FOCUS MORE ON SOLUTIONS, NOT PROBLEMS...

This week, I want to talk to you about why you should focus more on solutions rather than problems, and how doing this can quietly transform the way you get through your days more easily.

It's so easy to get pulled into the orbit of a problem, isn't it? You turn it over in your mind, you pick it apart, and you lie awake at night thinking about it. But honestly, although there's nothing wrong with you if that's exactly what you do, you must realise that the more attention you give a problem, the more space it takes up in your mind.

However, when you deliberately ask yourself something like, "Right, what can I actually do here?" you find that the problem shrinks a little in your mind. It doesn't go away completely, but you then direct your energy somewhere else, which is more useful.

That one question is really one of the most practical things that you can do in situations like this. This isn’t me telling you that you should always be cheerful, or pretend everything's fine. It's about noticing when you've spent too long looking at a problem and the things that have gone, or that can go wrong, and instead, choosing to purposefully only look at what comes next. That's all it is. There's no magic involved.

Here are some examples:

- You have young children, and you find that one morning your car won't run on the school run. You just take a breath, text the school to say that you're running late, then knock on your neighbour's door. In 15 stressful minutes, you've sorted it all out, and nobody's day is ruined because of it.

- Or you're at work and you find that a colleague has made a mistake that's now landed on your plate. Instead of going back and forth blaming, or discussing whose fault it is, you just sit down together, work out how to fix it and work out how to prevent it from happening again, and then move on. Not only do you correct things in this way, but your working relationship also stays solid.

- Or you've overspent and your bank account is making you anxious. But instead of avoiding the problem, you just write down three things that you can cut or trim in your spending that week. That list then makes it feel to you like this is something that you can handle.

It's worth saying though that sometimes people genuinely need to sit with a problem, or something difficult, before they're ready to move forward with it. Brushing straight past the emotional impact of something can occasionally mean that you actually miss what the problem was really telling you.

So, this week, try to notice moments when you may be dwelling on a problem for too long, and then gently ask yourself what is one small thing you could do practically, instead of just worrying about it. You may be surprised how quickly things start to shift in your mind when you remember you need to focus more on solutions, rather than on problems!