3 Step Process To Solve Any Problem

In this episode, we go over in detail the Three Step Process to Solve any Problem in our lives. Any problem--three steps!

Transcript

And now,

Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter with your host,

Glen Ambrose of Life Enhancement Services of Rhode Island.

Hello,

This is Glen again.

And we are recording our next podcast.

This time,

One of our previous podcasts,

I got some input about the three-step process to solving any problem.

So what I decided to do was go into detail on that process and spend a little time going over it in each part of it because it's a very important tool,

I should say,

That you can implement in any area of your life.

So basically,

The three-part process is one,

Identify the problem,

Two,

Find the solution,

And three,

Implement that solution.

So that's it.

Thanks.

That's the end of the podcast.

That was a short one.

Yeah.

Well,

I hope you enjoyed it.

Good luck.

I was listening.

What were they?

Can we go over them again?

You missed it?

I was like,

Yeah.

Rewind the podcast.

It's the whole podcast.

I don't have it yet.

We're in the middle of recording.

I'll go through them in a little bit more detail,

I guess.

So it's identify the problem.

So first,

You want to get clear on exactly what the problem is.

Often it's different than what it looks like on a surface.

So a lot of times,

We're looking at a problem and it's actually just the,

It's just a symptom of the problem.

If like,

If the problem is,

I can't get to the gym.

Well,

That's,

Are you motivated to get to the gym?

Are you willing to do what it takes to get to the gym?

No.

Well,

There you go.

Probably not.

Right.

But that's,

You know,

That's what it is.

You need to be honest with yourself.

And that's,

You know,

That's the,

What you need to do.

That's how you get your true answer.

So is being honest with yourself.

And one way to do that is just getting quiet,

Getting quiet with yourself and asking the question over and over.

Like often what I'll do is I'll put my hand like right over my heart and just quiet and just ask the question,

You know,

What,

What is the problem here?

What's the problem?

And I'll ask it over and over and just listen after each time.

So,

You know,

What,

Why can't I get to the gym?

Really why can't I get to the gym?

Right.

Really,

Really,

Really,

Why can I not get to the gym?

You know,

And if you just listen after each one and just really quiet and listen,

The answer will come up and like I said,

Oftentimes it's not,

It's not what you think it is.

You know,

It's,

It's a little bit deeper than that.

The other way you can get to identify the problem is talking with somebody.

You know,

The,

It's hard to see our own stuff.

We got all our emotions,

All our excuses clouding it.

So getting an outside perspective is very important.

You know,

You can go to a life coach.

That's one thing that I do with a lot of my clients.

And as a life coach,

I'm confident that I'm very good at it.

But quite honestly,

Everybody is good at seeing things from another perspective because they don't have all that emotional baggage around it.

So you know,

Obviously you want to select somebody that you trust somebody that has an outlook on life that you want.

You know,

Don't go to somebody that's trashing their life and all depressed all the time and ask them how,

You know,

For advice on how to fix yours,

Go to somebody that has what you want,

You know,

Has a lifestyle or an outlook that you respect and you'd like to emulate and go to them and ask them.

You can also ask several people,

You know,

Because there are different perspectives.

So if you ask,

You know,

Three different people or four different people,

And the majority says one thing,

Then that's a good chance that that's that's the answer.

You know,

So talk it out with somebody and get that outside perspective.

So that's that's really the first part is getting clear on what the problem is,

Is otherwise you're just putting band aids on on like pseudo problems and never really getting to it.

Do you think that if you can't identify what the problem is,

What the actual root problem is,

That you're just not being honest enough with yourself?

Most times,

Yes,

But that it could just be that you're not capable of that type of honesty yet.

You know,

I mean,

If running around in our busy world has its drawbacks,

We are very habitual people,

We fall into habits very easily,

We live our lives very habitually,

And most of our lives is just go,

Go,

Go.

And we don't slow down and learn to,

To be honest with ourselves.

You know,

Most,

Most of us are cash register honest,

You know,

We don't run around stealing things.

So then we say,

Oh,

I'm honest.

It's like,

Well,

Not with yourself,

Though,

You know,

And if you're not truly honest with yourself,

Then you're not truly being honest with others.

That's not necessarily.

It's not conscious,

So it's not something to beat yourself up over.

It's just something we need to work on.

So sometimes it takes some effort to be honest with yourself,

You need to learn how to slow down and really ask yourself and do what I call a gut check,

Just go way deep down inside your gut and find out what's really the truth,

How you really feel about things.

So yeah,

It's most of the time it's that we're not being honest with ourselves,

But it's not necessarily because it's intentional.

Most times it's not,

We just plain don't know how to be honest with ourselves.

We're too busy going 90 miles an hour.

How do you know that a feeling is an honest feeling and not something that is perpetuated by the emotional baggage around it?

Like for example,

When you get angry with someone,

Like a friend for example,

If you're having an argument with a close friend or a relative,

And things are said,

Then it's always the like,

Oh,

I didn't really mean that.

How do you know which one,

Or when people get intoxicated a lot of times.

That does happen in the world.

It does.

But that idea that people call alcohol truth serum.

What is the honest feeling?

They're feeling good because they're drunk,

So their truth at that moment is a lot nicer,

Or they're feeling angry because they're in the middle of a fight,

So their truth is more negative.

How do you know that the feeling that you're feeling is an honest feeling?

I think the intoxicated aspect is a decent way to come at it because that's a good example of what isn't true,

But comes across as true.

When you're intoxicated,

Drinking lowers your inhibitions,

So things can come out easier.

So we're like,

Oh,

Well,

That must be the truth because my inhibitions are lower,

And then these things just stop pouring out of me.

So that must be how I truly feel.

But all it is,

Is you're lowering your inhibitions,

So emotions and things that are buried and like you said,

Baggage that's all attached to that is coming flying out with it,

Completely uncontrolled.

So without clarity,

Without being able to get in touch with true feelings,

And it confuses it and usually comes out a lot more crass and painful than it needs to when people are drinking.

It's very similar to brutal honesty.

I take my honesty very seriously with myself and with others.

I had to learn new ways of dealing with things when I decided I wasn't going to lie about anything anymore,

Not even white lies.

I was not going to permit myself to do that.

It's been years.

When I first started doing that,

I knew that brutal honesty was just painful.

It just hurt people and it wasn't necessary.

So I paused and took time and found out what my real truth was,

What I was really feeling.

And generally,

If anger is flying out of me,

That's not my truth.

That's my fear.

Anger is based out of fear.

So I need to get at the root of my fear and address that.

That's the real truth.

So if you're flying out of anger at somebody,

That's not the actual truth of the situation.

You're angry because there's a certain part of you that is being,

That is threatening to you that you don't like.

And that's what pushes up the anger and comes flying out of you.

Okay.

Okay.

Sold.

I'm good with the truth.

I'm good with the truth and the finding the finding the actual root of the problem and being honest.

So what's the second thing that I need to do to solve this problem?

Okay.

Problem solving.

Part de.

I didn't know you were bilingual.

Oh,

Yeah,

There's a lot about me.

You don't know.

Find the solution.

That's the second part.

Again,

An outside perspective is very important.

A lot of times we can't see the forest through the trees.

So one of my favorite quotes of Einstein says,

We can't solve problems by using the same mind,

I'm sorry,

The same kind of thinking we use to create them.

So we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

You know,

That's,

That's very important because basically our thinking where we're coming from our perspective is based on I like to say it's based on two things,

Our experiences mixed with our personality.

So like,

Two people can experience the exact same situation and internalize it differently,

Depending on their level of sensitivity.

So if that starts when we are babies,

And you know,

Little Sally steals your blue crayon,

And that actually severely bothers you because you feel that crayon is part of you at two years old,

And she just took a part of you,

And you internalize that,

That that's a building block of who you become later on.

So this is,

You know,

Our entire life builds on top of each other and forms our decision making techniques and our perspective.

So if you're looking at your life from your perspectives,

Especially if you haven't gotten that good at being honest with yourself yet,

It's hard to find the truth,

You know,

So getting it's hard to find a solution.

I mean,

Most,

We we don't get ourselves into trouble on purpose.

You know,

We,

We just don't we don't.

We don't screw up our lives.

Because we want to,

You know,

Everybody gets up and does the best that they can.

And then all of a sudden they find out that they're in a situation that they don't want to be in.

So they've gotten there by doing the best that they can.

So it's time to look at things from another perspective and find out what that solution is.

You know,

So I mean,

Sometimes if it's the simpler things,

We can figure it out ourselves.

But a lot of times we need to get that outside perspective or at least talk it out with somebody.

Yeah.

You know,

Keeping it inside of our heads is the worst thing we can do.

Because things are different inside of our heads.

They're just different.

I mean,

I can't count how many times that I'm thinking about things and I'm like,

Okay,

Well,

You know,

I need to do this to straighten out the situation.

And then I go talk to somebody about it and the words are coming out of my mouth and I'm going,

What was I thinking?

That's there's no way I mean,

It doesn't even make sense coming out of my mouth,

You know?

And that's so when there's something that happens when when our thoughts come out into the open into air,

When they hit air,

It's like blood hitting air,

Isn't blood like blue in our system.

Then when it hits air,

Yeah,

The oxygen.

Yeah,

It's it's like that.

It's like when you know,

When when truth when our words come out,

Our thoughts come out of our mouth,

All of a sudden,

They hit reality.

And it's like,

What the heck,

That doesn't make sense.

You know,

And if we are still buying it,

At least we've got somebody there to look at us,

You know,

Hopefully somebody we trust that goes,

Yeah,

That's you're off,

Dude.

You know,

You got to think of this in a different way.

Do you think this is kind of a little off topic,

But let's go on a tangent for a second.

A tangent?

Yeah,

I never do.

Do you think do you think that the level of technology with emails,

Instant messaging and text messaging has do you think that that gives people a lot more of an opportunity to spit out this stuff that is not truth and not like that they wouldn't say if they could say it out loud to hear how stupid it sounds or how mean it sounds or how wrong what they were thinking was because they're not verbalizing it anymore.

They're not actually like say it.

Or do you think that the writing,

The typing it out or the writing it takes care of that?

Well,

I think it's,

You know,

To me,

Technology is like everything else.

You know,

It can be used in a good way and it can be used in a bad way.

You know,

It's like it makes me laugh when I think of it.

It's like do you know when people say guns don't kill people,

People kill people.

Well,

It's like technology isn't bad.

People who use it bad are,

You know,

It's the same thing.

So if you're,

You know,

If you're using technology and you just you're pissed about something and you just type something out and hit send.

Yeah,

That's,

You know,

There isn't the person isn't right in front of you.

There's less consequence.

It's instant.

So it can be dangerous.

Yeah.

You know,

It can definitely enhance the danger aspect of it.

But I mean,

Oftentimes when if there's a sensitive subject,

One thing that I do is I'll type out the email answer and then I save it in my drafts.

No matter how right I know that I am,

I save it in drafts and reread it the next day.

And how often are you wrong with how right you were?

Every time.

Every I don't think I don't think that I've ever sent something exactly the way I wrote it.

Now I might have I might keep the same idea and just tweak it a little.

Yeah.

Or I might completely delete it and start fresh.

You know,

That varies.

But very I don't think I've ever sent something exactly the way I typed it when I was upset.

No.

And that's a big part of it is not reacting when we're upset.

You know,

It's that instant reaction that gets us into trouble if we can just pause for a moment.

And you know,

Honestly,

That's something that I might even do a whole show on is pausing before we react.

But we're very reactionary in this life and we react to situations instead of and if we react to a situation and the situation has control over us.

Yeah.

So I I try my best to always use caution when reacting to a situation and to never be hasty with it and to be quick to to get into an argument about something like that.

Obviously I do it from time to time.

But I've just seen really negative consequences to that from people around me that just,

You know,

Used,

You know,

It's hey,

Something,

You know,

Ticked me off.

I have Facebook.

I'm going to I'm going to write a gigantic status on Facebook and now,

Oh,

I just blew up the problem.

Right.

So but taking that time is good because every problem to have a good solution has three steps and you're kind of not giving yourself time to do those three steps when you're reacting so instantaneously like that.

That being said,

What is the third step?

The third.

Dun dun dun.

I'm literally on the edge of my seat.

Wow.

Wait,

I'm going to scoot up.

OK,

Now I'm on the edge of mine.

There we go.

Implementing the solution.

That's not comfortable.

No,

And sometimes implementing a solution isn't comfortable.

See that?

Yeah.

Wow.

That's just divine guidance right there.

This isn't called life lessons and laughter for nothing.

It's not.

That's it.

So moving on.

Implementing the solution.

That's the third step.

So this is often the most difficult one.

You need to be accountable for taking the action and working through that process.

You know,

One thing and I forgot where I ran across this,

But I ran across this American Society for Training and Development and it says that you increase your chances of weight loss success from 10 to 95% simply by being accountable to someone willing to encourage and support your efforts.

That's it.

Just accountability.

So if accountability is this effective in weight loss,

How important of a piece of the puzzle is it?

You're increasing your chances dramatically by being accountable.

So that's another,

When you're saying you're implementing the solution,

If you have somebody there to be accountable to,

Because what we do is taking action is a pain.

It's just a pain.

I don't want to.

So if you have somebody to be accountable,

Then you'll actually take those steps and implement the solution.

So that's one part of it.

If you're hungry,

You can drive to the store,

You can pick out food,

You can pay for it,

Load it in your car,

Drive home,

Cook it properly,

Plate the food and eat it.

Now if you miss one of those steps,

The whole plan can fall apart.

So you need to be clear on what you need to do.

You need to get clear on that solution.

Step two,

And you need to follow every step.

And obviously when I'm giving examples like this,

This is big stuff.

This is real big issues that you have with your life that you need to straighten out that have multiple steps towards them.

There's a lot more simplified version of things for smaller daily issues.

I don't think that you're going to.

.

.

If your problem is that you're always eating junk food at home,

Then the solution is to think ahead and have healthy food in your home.

And then to implement that solution,

You need to go out and to the grocery store with a list and purchase the things and bring them home.

That's pretty straightforward.

There's not 20 steps that you need to go over,

But you do need to make sure that you implement the solution.

I think that the thing that you said about accountability,

Because I've been thinking about that since you said it,

Was that accountability can be to a host of different people or different things.

And obviously some people work better at work if they have accountability to their boss.

Or I think that a big one that I've heard a lot of people say over the years is when they have kids,

They never treated themselves as well.

They never did things the way that they were supposed to until,

Oh crap,

I'm going to be a father or I'm going to be a mother.

Now hey,

I'm going to stop drinking or hey,

I'm going to actually go bust my tail at work.

And I think that really is a powerful motivator or that's one of the main reasons why having a personal trainer is so important for a lot of people.

And it really helps in all aspects of your life to have somebody to be accountable to.

Because if you're just accountable to yourself,

Then there's a lot more of a chance that when you go to implement the solution,

You're going to fall short of it or give up because there's less riding on it.

If my solution is to eat better and I'm just doing it for myself,

Then what's to stop me from doing anything wrong?

And obviously there's a lot of self-love and stuff and being accountable to yourself is a huge thing that people should strive for.

But I think that it's definitely a lot easier to implement a solution when you're accountable to someone else.

Yeah,

It's true.

There is that aspect of self-love.

But if you've done enough of the internal work where you were just filled with self-love and you just.

.

.

I mean,

That's huge.

So if you've done that work,

You've probably found ways to do some of this stuff already.

The average person hasn't done that much work.

So it is.

I've told my clients for,

I think,

20 years ago,

I started telling my clients when I used to have to sell personal training at gyms that I worked at in the beginning,

One of the things that I used to tell people is,

You'll keep an appointment with me before you'll keep one with yourself.

And it's true.

If you have somebody to be accountable to,

You're going to get there.

If you're just being accountable to yourself,

A lot of times you'll just be like,

I'll do it tomorrow or I don't feel like it.

And you just blow yourself off.

I miss appointments with myself every day.

Every day.

I don't think I've.

.

.

It's very easy for me to keep an appointment with you to go to the gym and work out.

It's not so easy for me on the off days with you to schedule a time in my head that I'm going to go and then meet that time.

Right.

And that's a lot of it is the.

.

.

It goes back to the self-love we talked about.

It goes back to the honesty,

Learning to be honest with yourself that we talked about.

One aspect about being honest and loving yourself is respecting yourself and having true,

True truth in your word.

If you give your word to somebody,

We take that usually pretty seriously,

But we break our word to ourselves all the time.

So if we're really going to be honest with ourselves,

Start with ourselves,

I'm going to the gym tomorrow.

At this time,

I promise myself that I'm going to do that.

That's a very self-loving thing to do.

And if you take that seriously,

Your self-esteem is going to start rising because you're giving yourself your word and you're holding it.

You respect yourself enough to do what you say you're going to do.

That's huge.

And if you are using somebody for the accountability aspect of it,

A lot of times people sit around going,

I should be able to do this on my own.

How many people are sitting on the couch watching The Biggest Loser and eating a box of cookies going,

I shouldn't need to hire a trainer.

I should be able to go to the gym on my own.

I should be able to do that.

And then 10 years later,

They're still on the same couch going,

I should be,

I,

Trainers are a waste of money.

I should be able to,

They should themselves into staying where they are.

Don't worry about what you should do or what you shouldn't do,

What you should be capable of or what you shouldn't be capable of.

Just do what it takes to get the action implemented.

So if it takes hiring a trainer to get your butt to the gym,

Hire a trainer and get your butt to the gym.

Don't sit there telling yourself that I shouldn't have to do that because maybe other people don't need to.

You know,

That's just another tactic we do to keep ourselves stuck.

Reach out and get that accountability from somebody else out there.

So to sum up the three steps to solve any problem,

They were,

Let's see if I remember these from this conversation.

One,

Identify the problem.

Be honest with yourself.

Two,

Identify a solution.

Three,

Implement the solution.

That's it.

That's it.

Those are the three.

Right.

And you know,

We talked a lot about accountability to outside sources.

There are certain things that you can try to be accountable to yourself on.

You can start weaving that into your life.

So I use my calendar for everything.

I'm a personal trainer and on my calendar I have my workout times.

And I'm already at the gym.

But I still put it in there to remind myself because when I didn't have it in there,

There were days where I'd finish up with some clients and I'd be like,

Oh,

I've got to run here and do this,

Aaron.

I've got to do this.

And I'd just be off.

All of a sudden I realized that I missed some workouts.

So I take the steps necessary to hold myself accountable to myself.

And a calendar is a great way to use that.

Some people are like,

Oh,

I can't.

Then I have to remember to put things in the calendar.

Or then I have to remember to look at the calendar.

Well,

Develop the habit.

At least I have to look at my calendar or I have alerts going off all the time on my phone.

But at least that's one central spot that I can find that all the different things that I'm accountable for and I make sure I hit them all.

So today I asked most of the questions.

But normally on the show we have a spot where we answer questions that listeners send in.

And why don't we end with you letting people know where they can send those questions to.

Okay.

As far as the questions,

You can send them to my website.

It's probably the best place.

It's life-enhancement-services.

Com.

You can message me through there.

And also my Facebook page,

Life Enhancement Services.

Those are probably the two best places that you can reach me at.

And that's it for the recap,

The detailed recap of the three-step process.

So thanks for joining me and we'll see you again real soon.

This podcast is presented by Life Enhancement Services of Rhode Island with New Shore Productions.

For more information on Glenn Ambrose and his work,

Visit life-enhancement-services.

Com.

Reviews

Very helpfull. .thank you so much🙏🙏🙏

Interesting talk - thank you 😊

Really useful steps. Thank you 💜 x

Very well done!! I especially like the idea of acting from one’s truth rather than one’s fear. Thank you!!

I really enjoyed that, thank you!

Very inspiring !! Thank you

Simple truths. Love it!

I really enjoy Glenn's talks.

Thank you Glenn - your simple but advice is always SO powerful ❤️

Wow! Thx Glenn...i aim for rigourous honesty and stepping back to be able to respond and not react to any situation. Great podcast! I'm definitly a new fan 😇🙏💞

Remarkably Simple, these 3 steps are very helpful. Glenn is sweet funny and real. Seems like we all "should" know these obvious steps- but we don't! I highly recommend this.