realize that you didn’t need it in the first place.

9. You feel like your life has no meaning.

These moments where nothing makes sense are where you get to explore. We’re not born with a meaning for our life. Meaning comes from learning who we are and growing as a person. The meaning for your life when you’re 19 will probably change from when you’re 51 and have three grown-up kids.

The quickest way to destroy your life is to believe that life has no meaning. A lack of meaning leads to depression, carelessness, drug-taking, and even crime at an extreme level.

Solution: If you feel like your life has no meaning, then it’s time to experiment.

Standing still is not how you find the answer. Being intensely focused on one’s self only leads to more suffering. A short-term solution to this problem is to experiment with helping those who have nothing. Spend time with people who’d kill to be in your position and get some perspective.

I’ve found in my life that the greatest meaning for your life is normally tied to finding something you’d be happy to do for free that helps others.

10. You feel like you can’t go on.

We’ve all had those days. Those deep and sometimes dark thoughts can lead to a place you’ve never visited. Some failures in life hurt more than others. Some failures can’t be solved through a listicle post such as this one with a dose of inspiration.

If you truly feel like you can’t go on, there’s another way.

Solution: Seek real help.

These dark thoughts must be treated. and sometimes the best medicine is to seek professional help through counseling, or for an extreme case, by calling Lifeline .

While I’ve never had suicidal thoughts, personally, I have dealt with mental illness. There is a way to come out the other side, but you have to put aside your pride and seek help. Please don’t become another victim of suicide by doing nothing.

11. Every day feels the same.

You wake up. You eat. You go to work. You eat. You come home. You eat. You go to bed.

Life can feel the same if you do nothing. It’s up to you to create variety and shape your habits into something more than a fixed schedule that makes you feel bored. Days feel the same when there’s no purpose behind anything you’re doing.

Solution: You must find joy in the repetition.

You do that by taking those reps and making them mean something. Add some variety by breaking your comfort zone. Set a goal to do something wild during your day every so often.

• Travel to another country
• Talk to someone new
• Try learning a new skill

Even after trying something new, you have to get used to some level of repetition. Let that repetition become habits that serve something which can help others.

12. Your friends are screwing your life up.

Dump them. Divorce them. Delete their number.

Every relationship you have in your life is a choice. The people around us often hold us back . They fill our minds with limiting beliefs, stories, and goals that give us no sense of meaning.

Friends can kill our dreams or make us believe something we never thought was possible.

Solution: Everyone deserves a second chance. Start by telling your toxic friends how you feel.

Give them a chance to change with the new you. If they refuse, take a break from them for a while. Ask yourself whether you want them in your life long-term.

"Fitting in" is what we’re taught to do. What I’d advise you to do is be you instead, and that will attract the right people into your life.

RELATED: How To Stop Living Your Life Based On Your Fears

13. You feel stressed.

About 77% of people in the United States alone experience regular stress.

I recently learned about the effects of stress . I had a cortisol test and the doctor found the levels to be twice the normal range. This stress led to brain fog, tiredness, and a lack of mental clarity.

Stress is also caused by what you let into your life. Having options can be a bad thing.

Solution: We don’t need more; we need less to destress:

• Declutter your home and office.
• Say no to more meetings.
• Say yes to invites from people that make you feel like saying “Hell yes!”
• Buy less material things.
• Have fewer people in your life.
• Listen to one podcast instead of many.
• Read fewer books instead of everyone that’s recommended on a podcast.
• Have fewer recurring subscriptions.
• Invest and save more money so you can stress less about unexpected bills.
• Take regular breaks (quarterly has worked for me).

14. A fear is standing in your way.

There are so many common fears — fear of spiders, flying, public speaking, dying, career change, heights, and maybe even a fear of expressing yourself.

Fear is a concept of the mind. Nothing is scary or not scary. Our mind makes that choice for us and provides meaning to everything.​ Fear can be overcome and that’s why we love stories of battling with fear. I’ve famously spoken about creating fear lists and then knocking them off one at a time.

Solution: Smash the fear into tiny little pieces.

Don’t avoid it. Don’t let it stand in your way any longer. Make a decision to overcome each fear you have and you’ll be unstoppable by the end.

Don’t let nerves trick you into thinking you’re fearful. We all get nerves, but we can still keep moving forward with nerves — I’ve even learned to use nerves to my advantage by using them as an extra energy source.

Nerves tell me I’m on the right track. I’ve overcome my fear of public speaking and my fear of flying — my fear of spiders remains, but I’m working on that one. Real fear can be overcome through deliberate practice.

15. You're dealing with the concept of death.

Last but not least, the old chestnut of death. Death is the one life problem we all have in common and can’t solve. Sorry for the bad news. Death is going to take us eventually and it will take people you love through your life too.

Solution: The solution to dealing with death is not to overcome it but to accept it.

Death can be our greatest motivator if we let it. Once you understand what death means in all of its darkness, you’ll understand life. You’ll see death not as a problem but as a fact. That fact will change the way you see everything going forward.

For me, it took several near-death experiences (almost being murdered and a cancer scare) to see death for what it is. Death is not an easy pill to swallow. No post like this is going to give you all the answers you’re probably wanting to know.

The only way I see of dealing with the reality of death is to go out there and live the best damn life you can, while you can! Use your life to do something that gives you meaning and then you’ll no longer see death as a problem when it comes upon you.

RELATED: 11 Little Habits Of The Strongest, Most Resilient People

Tim Denning is a writer for Business Insider and CNBC whose work focuses on personal development and entrepreneurship.

This article was originally published at Medium . Reprinted with permission from the author.

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How to Resolve Problems In a Healthy Way

For those struggling with mental health, conflict can be overwhelming.

Posted February 9, 2023 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma

• Why Relationships Matter
• Take our Relationship Satisfaction Test
• Find a therapist to strengthen relationships
• Resolving conflict is possible when approached the correct way.
• Problems are stressful, avoid autopilot problem-solving.
• The other party has to want, or at least accept, a healthy resolution.

A big part of living a balanced and fulfilled life lies in our ability to avoid and minimize conflict. When conflict does arise, our ability to resolve it quickly and amicably has a big impact on our stress and happiness .

For some people, avoiding and resolving conflict comes with relative ease. For many others, conflict seems to be ever lurking around the corner, and we live in a perpetual state of unresolved conflicts. The result is a constant level of stress and wounds that don’t ever fully heal.

Healthy Problem-Solving

To help you on this journey of resolution and healing, I’ve developed a list of characteristics of healthy problem-solvers. Problems carry with them the seeds of both consensus and conflict.

Those who have had their self-esteem battered by emotional abuse can have difficulty dealing with problems because of the potential for conflict. Either they refuse to stand their ground and give in, or they turn every conflict into a do-or-die battleground of “This time I’ll win”!

There is a middle ground between these two extremes. Granted, this middle ground takes more time to accomplish, but it has the best chance of allowing both parties to remain standing at the end.

10 Tips to Help Resolve Conflict

Below are ten action steps you can take when looking to solve problems in a healthy way.

• Resolve to solve the problem, not to win. If you only want to “win,” you may find that you’ve won the battle but lost the war. Problems and how they are handled have short-term and long-term consequences. Be aware of both. Consider a strategy, not a battle plan.
• Face the problem. Plan a specific time for a conversation to identify the areas of concern and be prepared to offer options for solutions. Some problems won’t go away on their own. For those that won’t, I suggest facing them instead of avoiding them. As soon as possible, find a way to deal with the problem. Those left unattended can balloon out of control and are harder to address later.
• Be open to unique solutions. Usually, when I perceive a problem, I have an initial idea of how to solve it. Sometimes, though, once I hear different opinions, I change my mind about how to deal with the problem. I may have a good solution, but I may not have the best solution.
• Be clear on your boundaries . People can become emotionally heated when working through problems. Know your limits. Know what behaviors you are not willing to accept from others, or from yourself.
• Forgive yourself and others. When the boundaries are breached, repair them with forgiveness .
• Accept that life is not always fair. Problems, and the way people handle them, do not always seem fair. What is fair to one person may appear unfair to another.
• Deal with one problem at a time. There may be other problems swirling around, but you can realistically handle only one at a time. Don’t try to take on the problems of the world all at once.
• Anticipate a positive outcome. When you enter problem-solving mode, be optimistic . This attitude may seem simplistic, but it is enormously helpful. If you begin to tackle a problem thinking there is no good answer, how motivated are you to solve it?
• Believe in your ability to solve the problem. This concept goes with the one above but is a bit different. There is a difference between believing there is no answer and believing you have no answer. Trust yourself to find a solution.
• When working through problems, be aware of how you’re communicating with yourself and others. Problems are stressful , avoid autopilot problem-solving. Keep your head in the game and be aware of how everyone involved is dealing with the problem.

Each Problem Is Unique, But the Benefit of Resolving It Is Consistent

Each conflict is different. Your ability to resolve them lies, in no small part, in the willingness of the other person to want it resolved as well. There may be times when there simply isn’t the desire on the other side to find a resolution. It may make sense to step away for a while and revisit it later.

But finding solutions sooner than later is always the preferred outcome. Sometimes we may need to go beyond the 50-yard line to resolve an issue, even if it feels like we are doing more than the other person is. That’s okay. Finding a good solution, whether easily achieved or the result of months of difficult conversations, can bring peace and rejuvenation that can’t be truly felt otherwise.

Unresolved conflict can drain the mind and body of energy. Life is better lived when problems are resolved, and working in a positive way to find a resolution not only means good outcomes but a more positive journey to achieve them.

Gregory L. Jantz, Ph.D. , founded The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, and is a member of the White House roundtable on opioid abuse.

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3 Steps for Dealing With Problems in Life

The times we live in are filled with problems! But are there strategies we can use to reduce and solve our problems? How can we handle our problems in life?

“Tribulation” means troubles, problems and worries. Jesus clearly said that we would have trouble. Today our problems can be abrupt disruptions in our lives, ongoing issues we continually deal with, or just negative annoyances or concerns. 

A bit later, Jesus prayed these words to the Father: “Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are” (John 17:11).

Jesus showed the reason His people would continue to have troubles—because they are “in the world.”

Is there anything we can do to handle our problems ?

The origin of problems

First, let’s go back to the beginning to learn about the origin of problems.

There’s no indication that Adam and Eve had problems before they chose to sin. In the beginning, they enjoyed a perfect relationship with God, and He provided them with all the blessings they needed.

Unfortunately, they decided to disobey, and as a consequence, they brought many problems upon themselves.

3 This  is  an evil in all that is done under the sun: that one thing  happens  to all. Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil; madness  is  in their hearts while they live, and after that  they go  to the dead.

For most of us, probably the worst thing about our problems is that we never know how and when they will show up in our life—and how long they will last! 

We have to face the problems

An anonymous author wrote these wise words: “Running away from any problem only increases the distance to the solution.” Henry Ford was quoted as saying: “Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.”

Sometimes we face problems that the Bible addresses directly. In those cases, the issue is simply applying the biblical wisdom principle to the situation. Unfortunately, we often try to avoid dealing with problems. But we can’t avoid them forever. Sooner or later, we have to face them.

Sometimes we face problems that the Bible addresses directly. In those cases, the issue is simply applying the biblical wisdom principle to the situation—and the problem will eventually be solved (sometimes quickly, other times slowly) over time.

For instance, if we have relationship issues with people because we speak harshly, are critical or use bad language—then going to a section of Scripture that deals with controlling our speech (such as James 3) and changing the way we talk will begin to solve that problem.

But sometimes we face problems that have no simple solution. Sometimes they are outside of our ability to fix or make better.

God’s Word provides many tips to help us recognize and face these kinds of problems. Sometimes we can find important insights embedded into the stories of people in the Bible. One example is the account of Hannah, the mother of Samuel. She, too, had problems she had to deal with—with no simple solutions.

Looking at her experience and actions can give us valuable insight we can apply today.

Hannah’s problems and troubles

The Word of God tells us that there was a man named Elkanah who had two wives, named Peninnah and Hannah. This in itself (having two wives) was already a problem. But Peninnah had children and Hannah did not, which generated more problems.

6 And her rival also provoked her severely, to make her miserable, because the Lord had closed her womb. 7 So it was, year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, that she provoked her; therefore she wept and did not eat.

10 And she  was  in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish.

Let’s look at three lessons we can learn from how Hannah handled her problems.

1. Take your troubles to God and put them in His hands

12 And it happened, as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli watched her mouth.

Hannah shared her deepest troubles and concerns with God. She understood that only He could solve them—and she put them in His hands. She had faith that with God nothing is impossible. 

To truly surrender one’s problems into God’s hands brings deep peace, even if sometimes the answer does not come immediately. Faith must be exercised in taking things to God and in waiting patiently for His answer.   

To learn more about how to go to God for help through prayer, read “ Prayer of Faith ” and “ Prayer From the Heart .”

2. God provides calm and peace

18 And she said, “Let your maidservant find favor in your sight.” So the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer  sad.

Though she hadn’t received an answer to her prayer just yet, her attitude and outlook changed after putting it into His hands. She had faith that God would answer.

When you have serious problems and feel tension and anxiety as they weigh on you, the best thing to do is to take your challenges to God and fully trust and believe He will answer according to His will. This is the best way to turn stress and anxiety into peace and calm.   

To learn more about finding peace, read “ Finding Peace of Mind .” 

3. Trust God to intervene—according to His will

After giving our problems to our Creator in prayer, we then must wait for His answer. Hannah’s life had to continue.

God may not answer as fast or in the exact way we hope for, but He does promise to answer and help us when we genuinely take our difficulties to Him in faith. For Hannah, that answer seems to have come pretty quickly: “Then they rose early in the morning and worshiped before the LORD, and returned and came to their house at Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the LORD remembered her. So it came to pass in the process of time that Hannah conceived and bore a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, ‘Because I have asked for him from the LORD’” (1 Samuel 1:19-20).

7 In the day of my trouble I will call upon You, For You will answer me.

15 He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I  will be  with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him.

28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to  His  purpose.

For more insight about this promise, read “‘ All Things Work Together for Good’ (Really?) ”

After God intervenes

And Hannah prayed and said:

“My heart rejoices in the Lord; My horn is exalted in the Lord. I smile at my enemies, Because I rejoice in Your salvation.

When God does answer our prayer and intervenes to deliver us from a problem, we should specifically thank Him for His mercy and favor.

Yes, our Creator promises that in due time He will answer our prayers and help us through our problems.

The good news is that Jesus Christ will return to solve our world’s many problems. Some will only begin to be solved on that day. By teaching His laws and ways, Jesus Christ and His family will build a new world—one that will be increasingly free of problems, suffering and pain.

But between now and then, we can strive to live by His laws and ways—which will protect us from many of the problems we often bring upon ourselves.

As far as the problems that do come upon us, we can follow Hannah’s example and take them to God, experience comfort and peace by putting them in His capable hands, and trust in Him to intervene according to His will.

Date Posted: December 29, 2021

About the Author

Alvaro Matamala

Alvaro Matamala is an elder of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, in Chile. He serves three congregations in Chile; Curicó, Talca and San Carlos. Alvaro worked for 30 years in management and advertising. He is married to his wife, Fabiola, and has six children and five grandchildren.

How To Solve Your Problems In Life

Lets face it…

Life is not easy and is filled with many problems.

However, if you don’t want to lose motivation and continue on achieving your goals, then learning how to solve your problems as simply as possible is going to be critical to your well-being and mental health.

It is possible to solve your problems simply even if life is complicated and everything prompts us to complicate it even more.

In life, we have the art of transforming simple situations into complicated ones due to the fact that the mind reacts from fear and can over-complicate things.

Why, are we complicating our lives?

Does it come from us, from our education, from life, or is our brain programmed this way?

The fact is that we now live in a very busy and complicated world where we are constantly inundated with many issues and are therefore being overwhelmed with situations that can cause problems in our life. It is especially difficult when you need to combine your work and study.

Because they are stressful , most people tend to avoid these situations until it becomes highly problematic.

How to solve a problem in life?

Finding a solution requires a different perspective than the one you used to define the problem. So it requires a different intellectual approach: The act of solving a problem creatively is a different function of your brain than it allows you to define it analytically. The obstacle is not the problem, nor the relationship you have with it.

You won’t be able to solve it by keeping your nose stuck on it. The solution is often to move away from it and clear your mind to identify and invent a solution.

Therefore, you should see a problem-solving method.

• How can I solve it?
• I am using a problem solving method.
• I stop thinking about the problem and focus on the solutions.
• I ask myself the right questions.
• I take action to solve my problem.

Some examples of questions:

• What are the solutions available to me?
• Who can I contact to resolve it?
• What means do I have at my disposal to solve this problem?

People are especially sensitive to problems at a young age. Students are just starting their adult lives a little at a time, and this is very frightening. One of the best solutions to situations like this is to learn from other people’s experiences.

(Note: If you want some ideas on how to go about this, here are some essays that can help you. Now lots of problem and solution examples to choose from are available absolutely free.)

By stopping, (i.e. talking about the problem), which only makes things worse, it is better to spend your energy on solution-oriented thinking.

Change your thinking about the problem

When you are faced with a problem you often get stuck without even finding the beginnings of a solution. This is often explained by the fact that you are caught, even stuck in the situation, stuck in the emotional and the subjective. Taking a step back and taking a step back, changing your mind, occupying your mind with something else, increases your chances of finding a way out. Whether it’s the movies, a game of chess, or a bike ride, you need to excite the areas of your brain that help creativity. Often these will be free activities, in all cases an activity far away or even the opposite of the one in which your problem is found.

In fact, you change your point of view and go look at it from another angle, and now discover flaws in its difficulty, beginnings of passage, trails of light that were not visible before.

Explore unknown territory

You may be facing an issue that another has experienced that is similar enough that you can borrow the solution. But the solution may not be what you need. Your talent as a problem “solver” will consist in adapting it to fit it into your approach. Which company or person has experienced such a problem? How can you tailor its solution to your situation? Not only do you find inspiration by examining others, but you confront your brain with other paths.

Do some brainstorming

Brainstorming requires being in a group to brainstorm ideas. While waiting to bring people together, try brainstorming yourself, or over-activating your brain. Here are some ways to provoke a “storm” in your neurons and find a solution. Give him another name, try to knock him out all at once, or just laugh at him. You surely have to drive out of your mind dogmas and preconceived ideas, principles that prevent you from changing the way you see and act. Free yourself from habits and thought patterns, from psychological blockages to consider an effective way of thinking about your problem. It’s not easy on your own, but it will get you going.

Try to put yourself in your problem’s shoes, oversimplify it or change the order of the parts, ask yourself how others other than you would do, or just imagine how a child would approach the issue. And if you don’t succeed, quickly create your creativity group to brainstorm and you will see that you will find solutions very quickly.

Often by dint of seeing the problem (s), we only see the problem and it is impossible for us to see the solutions.

So we worsen the situation instead of improving it.

And that’s a big deal, because the majority of people do this.

In addition, here are some tips for an everyday problem.

1 – Be pragmatic

To solve a complex problem, it is not necessary to see it in its entirety, but to break it down into sub-problem.

This applies to all areas of life, personal or professional.

Take, for example, the goals you want to achieve .

First, you need to set an overall medium to long term goal.

The task could quickly become insurmountable. As the days go by, you will feel like you are moving further and further away.

You will lose confidence in yourself and you may give up before you can realize it.

If instead, you break down your goal into smaller goals, succeeding each other.

So, you will achieve your overall goal without realizing it, just while keeping your motivation intact.

In all areas of life, it is the same and our life would be improved.

2 – Do not wait until the problem is insurmountable.

As soon as you have a problem, resolve it immediately.

Look for the solutions, do it, help you if possible.

3 – Don’t hide the problem.

There is no point in hiding the problem under the rug, you will only make the situation worse.

No, on the contrary, keep ahead of you, clearly visible while taking action to resolve it.

4 – Lying leads nowhere.

It is not by lying to yourself or by lying to others that you can find a solution.

Also, it will seriously damage your reputation and others will not trust you anymore.

5 – Use your tools at your disposal.

There are tons of tools that we can use to solve our problems.

You just have to look for them to find them.

Take action and don’t wait for them to be brought to you on a silver platter.

6 – Stop procrastinating or pushing back.

Delaying or postponing until the next day is not the best solution, it will not help in solving your problems.

7 – Set up the tips.

If you are given a piece of advice and it turns out to be effective, it should be implemented and used.

Because knowing it is not useful, what is is using it.

How to solve a problem of everyday life?

The next time you need to solve your problems,

• Remember to break it down into a simple problem.
• Take action to find a solution.
• Don’t hide it under the rug, that doesn’t help.
• Stop scaring and worrying yourself. This is bad for you.
• Get help from competent people.
• Listen and act on the advice.
• Stop pushing back.

Learn to become the actor in your life and stop having to live with it. For this, adopt from today the habits of success.

Look for ways to improve your life every day, and that means solving small problems quickly before they become overwhelming.

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10 Ways How to Overcome Challenges Life Throws at You

Updated: June 19, 2024

Published: March 30, 2020

Life is full of its ups and downs. One day, you may feel like you have it all figured out. Then, in a moment’s notice, you’ve been thrown a curve ball. You’re not alone in these feelings. Everyone has to face their own set of challenges. Learning how to overcome challenges will help you stay centered and remain calm under pressure.

Everyone has their own preferences for how to face a challenge in life. However, there are a few good tips and tricks to follow when the going gets tough. Take your pick from the following list!

Photo by  Rémi Walle  on  Unsplash

10 ways to overcome challenges in life, 1. make a plan.

While you don’t know what is going to happen in the future, you can always plan ahead. Look at the patterns in your life and see what challenges you’ve struggled with. Assess the optimal outcomes and make a plan for how you can achieve them.If you work somewhere and can anticipate the types of challenges you may face, then you can plan ahead. This is the same for students in school . If a challenge is time management , then you can learn and plan for calendar management, for example.

2. Know You’re Not Alone

Every person in this world has their low points. Some may handle or even hide it better than others. But the truth is, whatever you are going through, there are others who have been through it too. You’re not alone. Try to reach out to your community and network. Speak your feelings and express your concerns in all settings of your life.

3. Ask For Help

You’re not alone, so you can find help. There’s no need to feel ashamed for asking for help. Whether you choose to rely on a loved one, a stranger, a mentor, or a friend, there are people who want to help you succeed .

4. Feel Your Feelings

By masking your feelings, they are not going to go away. Rather, feelings become trapped energy and can even have negative health consequences when they are ignored. Take some time to feel what you feel. This could come in the form of meditation . Or, if you’d rather write down what you feel, writing can be a therapeutic and cathartic experience.When you feel and share your feelings, you may also be able to see your situation in a new light. This exercise could lead you to come up with novel solutions and overcome any challenge at hand.

5. Accept Support

Asking for help is only one side of the coin. On the other side of the coin, you have to be open and willing to accept support . People who come to your aid truly do care about you. Be open to receiving help when you need it.

6. Help Others

The old adage goes, “What you give is what you get.” If you’ve been through a situation or have advice for someone you know who is going through a tough time, be sure to help out! Helping others not only benefits them, but it can also help you feel happier yourself.

7. Think Big

It can be easy to let yourself think small because of the fear of failure, or even the fear of making a decision. But, to accomplish great things in life, you have to be open to taking risks. With whatever challenges may arise, always think and dream big. That way, you will achieve more than you could have ever imagined. Try not to let your thoughts get in your own way.

8. Positive Mindset

What you think becomes your reality. Train your mind to think positively. This will take both time and practice. It begins with mental awareness. You can practice awareness through mindfulness techniques and meditation. When you get good at acknowledging your thoughts and letting them pass, you can stop negative thoughts in their tracks.

9. Don’t Give Up

When a challenge arises, be it a big test in school or an upcoming running race, don’t give up! Persistence is a huge key to overcoming challenges. Giving up means that you will neither overcome the challenge nor learn from it. Power through challenges by asking for support, feeling your feelings, and making a plan to work through it.

10. Work Smart, Not Hard

Generally, there is more than one way to get something done. However, there’s always just one optimal way or best way of doing it. To work smarter rather than harder, start by working backward. Outline and define your goal. Then, plan the process for how to get there. Perform research to see how others who have come before you have done it. Take count of your own skills and ideas for how you may be able to do it better. Then, stick to your path and get to work!

Photo by  madison lavern  on  Unsplash

A 4-step method for overcoming challenges.

Want to try a technique for overcoming challenges that Buddha himself once taught? This four-step method could help you a lot!

1. Accept and Let Go:

Accept where you are now and what you have. This is your life, at this time. While it’s temporary, accepting it will help you to let go of stress, anxiety, and fear. Meditation is one of the best ways to learn and practice acceptance.

2. Observe and Decide:

When you face a particular challenge, take a step away from your feelings to make a plan. While it’s important to still feel your feelings, when deciding how to act, you want to be objective as possible.

3. Face Fears and Act:

Taking action is one of the biggest steps in overcoming challenges. It’s likely that a big part of whatever you’re facing feels like a challenge because you have an underlying fear. Try to recognize and define what you fear in the situation. Then, you can act to mitigate that fear.

4. Practice Gratitude:

Ultimately, we tend to exist in our comfort zones. So, when something new happens or is presented, we may feel like it’s hard to deal with. By practicing gratitude, you can reframe your definition of a challenge. You will also be happier overall in your present moment.

The Bottom Line

Learning how to deal with challenges takes time, persistence, and a positive attitude. No matter your life situation, the hard times will happen. But, with the right mindset and practice, you will be able to overcome them every time and grow in the process!

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How to Solve Life Problems

Do you know how to solve life problems? Life is of course full of problems. In fact, it’s so full of problems that at times it seems as though solving one problem creates a new problem. But having problems is a necessary part of life. And living life in optimal ways requires understanding how to solve life problems. In fact, it could be said that those who successfully work through their problems live a happier, more fulfilling and rewarding life. But how to solve life problems? Is there a formula for solving all of life’s problems? Well, maybe not a formula, but using the following six steps can definitely bring some value.

1) TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR PROBLEM

Okay, something unexpected just happened, and you now have this big problem on your hands. Yes, absolutely life is unfair. This is just such an inconvenience. In fact, you don’t even deserve this, and you certainly don’t have the time to deal with this problem. Right now, you kind of just want to crawl under a rock — hoping in your heart that this problem will just go away. But what good will that do? What good will it do to blame, complain or make excuses? You have this problem because life has something of value to teach you. With this in mind, take responsibility and use the problem as a challenge to get better.

2) AVOID MAKING ASSUMPTIONS

Having taken full responsibility for you problem, you are now in the right frame-of-mind to begin solving it. The best place to start is of course to use the lessons from solving past problems and applying them to your current predicament. Our past can certainly provide us with many valuable insights and clues to help us in the present moment. However, it’s important that we keep in mind that what worked in the past, may not necessarily work right now. Yes, certainly use the lessons from the past on how to solve life problems and try to apply them to your current problem, however stay vigilant and aware that other possibilities may also exist.

3) TURN YOUR PROBLEM INTO A QUESTION

Thinking about how to solve life problems always begins with proper perspective. However, in order to gain proper perspective you need to ask the right questions. This all of course begins the moment you decide to turn your problem into a question and start restating it in a variety of ways. This is advantageous because asking a question brings along with it possibilities and answers. It encourages us to focus on solutions rather than getting lost within the intricacies of our problem. Asking one question of course brings to mind other possible questions. And with every question asked you gain deeper insights that can help you solve your life problems.

4) SEEK ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES

While trying to solve your life problems you may at times get stuck. You will reach a point where you just run out of ideas and just don’t quite know how to proceed. This is the point where you need to look for alternative perspectives that will help shift your view of the problem. Books can of course be of tremendous value. Throughout history people have been solving all sorts of problems. Learn from them and use their stories of struggle and triumph on how to solve life problems in your own life. Likewise ask the people in your life for their input, ideas and suggestions. Their unique life experiences might help you see your problem in a more favorable light.

5) THINK IN PICTURES

If ever you’re struggling to solve your life problems, it can be helpful to start thinking in pictures. Pictures will help you to bring your thoughts to life on paper in front of your eyes. Once there, you can begin playing with your thoughts, exploring your thoughts, and even re-imagining them on paper in a variety of ways. Doing so will help you assess your problem from unique vantage points and perspectives that may lead to incredible breakthroughs and ideas. You can of course do this using doodles, mind maps, metaphors and diagrams. Just tap into your inner child and allow your imagination run wild.

6) PONDER OVER YOUR PROBLEM

Sometimes the harder we try to solve our life problems, the less progress we seem to make. If you ever reach that point, then it can be helpful to step back from trying so hard, and instead spend time pondering over your problem in a variety of ways. To ponder over a problem requires putting yourself into a relaxed state-of-mind, and then just allowing your imagination to go to work. You can of course do this while lying in bed, walking along the beach, or while meditating. Sometimes it just takes time to solve a problem. You need to give your ideas the space to manifest, to grow and expand in your imagination.

HOW TO SOLVE LIFE PROBLEMS SUMMARY

So there you have it. Those are the steps you need to take on how to solve life problems. It’s not quite a fullproof formula, but using these six steps can certainly help you work through your life problems far more effectively. Some problems will of course take a little more time and effort to solve. Just maybe you might not even be able to solve all of them. You might very well fail time and again. But within every failure there is the seed of opportunity to learn and grow from every experience that will help you to solve your life problems in better ways.

Buy IQ Doodle  

Imagine for a moment you could develop new habits and methods of thinking where you naturally and effortlessly adopt these ideas into your life on how to solve life problems. How would that make you feel? Would you feel more fulfilled, empowered and in control?

Yes, there is such simplicity within this IQ Doodle, but of course there is a reason for that. Making positive change doesn’t need to be a complicated process. It just needs to be a consistent process where we progressively develop new habits-of-mind through repeated exposure and implementation. And that’s what these IQ Doodles are for.

We have prepared for you an IQ Doodle pack that includes several variations of this IQ Doodle that you can use for guidance and inspiration on how to solve life problems . Use it consistently and you will begin making positive changes in the way you live, work and interact with others.

Visit the IQ Doodle Store to learn more about how to use this IQ Doodle on how to solve life problems and begin optimizing the way you live your life today.

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Want to know more about this topic? Here are some helpful links to articles that you may find of value:

• 5 Problem Solving Techniques for Every Aspect of Life @ Fast Company
• Here is an Effective Method for Solving All Your Problems  @ IQ Matrix
• How to Solve Problems Like an Expert @ Psychology Today
• Need to Solve a Problem? Dreaming May Help @ Inc.
• The Problem Solving Paradox of Creativity @ The Creativity Post

3 thoughts on “How to Solve Life Problems”

There is no problem without a solution. All problems have enough solution to the whole scope of its being. But it must be clear that solutions won’t present itself to you and your problems. There is nothing like too BIG PROBLEM. TOO BIG PROBLEMS,there is also a too big solution to it. BIG PLUS BIG equals to BIG SOLUTION.

It’s mind-blowing writing, thank you very much for sharing this type of amazing thought.

Very powerful article, everyone should read. Thank you so much for the great information

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Stumped five ways to hone your problem-solving skills.

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Respect the worth of other people's insights

Problems continuously arise in organizational life, making problem-solving an essential skill for leaders. Leaders who are good at tackling conundrums are likely to be more effective at overcoming obstacles and guiding their teams to achieve their goals. So, what’s the secret to better problem-solving skills?

1. Understand the root cause of the problem

“Too often, people fail because they haven’t correctly defined what the problem is,” says David Ross, an international strategist, founder of consultancy Phoenix Strategic Management and author of Confronting the Storm: Regenerating Leadership and Hope in the Age of Uncertainty .

Ross explains that as teams grapple with “wicked” problems – those where there can be several root causes for why a problem exists – there can often be disagreement on the initial assumptions made. As a result, their chances of successfully solving the problem are low.

“Before commencing the process of solving the problem, it is worthwhile identifying who your key stakeholders are and talking to them about the issue,” Ross recommends. “Who could be affected by the issue? What is the problem – and why? How are people affected?”

He argues that if leaders treat people with dignity, respecting the worth of their insights, they are more likely to successfully solve problems.

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Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, 2. unfocus the mind.

“To solve problems, we need to commit to making time to face a problem in its full complexity, which also requires that we take back control of our thinking,” says Chris Griffiths, an expert on creativity and innovative thinking skills, founder and CEO of software provider OpenGenius, and co-author of The Focus Fix: Finding Clarity, Creativity and Resilience in an Overwhelming World .

To do this, it’s necessary to harness the power of the unfocused mind, according to Griffiths. “It might sound oxymoronic, but just like our devices, our brain needs time to recharge,” he says. “ A plethora of research has shown that daydreaming allows us to make creative connections and see abstract solutions that are not obvious when we’re engaged in direct work.”

To make use of the unfocused mind in problem solving, you must begin by getting to know the problem from all angles. “At this stage, don’t worry about actually solving the problem,” says Griffiths. “You’re simply giving your subconscious mind the information it needs to get creative with when you zone out. From here, pick a monotonous or rhythmic activity that will help you to activate the daydreaming state – that might be a walk, some doodling, or even some chores.”

Do this regularly, argues Griffiths, and you’ll soon find that flashes of inspiration and novel solutions naturally present themselves while you’re ostensibly thinking of other things. He says: “By allowing you to access the fullest creative potential of your own brain, daydreaming acts as a skeleton key for a wide range of problems.”

3. Be comfortable making judgment calls

“Admitting to not knowing the future takes courage,” says Professor Stephen Wyatt, founder and lead consultant at consultancy Corporate Rebirth and author of Antidote to the Crisis of Leadership: Opportunity in Complexity . “Leaders are worried our teams won’t respect us and our boards will lose faith in us, but what doesn’t work is drawing up plans and forecasts and holding yourself or others rigidly to them.”

Wyatt advises leaders to heighten their situational awareness – to look broadly, integrate more perspectives and be able to connect the dots. “We need to be comfortable in making judgment calls as the future is unknown,” he says. “There is no data on it. But equally, very few initiatives cannot be adjusted, refined or reviewed while in motion.”

Leaders need to stay vigilant, according to Wyatt, create the capacity of the enterprise to adapt and maintain the support of stakeholders. “The concept of the infallible leader needs to be updated,” he concludes.

4. Be prepared to fail and learn

“Organisations, and arguably society more widely, are obsessed with problems and the notion of problems,” says Steve Hearsum, founder of organizational change consultancy Edge + Stretch and author of No Silver Bullet: Bursting the Bubble of the Organisational Quick Fix .

Hearsum argues that this tendency is complicated by the myth of fixability, namely the idea that all problems, however complex, have a solution. “Our need for certainty, to minimize and dampen the anxiety of ‘not knowing,’ leads us to oversimplify and ignore or filter out anything that challenges the idea that there is a solution,” he says.

Leaders need to shift their mindset to cultivate their comfort with not knowing and couple that with being OK with being wrong, sometimes, notes Hearsum. He adds: “That means developing reflexivity to understand your own beliefs and judgments, and what influences these, asking questions and experimenting.”

5. Unleash the power of empathy

Leaders must be able to communicate problems in order to find solutions to them. But they should avoid bombarding their teams with complex, technical details since these can overwhelm their people’s cognitive load, says Dr Jessica Barker MBE , author of Hacked: The Secrets Behind Cyber Attacks .

Instead, she recommends that leaders frame their messages in ways that cut through jargon and ensure that their advice is relevant, accessible and actionable. “An essential leadership skill for this is empathy,” Barker explains. “When you’re trying to build a positive culture, it is crucial to understand why people are not practicing the behaviors you want rather than trying to force that behavioral change with fear, uncertainty and doubt.”

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How To Solve Problems In Life [All Of Them]: The Definitive Guide

This article has everything you need to know about how to solve problems in life. The problem solving process involves the ability to logically think through a situation or issue in search for a solution(s) to solve the problem. A problem is a gap between a current condition of what is and what must be, should be, or could be.

A problem exists when situation in life fails to meet the expectations of what a person wants in his or her life. The principles needed for increasing the wanted outcome in life, are identifying the problem, and fixing the problem with improve or new solutions. Problem solving and decision making can involve any issue or task that needs to be resolve.

How To Solve Problems In Life:

The first rule of problem solving.

The first thing to do is to define the problem and make sure it is a real problem, particularly your problem and not someone else’s problem or someone else’s fault. Approaching the problem for answers using the what, where, when, why, how and who questions of the current situation.

If the problem is too big or overwhelming, step back and stay calm, and analyze small pieces of information pertaining to the problem. Manage the problem using levels of priorities pertaining to which one needs to be addressed or responded to first using common sense and learned procedures or training. Remember there is nothing new under the sun and keep a positive mind and approach that the problem can be solved and may take time.

Analyze the problem from all angles is very important in clearly defining the problem and ensuring that best solutions to be presented. Collect all the information as you can about the problem to continue to analyze the extent of the problem and do not make any early impulsive decisions for final solution. Use self-discipline and write down a list of solutions that may be used while you are brainstorming.

Get the agreement from all the people involved in the problem solving process, establish a task schedule and time frame to continue to monitor the progress for an evaluation of the outcome to see if the solution is working.

Steps for Problem Solving

1. define and identify the problem, 2. analyze the problem.

In this stage of problem solving, questions should be asked and information gathered and sifted. It is essential to spend some time researching the problem.

Questions to Ask When Analyzing the Problem:

3. Identify Possible Solutions

Viewing problems from a different perspective.

As a leader, you can’t be surprised by problems. The best you can do is to be prepared for them. One of the ways a leader prepares is to have the right perspective when problems occur. The questions you ask about the problem has a way of shaping the perspective you have toward the problem. What do I need to do differently to solve this problem? What is keeping me from solving this problem? What will solving this problem make possible? What kind of story do I want to tell a year from now about this problem?

Solving Problems as a Leader

Are you a leader or a follower? When faced with a difficult problem, how do you react? How you face problems is one of the critical factors that help determine how successful you will be in life. It is also one of the key qualities of a leader! Leaders solve problems – followers go to leaders to get their problems solved.

The examination of the facts will help you find a better solution. Decide if this really a problem that needs solving? How bad is the problem? What is the worst thing could happen if the problem is ignored? If the problem does need solving, what actions are needed to solve the problem. Brainstorm all the ideas and write them down to use for solutions to solve the problems in the future.

If the problem is too big, seek assistance from support teams. Know when to let go of problems and used systematic approaches to solve your problems. Break the problems into small steps and components to track the progress of each one at a time. Test and monitor the solutions that are implemented, and do not be frustrated by any setbacks or failures, but continue to solve problems with integrity and honesty.

Solving Problems Effectively In Marriage/Relationships

Conflict happens; it’s a normal part of any relationship. Problems themselves are not necessarily a sign that a marriage or relationship is in trouble. Dealing with problems in unhealthy ways, however, is a signal of a troubled relationship. If a couple cannot develop an effective strategy for addressing problems, the result will be a backlog of unresolved issues, leading to bitterness, resentment and the breakdown of the relationship.

Problem Solving With Teenagers

As children become teenagers, they’ll come across problems they need to sort out themselves. You won’t always be there to give your child advice, but you can help him develop skills and strategies so he can solve problems on his own. Everybody needs to solve problems every day. But we’re not born with the skills we need to do this – we have to develop them.

I want to thank you for taking the time to read my article about how to solve problems in life. I sincerely hope its contents have been a good help to you.

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Stuck in a rut? How to appreciate your life again, according to science

Andrew Limbong

Why we become bored with our lives (and how to find joy again)

Malte Mueller/fStop/Getty Images hide caption

A new job, apartment or relationship can all come with a sheen of excitement. But that luster fades after a while. And everything seems a bit duller.

There's a term for that phenomenon, says Tali Sharot , a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: habituation. It's "our tendency to respond less and less to things that are repeated or constant."

Its evolutionary purpose is to help us adapt to our surroundings so we can be on high alert for new threats. But it can also impair our creativity and affect our levels of stress and happiness.

Atria/One Signal Publishers hide caption

So how do we add that sparkle back into our lives? In a new book, Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There , Sharot and her colleague Cass R. Sunstein , a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on behavioral economics, discuss how to dis habituate. That means making changes "that will allow us to feel joy again from the same things that are around us," says Sharot.

Sharot talked to Life Kit about how to disrupt your routine, get out of your rut and revitalize your life. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

In your book, you reference an episode of The Twilight Zone . In it, a crook is killed during a robbery. In the afterlife, he's given infinite access to money, cars and women. It's great at first, but eventually, he isn't happy. And surprise, you find out he's in hell. What lesson can we glean from this?

The major takeaway here is that even great things in your life, if they're always there, don't excite you as much. They don't bring you as much joy.

I worked with a tourism company that wanted to know when are people happiest on vacation. We went to different resorts and surveyed people. We found the happiest day of vacation was at 43 hours. After that, happiness started to go down slowly. People were still happy on days 5, 6, 7, 8 — but not as happy as they were on Day 2. That's habituation kicking in. They were getting used to the great things around them.

And that's what happened in that episode of The Twilight Zone . The crook had everything he thought he would want. But it wasn't as good as on days 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 as it was on Day 1. Usually, by that point, you're looking for something else .

What steps should you take if you're in a colorless gray rut? 

Take breaks from good things. Remove yourself from that environment or situation for a certain amount of time — then come back. You'll be better able to notice things that are great. People who go on business trips, for example, often find that when they come back, they suddenly appreciate their comfortable home, their loved ones, the view from their window.

You can also take this break in your mind. Close your eyes and imagine not having your house, not having your family, not having your job. Try to imagine it with vividness and detail. When you open your eyes again, there's some dishabituation, this feeling of gratefulness.

Improve your sense of direction

Don't overlook variety. It causes you to be in a state of learning. This could be something big, like moving to a different place or taking a new job. But it could also be smaller things, like taking on a new skill. Learning is one thing that really induces the most joy in people.

The changes you're talking about here are experiential. You can't buy your way out of a rut, right?

If you buy a new car, outfit, phone or whatever, you tend to habituate quite fast. But when it comes to experiences, like a concert, a lecture or a night out, if the experience was good, you tend to retrieve it in your mind every so often, and it still has quite a high amount of joy associated with it. That's one of the reasons why a lot of findings show that experiences give you more joy than material things .

Aside from sparking joy in your life again, are there any other benefits of dishabituation?

One study has shown that after people move from one country to another, for a short duration, they're better at problem solving . It could be because everything is new: the language, the way things look, the people, everything. Their brain is "on" in a different mode, a mode of taking in information and thinking about things differently. So they become better at problem solving. 

Another interesting study has shown that if you change your environment in a very simple way — like getting out of your office to work in the kitchen or a coffee shop or go for a walk — you become more creative . Now, the creativity boost that you get from simply changing your environment lasts for only about six minutes. However, those six minutes could be quite important. That could be the big eureka moment. So it's definitely something that I recommend doing any workday. Don't just sit in the same place — try to change your environment somewhat.

Are some groups of people more susceptible to habituation than others? 

One thing that we think may matter is age. There is a well-known U-shape of happiness in life, where happiness is relatively high in teenagers and kids; then it goes down, down, down and reaches rock bottom on average in your midlife. Then it starts going up again.

When a romance ends, can a friendship grow? NPR listeners weigh in

So why do we have this low point in midlife? One of the reasons is that we have a lot of sameness. Midlife is a time where most of us have been in the same situation for a long time: perhaps [staying] in the same place, in the same job, with the same partner for a long time.

These things can be good. But if you stay in that position for a long time and you're not progressing upwards, people usually tend to feel a bit down. Because what people like to do is see themselves progressing.

The digital story was edited by Malaka Gharib. The visual editor is Beck Harlan. We'd love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at [email protected].

Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify , and sign up for our newsletter .

How to Solve Problems in Life

Problems, problems, problems! How to solve problems in life? Guess what? Even kids have problems. It is part and parcel of life. Without problems how would we ever find success or be happy. If there is a problem, only we have the power to solve it.

The ability to solve problems in life can make a huge difference and it gets easier when you realize that problems are simply choices.

Once we find out the way to solve it, we will be happy. How to solve problems in life? As we say, problems are persistent and that makes it worse.

But, every problem also has a solution. Right? Then why don’t we find them? The answer is simple: it is difficult and time-consuming. People want to take it easy in life and when a problem hits, they just want to ignore it.

How to solve problems in life?

To be an effective problem-solver, you need to be systematic and logical in your approach. Most people believe in evading the problem or even trying to wish it away. This never happens and like cancer, it will eventually spread and reach a point where it is difficult to control.

It is the negative attitude of a person towards problems that make them enormous. Accept problems as they come and try helping yourself by looking out for the ways to find solutions.

Another thing is whenever a tricky or problematic situation strikes and you try to tackle it, you might be saving yourself from a huge problem in the future. For instance, when you know that the house may catch fire, you will get a fire extinguisher. You wouldn’t let the house catch fire! The point is that problems can also be taken as opportunities that will help you solve bigger problems.

However, if you are a lazy person, then of course problems will always remain a problem no matter how small it is.

Problems need to be looked at it in different ways so that you do not feel their burden. Now let us see how to make the problem look like solutions.

Know the problem

Basically, the initial step will be to know what the problem is and then get to the root of it. After understanding the problem, you will know its intensity and size. Whatever the size, you have to go about gathering the facts and work it out to solve it. Success lies in your approach to handling and solving the problem. Finding a way out helps you keep emergencies at bay and stay composed in chaotic times.

Think Rationally

There are bound to be problems in life. Accept that. Now, you have the perfect mindset to think rationally. Although (not always, but most of the time), it is important that you share your thoughts about the problem with someone close or the person who can really help with it. If you are flexible in looking at a problem, you can view it from many different perspectives.

Some people need guidance in life and they can achieve greater things. So let your mind be open to suggestions and advice that will help to make life a little easier.

Of course it all depends on the type of problem—whether it is personal or anything else. Another aspect is the root of the problem that is why the particular problem is there.

Learn from the past

You can analyze your mistakes and then solve them. Problems can even be solved by checking out past mistakes. Learn from your mistakes and you will be set on the right path. Be confident. Making an attempt to solve the problem is your responsibility towards your life and from which you cannot shy away.

Ask for help

What’s wrong with that? You are human, right? So what if you are an achiever ? You can still ask for help. That will not lower your esteem. Instead, you can get plenty of solutions from all kinds of people and you can choose what suits you the best.

You cannot solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created it ~ Carl Jung ( Tweet this )

Anger will not help

Yelling at everyone because of a problem will make the situation unpleasant. Keep a smile on your face and see how people react. But with an angry face, people will only create more problems for you.

Conclusion – how to solve problems in life

Everyone has problems in life. “How to solve problems in life?” is the question that everybody needs an answer to. The problem is the result of not accepting something that is not fine and not solving it at the right time. However, one thing is sure, ignoring a problem means aggravating the situation and on the contrary, grabbing it right in the beginning definitely has some hope for a solution.

It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. ~ Abraham Harold Maslow ( Tweet this )

Solve your problems in life carefully. Some problems just have to be managed. There’s no simple way to solve, avoid or minimize them. The problem isn’t a cover for a larger issue. It’s just a problem. You have to deal with it.

When people know what to do, they don’t get upset. It’s when they don’t know what to do that they get overwhelmed, anxious, or depressed. ~ Anon ( Tweet this )

So Solve, Avoid, Cut, Address, Cope and try to solve problems in life!

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About the Author

Vandana singhal.

Vandana Singhal writes extensively on science, technology, health, and travel. Vandana has a degree in science and is artistic in nature.

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Every New Notes App Feature in iOS 18

Notes is quietly one of the most useful apps in the Apple ecosystem. It's one of the best note-taking apps for iPhone, can bring in multiple collaborators, and has plenty of additional features such as a built-in document scanner . With iOS 18 , Apple is making Notes even better. Here are the best new Apple Notes features to try out for once you've installed the new OS .

Take Voice notes in iOS

Apple Notes now supports voice recordings in iOS 18. The app allows you to take quick voice notes and embeds them inline into your text. Plus, once a voice note is recorded, you can also share the audio file with others. This means that you don't have to share your entire note just to pass along an audio recording. You can choose any individual voice note and share it with anyone.

To record a voice note, create a new note and tap the paperclip icon, then select Record Audio . Next, hit the red record button when you're ready and start speaking. Tap the pause button to pause a recording or tap Done to finish.

Your iPhone will even transcribe your voice notes

With iOS 18, Notes can also transcribe your voice note for you, saving you the hassle of manually typing out everything you just recorded. This feature is available on iPhone 12 or newer and currently only supports one language—English. That said, it will work with the following regional differences:

English (Australia)

English (Canada)

English (Ireland)

English (New Zealand)

English (South Africa)

English (UK)

English (U.S.).

Oddly, iPhones also support two additional variations of English, namely English (India) and English (Singapore), but live audio transcription isn't yet available for these.

To transcribe audio in notes, tap on any audio recording in Notes, then the quotation mark at the bottom left of your screen.

Solve math problems

Apple Notes appears to be taking a leaf out of Soulver's book and adding a feature that lets you solve math problems. You can quickly set up a bunch of variables and define their values within notes, such as x=10, y=20, and z=30, and Notes will be able to tell you what x+y+z is. You can also assign full names to your variables and Notes will still perform your calculations just fine. Support includes common math calculations including addition, multiplication, division, and subtraction. Math in notes uses the same tech powering the new Math Notes section of the Calculator app.

Navigate large notes with ease

Notes has allowed you to break your notes down into sections for some time, but adding too many sections used to make your notes hard to skim through. In iOS 18, you can collapse the sections you want to skip, which significantly reduces the amount of scrolling needed to reach the end. Don't worry—collapsing a section of notes won't delete it. To use this feature, apply the Heading style to any section of notes, then tap the heading to collapse it.

Add some color to your notes

Some people like to use different colors when they're typing. Maybe you want to make important parts of your note pop or separate out topics by color. In Notes for iOS 18, you can easily try out different colors by tapping the Aa button from the Notes toolbar above the keyboard, then selecting the circle in the second row. You can choose one of the following options: purple, pink, orange, mint, and blue.

The Point Conversations and insights about the moment.

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Taylor Maggiacomo

Opinion Graphics Editor

You Don’t Need Your Own Fireworks to Celebrate July 4

Americans will predictably celebrate this Independence Day by watching fireworks crackle against the night sky. Like anyone, I appreciate a colorful spectacle. But our country needs to acknowledge that by setting off our own fireworks, we’re harming the very land and people that we are celebrating.

Year after year, there has been an unsettling peak of wildfires during the days surrounding the Fourth of July. The often illegal firework displays people set off at home cause of over one-fourth of those fires — and that’s probably an underestimate based on inconsistent data.

Human-caused fires peak on July 4

Wildfires reported from 1992 to 2020

From 1992 to 2020, there have been well over one million human-caused wildfires , a majority begun by people burning their yard waste. However, the days surrounding the Fourth of July are consistently the most common days for human-started fires, twice as many as on other summer days, all thanks to firework celebrations.

This data doesn’t even include building or household fires. One such fire last week, caused by kids setting off illegal Roman candles, destroyed a 76-person apartment building in Washington, D.C. Luckily, no one was killed or seriously injured.

And fireworks cause not just wildfires. In 2023 eight people died , and an estimated 9,700 people were treated in emergency rooms with firework-related injuries. Kids under the age of 19 — predominantly teenage boys — made up almost half of those injuries.

In many fire-prone states and cities, selling fireworks is already illegal. Municipal or state fireworks displays are still the best solution for a safe and exciting way to celebrate the holiday with your community. Since these professional displays still produce quite a bit of noise, pollution and trash on top of the fire risk, some places such as Napa Valley and Lake Tahoe in California have even opted to replace their fireworks celebrations with spectacular drone displays . Other communities should follow their lead.

Fireworks are fun. But leave them to the professionals — for all our sakes.

David Firestone

Deputy Editor, the Editorial Board

A New Poll Brings a Dire Warning for the Biden Campaign

The latest New York Times/Siena College poll is a coldly numerical embodiment of Democrats’ worst fears since President Biden walked haltingly off the debate stage last Thursday night. Campaign staff members have intimated to reporters for days that they have seen their internal polls drop, and there have been signs in public post-debate polls that Biden was hemorrhaging supporters.

But the Times/Siena poll is a significant jolt, showing that Donald Trump now leads Biden by nine points among registered voters, and six points among likely voters. That’s a three-point shift in Trump’s favor since the last survey, just before the debate. In the words of Nate Cohn , the chief political analyst of The Times, “Biden is not a broadly popular candidate anymore.”

His favorability rating fell four points after the debate, and is now nearly 10 points lower than it was in 2022. The share of voters who say Biden is now too old to be an effective president is now 74 percent, up five points since the debate. One prominent forecasting group that rated Michigan as “leans Democratic” in the presidential race now says the state is a tossup.

By every measure, the evidence is now unmistakable. If Biden’s candidacy was shaky before, it is virtually untenable now. Remaining in the race leaves the White House door unlocked for Trump and his destructive crew.

A number of other Democrats have already reached this conclusion, and some are saying it out loud. Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a centrist Democrat who represents a mostly red, rural district in Washington State — t he kind of district her party will need to retain to win back the House — said flatly that Biden will lose to Trump. Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, whose influence helped make Biden a viable candidate four years ago, said he still backed Biden but would support Vice President Kamala Harris if Biden stepped aside. Coming from a man who is officially a co-chair of the Biden/Harris campaign, that sounded almost like a shove.

Biden and his team still sound as if they’re blindly forging ahead with their campaign. But fortunately, there was a sign Wednesday morning that reality has begun to penetrate their bubble. Katie Rogers of The Times reported that Biden told a close ally he knows he now has to persuade the public that he is up to the job if he is to salvage his candidacy. (The White House, predictably, denied the report). Rogers also reported that Biden told at least one person that he’s open to the possibility his post-debate strategy won’t work.

If true, that’s the kind of cleareyed thinking that could still give another candidate the chance to hold off Trump.

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David Wallace-Wells

Opinion Writer

What Voters in France and Britain Really Want

Political observers crave a narrative — the more global, the better. And as the U.S. election descends into a state of chaos, American liberals looking across the Atlantic for some sense of context will see alarms flashing red. In France, a snap National Assembly election has delivered a distressing first-round victory for Marine Le Pen, long the bête noire of European liberalism, and a humiliating defeat for President Emmanuel Macron, almost a caricature of the continental elite.

But in Britain, another surprise snap election, to be held Thursday, is likely to produce a very different outcome, complicating efforts to divine a single meaning for this “year of democracy,” in which more than half the world’s population will, by December, have gone to the polls.

At present, the British elections appear set to deliver for Labour the most thumping victory any party has achieved in any mature democracy for at least a generation. The latest forecasts say a 3-to-1 parliamentary majority is not just possible, but likely. Some suggest a 4-to-1 margin is plausible, and Conservative efforts to warn voters of a coming left-wing supermajority appear to have backfired , making them instead much more likely to support Labour.

Keir Starmer, the presumptive prime minister, has run a conspicuously anti-populist campaign — those assessing each party’s manifestoes have noted Labour is promising less spending than the Tories — which means that a Labour victory may still be more an indictment of British conservatives than an endorsement of its progressives. (And the party is expected to only win about 40 percent of the national vote in a low-turnout election.) But after 14 years of Tory government, a 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Labour Parliament would still be a truly historic shift.

These look like contradictory outcomes, and a reminder that any country’s elections are complex, idiosyncratic and contingent. But together, the two elections seem also to affirm that the great meme of global politics at the moment is not exactly right or left but something more like crude anti-incumbency.

For now, all worried eyes are on France. But that election, whose second round will be held this weekend, may not be a simple referendum on Le Pen’s 21st-century blood nationalism. It also says a lot about the strategic dysfunction embedded in French party politics and the weakness of old-fashioned establishment power, visible in many places beyond France.

Le Pen’s National Rally is in a stronger position than it has ever enjoyed before, but in previous elections, its candidates have been outflanked in the second round after opponents consolidated into an alliance to defeat them. This time, the frictions between Macron’s third-place party and the progressive New Popular Front (which finished second in the first round) have made forming an alliance more difficult — a troubling sign that the French establishment may now functionally prefer a hard-right victory to an alliance with the left, and another mark of the fringe-ward drift of the continent’s bourgeois center-right.

Neel V. Patel

Opinion Staff Editor

Yes, the Starliner Is Stuck in Space

NASA has sent hundreds of people into space since 1961. Doing that is hard, but for an agency like NASA, it is supposed to be as routine as one can expect.

That makes the Starliner saga of the last several weeks all the more troubling. On June 5, Boeing sent two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, to the International Space Station aboard its new Starliner spacecraft. It was the first time the vehicle had ever ferried humans into space — after years of developmental delays caused by design and testing problems. This mission was supposed to be a moment of redemption for the company’s space program as well as its larger reputation .

But Boeing can’t catch a break. Helium leaks were detected soon after Starliner made it to orbit. Upon approach to the space station, five of its thrusters started to behave aberrantly. While the crew made it to the space station safely, a planned eight-day stay has stretched to 26 days and counting. NASA and Boeing say they are still trying to discern what caused the thruster issues — and, more important, ensure Starliner can safely bring back the astronauts.

That is, of course, the prudent move. The Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters could have been prevented by more thorough checks. But it’s one that leaves Williams and Wilmore stuck in space.

Now, NASA and Boeing object to that kind of characterization ; they have emphasized that in an emergency, the astronauts can take the spacecraft home. But if the pair can’t come home yet, because of circumstances outside their control, and there’s no timetable for when they could return, that seems to fit the very definition of being stuck.

This isn’t how NASA’s new era of human spaceflight was billed when Starliner was first announced. NASA wanted to elevate the private sector: For its new partners, it picked a newcomer, SpaceX, and a seemingly dependable veteran, Boeing. But the veteran is the reason Williams and Wilmore are having to adapt to new routines hundreds of miles above their homes on Earth.

Gail Collins

Opinion Columnist

Rudy’s Been Disbarred. Now Bar Him From New York.

The decline and fall of Rudy Giuliani hit a lower-than-ever level this week when he was disbarred in New York for lying about the 2020 election results. It probably wasn’t much of a life change. He’s selling his New York City apartment and has been puttering around in Florida, where his occupations have included selling autographed 9/11 T-shirts and sending birthday greetings to the dwindling number of people who are happy to receive them.

His identity, such as it is, has been as defender of Donald Trump’s fabrications about 2020. Giuliani was found liable in a defamation case, in which the jury ordered him to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers whose lives were upended by the lies he told about their performance.

The only bad thing about the verdict was that those two beleaguered women — who said they lived in fear for their lives from the Trumpian wrath Giuliani worked up — are about as likely to get $148 million out of him as Giuliani is to ever be welcomed back to Manhattan.

OK, his career is over, and his main occupation on many public occasions seems to be alcohol consumption . Is there anything we can learn from the saga of the guy who went from being celebrated as a Sept. 11 hero to the guy who keeps showing up looking half in the bag in the middle of the day?

It’s amazing how fast a guy can go from hero to horrible in the public eye. Looking back on Giuliani’s New York years, we’re reminded of his sudden announcement, as mayor, that he was asking for a separation from his wife Donna Hanover. Much to the surprise of the local press corps and, um, Hanover. Giuliani had decided he was in love with somebody else, the prelude of a personal life that kept getting messier and messier as the years rolled on.

Obviously, Florida can have him. Those of us in his old hometown were hardly expecting him to show up again trying to practice law here; the guy, you know, had so much trouble trying to obey the law here.

But it’s always nice to have a chance to remind the world that while New York is great at churning out celebrities, this is a city that knows what it doesn’t like.

Pamela Paul

Do the Right Thing, Joe

The most obvious takeaway from last week’s presidential debate was that Donald Trump is still a lying, rambling, unhinged old man whose authoritarian mobster instincts would once again put our democracy at risk. The second most obvious is that voters must do everything to prevent him from regaining power. And the third is that President Biden is no longer the man to do that.

Monday brought a development that only enhanced those regrettable takeaways: The Supreme Court’s decision to significantly expand presidential latitude for illegal but official acts during his time in office. Trump not only claimed this as a victory but then gave us a sneak preview of how he might use those powers during a second term, amplifying calls to prosecute Biden, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, Liz Cheney, Chuck Schumer and others in a military tribunal.

Give Trump power, and he will take it. Take power away from Trump, and he will refuse to let go.

In the thrall of MAGA, the Republican Party has embraced denialism, blind loyalty and the cult of Trump. Democrats and Never Trumpers have rightly condemned it for that.

But now Democrats are guilty of the same. Here we have Biden and his circle denying the president’s demonstrable unfitness for office, shutting itself off from anyone who points out the obvious and insisting that no one but Biden can manage the job of beating Trump in November.

None of this is true. It’s time to distinguish between resoluteness and obstinacy, between confidence and hubris, between being the right man to beat Trump in 2020 and the wrong man to beat him in 2024.

Almost everyone agrees that, above all, Biden is a good man. But in refusing to do the right thing and drop out of this race in favor of an open contest, he is not being a good man right now.

President Biden, when you ran for election in 2020, you said you would be the bridge . You have been that bridge, and for that, America should be grateful. But we’re on the other side of that bridge now. If you continue on this path, you could well replace gratitude with resentment and consternation. Give us the opportunity to thank you for your service and bid you goodbye while you still stand on high ground.

Jesse Wegman

Editorial Board Member

Trump Wastes No Time in Exploiting the Court’s Immunity Ruling

Update: Trump’s sentencing has been delayed until at least Sept. 18.

It took less than 24 hours for the Supreme Court’s radical, law-free decision on Monday inventing broad presidential immunity to start having real-world effects.

On Tuesday morning, Manhattan prosecutors agreed to delay Donald Trump’s sentencing in the porn-star-affair-hush-money-business-records-falsification-election-interference case that resulted in Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts in May. Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over the case, said the sentencing would be delayed until at least Sept. 18 .

The sentence, which could include anything from probation to monetary fines or prison time, was scheduled to be imposed July 11, days before the Republican National Convention, at which Trump will become the first ever convicted felon nominated by a major party for president.

But within hours of the Supreme Court’s 6-to-3 ruling , which held — contrary to the Constitution, two centuries of history and the court’s own precedent — that a president cannot be criminally prosecuted for almost any “official” action he takes, Trump’s lawyers asked for a delay. They also sought to have his conviction overturned in light of his newfound immunity.

Even by the vague, inscrutable terms of the court’s opinion , Trump should have no case. Most of the facts the jury found in convicting him occurred when he was not president. And yet some, like his signing of the checks to reimburse his lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, happened in the Oval Office itself. That gives Trump a lifeline, because the right-wing justices in the majority held that prosecutors may not rely on evidence of a president’s official actions, not even to help prove accusations that involve indisputably unofficial behavior. (Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who voted with the majority, did not join that part of the opinion.)

It is hard to imagine that Trump signing hush-money checks to his personal lawyer would count as an official action, but the court’s immunity decision was so sweeping that it’s anyone’s guess now.

Sentences are, of course, the essence of any criminal conviction; they are where the rubber of the jury’s verdict meets the road of accountability. The public often sees them as validating the conviction. And seeing Trump punished by the legal system will have special symbolic importance: He is asking the American people to return him to the White House, where he would be tasked above all with upholding the law.

But as he has demonstrated time and again, he has no regard for the law, and the imposition of a concrete consequence would have provided a powerful frame for his lawbreaking, mocking the Republican Party’s celebration of it. Now it won’t take place until days or weeks after the nation focuses its attention on his coronation at the convention, if it takes place at all.

This is only a small taste of the chaos and nonsense that the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority has unleashed with its immunity decision. “We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said during oral arguments in the case in April. The ages began Tuesday morning.

What Post-Debate Polls Reveal About Replacing Biden

It’s wise to be skeptical of the polls that have followed Thursday’s presidential debate. The people who watched the debate tend to be partisans whose minds were already made up. It takes longer for clips and impressions to filter out to voters who pay less attention to politics.

Still, a few things stand out from the early numbers . First is that no matter which snap poll you look at, the race looks stable. That’s not because voters think President Biden performed well or even because they think he’s fit for the job. Poll after poll shows they think he lost the debate, and badly, and he’s too old to serve a second term. But so far it’s not leading to a significant swing toward Donald Trump. For Biden voters, a candidate whose fitness seems uncertain is better than a candidate whose malignancy is known.

A new Data for Progress poll is particularly interesting. It, too, found that voters thought Trump had won the debate. It, too, found that most voters believe Biden is too old to serve another term as president. It found that voters were more concerned by Biden’s age and health than by Trump’s criminal cases and potential threat to democracy. And it found a mostly unchanged race; Trump led Biden by three points.

The poll went further, though. It tested other Democrats against Trump: Vice President Kamala Harris performed identically to Biden. Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitmer all performed about the same, trailing Trump by two to three points. But the similar margins obscure how lesser-known Democrats would change the race: 7 percent of voters were undecided about a Biden-Trump or Harris-Trump race, but between 9 percent and 12 percent of voters were undecided in the other matchups. More voters are up for grabs.

Democrats could read these results in two ways. The line from the Biden camp has been that Biden’s bad night won’t lead anyone to vote for Trump. The other way to read these results is that the base support for the Democratic alternative to Trump is pretty sturdy. Perhaps Democrats should be less worried about the possible fractures of an open convention and more interested in its possibilities.

For Democrats, fear of Trump is a powerful motivator. It generates a unity and energy completely separate from the Democratic nominee. But it’s not enough. Biden trails in most polls, as do other Democrats. There’s a crucial group of 7 percent to 12 percent of voters who do not fear Trump enough to vote for the Democratic nominee simply by default. They need to be won over.

The question Democrats need to be asking themselves is: Which candidate stands the best chance of winning those voters over?

Thursday’s debate was the Biden campaign’s high-risk gamble to show he was up to the job. It proved he isn’t. Even so, Democrats have feared that their base is fragile enough that an unpredictable process to replace Biden might fracture their support. But what the polls seem to show is that anti-Trump voters will stick by a Democrat, and a larger share of voters are open to Democrats if the party picks a more compelling candidate.

The polls may change sharply in the coming days, and I’ve heard rumors of internal Democratic polls that show significantly worse post-debate numbers for Biden. It’ll take some time yet to know where the race will settle. And it’s not as if Trump is standing still: He’s near to finalizing his V.P. pick.

David French

The Supreme Court Helps Trump — and Future Presidents — Dodge Accountability

I’m still sorting through the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling , and while it’s way too early for a definitive interpretation (scholars will be arguing about it for years), it’s not too early for three broad conclusions.

First, and most important, the Supreme Court granted a dangerous amount of discretion to presidents. The court might say that presidents aren’t above the law, but in reality, it established an extraordinarily broad zone of absolute immunity for presidents (one broad enough, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor notes in a dissent, to potentially protect presidents from prosecution for bribes and assassinations) and a tough test for prosecuting those acts that aren’t immune.

In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the president must be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the executive branch.” This is a high bar to clear.

To understand the most dangerous potential implications of this action, consider that a president has the extraordinary authority to order troops into American streets under the Insurrection Act. Then, once deployed, those troops would be under the command of a person who would almost certainly enjoy absolute immunity for the orders he gives them.

Second, forget any thought that the special counsel Jack Smith can try Donald Trump before the election. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the lower courts for additional proceedings to determine whether Trump can be prosecuted for any of his official acts during the scheme to overturn the election. It’s hard to imagine any scenario where the remaining legal questions can be resolved before November.

Third, Trump is still in grave legal jeopardy — but only if he loses the election. Even if Trump is ultimately held to be immune for all his official acts, he still can be prosecuted for private acts. During oral arguments , Trump’s counsel admitted that several of the acts Trump is criminally charged with committing should be considered private and not in furtherance of his official duties.

Trump’s lawyer agreed it would have been a private act when Trump, as one justice characterized the special counsel’s allegations, “turned to a private attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims of election fraud to spearhead his challenges to the election results.” It would also have been a private act when Trump “conspired with another private attorney who caused the filing in court of a verification signed by Petitioner that contained false allegations to support a challenge.”

This means Smith still has a case against Trump — unless Trump wins the election. Then he could use his power over the Department of Justice to end the case against him, and potentially even pardon himself from both the Jan. 6 prosecution and the classified documents prosecution in Florida.

The bottom line is clear: Trump’s fate (and potentially even the rule of law) is entirely in the hands of the American people. They alone will decide if he can be held accountable.

Frank Bruni

Contributing Opinion Writer

This Is Not Jill Biden’s Problem to Solve

Jill Biden should have prevented this. Jill Biden should prevent this.

I’ve been hearing or reading versions of that since President Biden’s alarming performance during Thursday night’s debate, as if it had been the first lady’s job to decide and tell him that he wasn’t up to running for a second term, as if it fell on her to persuade him to step aside. I briefly had the same thought myself.

But it’s a presumptuous, unfair and even meanspirited one. Jill Biden doesn’t hold an actual job whose description includes advising the president on the most sensitive matters and painful choices. She wasn’t elected to do that. She wasn’t elected, period. So how is it her obligation — and not the task of one of his many paid aides or one of the political operatives who have been counseling him for decades — to make everything right? She’s a spouse, not a sorcerer.

I understand the impulse to look to her and to Valerie Biden, his sister, who has also been mentioned frequently in recent days as a rescue worker and possible savior. The president is known to trust them in a special way. They’re family. And people who believe that Biden is unintentionally setting the country up for the disaster of another Trump administration are desperate for some — for any — intervention.

But it’s noteworthy and arguably sexist that the women in his life are supposed to clean house here. And the belief that Jill Biden does and can speak harsh truths to her husband violates the sturdy truism that nobody on the outside of a marriage has any real sense of the dynamics inside it. Maybe that’s not how she understands or plays her role. Maybe she offers him comfort and lends him support once he has chosen his course. That’s indeed something that she, as opposed to one of his political counselors, is in a unique position to do.

Focusing on Jill Biden lets Joe Biden off the hook. It falls on him to summon the self-awareness and the character to make the right decision. I’d love it if she assisted that with tough questions and brutally candid observations. But she’s not accountable for those.

Katherine Miller

Opinion Writer and Editor

A Crucial Week Ahead for Trump’s Case and Biden’s Future

Every Monday morning on The Point, we kick off the week with a tipsheet on the latest in the presidential campaign. Here’s what we’re looking at this week:

President Biden and Donald Trump have very light schedules so far for the week, probably in part because of the July 4 holiday, and perhaps in part because of the real suspense in the debate’s aftermath.

There continues to be widespread friction and noise about what Democrats will do, though Biden is in until something changes, which it may not. On Sunday, our colleagues in the newsroom reported that the Biden family wants the president to remain in the race, and a variety of Democratic politicians came out in support of Biden over the weekend. There is also a lot of reporting about what went wrong with the debate and what other Democrats are thinking about the prospect of a Kamala Harris candidacy or an open convention. Initial polling in the aftermath of the debate didn’t show much movement in the close head-to-head result; there will most likely be a lot more polling as the week continues. A lot of information keeps coming out — that could mean things change in some way, or it could just mean there’s deep conflict.

This week, the Supreme Court is extremely likely to rule on the presidential immunity issue in the federal Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump, probably on Monday morning. The case is very unlikely to go to trial this year, regardless of how the court rules. But because of the novel questions raised by Trump’s lawyers and the importance of Jan. 6 itself, how the court rules could have enormous consequences for the presidency and the campaign.

Steve Bannon is going to prison Monday for a few months, after he refused to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee. David Brooks interviewed him ahead of his incarceration.

This isn’t, you know, American politics, but it is relevant to our presidential politics, particularly looking ahead toward the future of European alliances: The U.K. has an election on Thursday (Labour is expected to return to power). The French are now headed toward their July 7 runoff election, which Emmanuel Macron called and which may majorly diminish his power.

Bret Stephens

The ‘Bad Debate’ Nonsense

Wishful thinking, to adapt a phrase, is a helluva drug.

In the aftermath of Joe Biden’s debate with Donald Trump, his well-wishers are claiming that it was just an off night. “Bad debate nights happen,” wrote Barack Obama in a social media post that’s garnered more than 100 million views. Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and a major Democratic donor, wrote that when Biden “does poorly, he tends to bounce back — and then win.” Biden himself told a gathering of East Hampton donors that “I didn’t have a great night, but neither did Trump.”

Pure nonsense.

It’s true that Obama had a bad first debate against Mitt Romney in 2012, just as Ronald Reagan had a bad first debate against Walter Mondale in 1984 — and both men went on to win resounding re-elections. It’s also true that Donald Trump’s performance — by turns bombastic, evasive, mendacious and meandering — would have been seen as embarrassing against nearly any other opponent.

But Biden was his opponent, and the transparent problem with the president’s performance wasn’t that he debated poorly. It’s that he is suffering from serious cognitive decline, something from which there is no coming back. I don’t say this as a medical expert, only as one of many millions of people who have witnessed, in elderly people we love, the same symptoms we saw in Biden on Thursday: the garbled thoughts and slurred words and unfinished sentences; the vacant stare; the confusion.

As a human matter, this is heartbreaking. As a political one, it’s disqualifying. Biden is asking voters for four more years to “finish the job.” Given recent reports in The Wall Street Journal about the speed of his deterioration, that’s a promise he’d be unlikely to keep even if he somehow wins the election.

All this has been increasingly obvious for years — and some of us have repeatedly said so . But this is also a time to ask questions of those who saw the president and insisted there was nothing seriously amiss, or that his verbal stumbles were just a function of his stutter, or that his voice may be soft but his thoughts are clear. Were they clueless? Dishonest? Choosing to not see?

Whichever way, they bear some of the blame for trying to prop up a mentally unwell incumbent in order to stop a morally unfit challenger. To those who love the president, starting with his wife, it’s time to tell him: for God’s sake, and the country’s, and his own — don’t run.

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The draft capsule: How to solve recruiting's hindsight problem

Cal Twomey writes how a 'draft capsule' would solve recruiting's revisionism problem

WE ARE calling it the 'draft capsule' and it needs to be added to the draft landscape as a key part of the year-round discussion.

Here's what we're putting forward: at the conclusion of every national draft, each club anonymously submits its top-30 list of draft prospects for that season into an online AFL portal. 

They are ranked in order from No.1 to 30 and collectively each pick is assigned points. The system automatically collates the points for each player depending on where they are put by the clubs and then generates a consensus top 30 draft prospects, in order, as judged by the clubs and recruiters themselves. 

It remains anonymous and under lock and key for 12 months and isn't released publicly until a week before the following year's draft – when the fanfare, interest and buzz on the next generation is at fever pitch. With time, the opening of the draft capsule will become a key part of the draft news cycle, bringing with it storylines on who was actually ranked where and how the first years of the players' careers had panned out against expectations.

Here's why the draft capsule is needed.

Recruiting has a revisionism problem. More broadly, it is human nature to use hindsight to turn the narrative the way that suits a current position. 

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But the clandestine nature of drafting means it is very easy years down the track to twist where certain players were ranked and how keen (or not) clubs were on them depending on how successful (or not) their careers are. Often the comparisons are used to skewer the scouts who made the choices, even though they were often in line with where the general view was of the player's draft range.

The draft capsule will take out the guesswork. Richard Tambling at pick No.4 ahead of Lance Franklin? Well, the capsule might have told you that the consensus was that Tambling was ahead of Buddy and it wasn't just the Tigers. 

Dustin Martin at No.4 behind Tom Scully and Jack Trengove? The consensus might have said that's exactly where he was – and exactly who clubs also had ahead of him. 

But the draft capsule concept won't just defend picks that don't turn out well – it will be able to shine a light on the riskier selections that work or challenge those that don't.

Where did the consensus draft actually have Marcus Bontempelli before the Bulldogs took him at No.4 in 2013? Or Clayton Oliver when Melbourne grabbed him at the same number two years later?

Both were considered genuine draft bolters, but were they really according to the recruiters? What about the Wil Powell type of examples? Unspoken about in the lead-up to the 2017 draft, the Suns swooped at No.19. The draft capsule would certainly not have had Powell in the consensus top 30 but he has proven to be a terrific pick.

And then there's the Chad Warner example. He got to the Swans' fourth pick in the 2019 draft at No.39 overall. Would he have featured in the consensus top 30? 

In 2018, after the introduction of live trading during the draft, we started at  AFL.com.au  a now annual tradition of diving into the machinations of the first round of the draft in the days following it. It digs into all the what ifs, tactics and bluffs as well as the priorities for each club. 

Every year since, the story has covered the deals that happened and those that didn't, the offers that fell flat and which players each clubs were really after with their picks. It serves as a reference point for down the track. 

Of course, the draft capsule relies on recruiter and club honesty – the AFL wouldn't be able to enforce that other than suggesting the clubs would also get something out of the exercise.

Club recruiting teams often go back and revisit why some picks worked and others didn't, what they missed or what they mistook and any clues to help the next draft night they're on the clock. Some of those assessments can be informed further by the capsule each year, with not only content but more importantly context being borne out of the exercise.

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In the spirit of reconciliation the AFL acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

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