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Transcript 

Welcome back to season two of the Ivy League Prep Academy Podcast. Equipping you to successfully pursue the college of your dreams. We believe everyone deserves to reach their full potential, and the admissions process shouldn't hold you back.

So when you hit a snag or face problem, how do you approach your solution? Do you avoid it? Ignore it? Do you let it overwhelm you? Do you run away from it or freeze in your tracks? Do you throw yourself into the problem with reckless abandon and then just hope that you figure it out as you go? Do you procrastinate even thinking about it until the only choice left is to throw yourself into it with reckless abandon? You know, to be perfectly honest with you, I have approached challenges and snags in my life. With each of those previous approaches, I've avoided problems, I've ignored problems, I've let them overwhelm me, I've run away, I've frozen in my tracks. And yes, I have thrown myself at them with reckless abandon just hoping for the best.

But over time, I have developed a way to flex my problem solving muscles to get the best solution. And today, I want to share my process with you. Now, of course, the problems that I'm talking about are the kinds of things that make people feel frustrated or anxious or overwhelmed.

For some people, when these kinds of problems arise, they stew over it or think about it or stress about it for a long period of time. So I'm not referring to little problems or little annoyances that you experience throughout the day. I'm talking about the big issues that you really want to solve, the things that are important to you.

And that understanding is where we begin our three step process for better problem solving. The first thing to do is actually to step back and recognize what's happening to you. Why are you feeling overwhelmed? Why are you feeling frustrated? Why are you feeling anxious? Why are you experiencing stress? Remember from my previous podcast, I'll go ahead and share a link to it.

In the show notes, I talked about the upside of stress, how much stress can help us to perform at a higher level. But in order for stress to help us, we must approach that stress, that anxiety, that frustration with the correct mindset. In order to reframe our mindset around stress and our frustration, we have to remember that something is at stake.

So if you haven't listened to actually, there's two podcasts about stress, one right after another. The first one is why stress is helpful, and the second is how actually to use that stress to your advantage. Go back and listen to those podcasts, because step one is to follow that process.

Recognize that if you didn't care about something deeply in your life, if there weren't stakes involved, then you wouldn't feel stressed. So feeling stressed is not evidence that there is something wrong with you. It's not evidence that you need to fix yourself, that you need to adjust yourself in any way.

Feeling stressed or feeling overwhelmed is just data for you. It is just information that something important is happening, something important is at stake. And that's good news, okay? There's nothing wrong with you.

There's nothing wrong with the situation. It's just that something really meaningful is occurring. And remember, if your life was completely free from stress, that also means that your life is completely free from significance and meaning.

So it's okay that you're experiencing the stress and the overwhelm, the frustration. Not only is it okay, it's normal, it's healthy, and it's great, right? It means that you care about something, and that is wonderful. And so the very first thing you do is you reframe the meaning of the stress.

And again, to save time on this podcast, just go back and listen to both of those podcasts. Step two is something that I learned over and over again in multiple classes at Harvard. Now, of course, I was studying business management.

I was studying this in the context of business, but it absolutely applies to our personal problems and our personal issues. And that is, remember that better solutions depend on better questions. If you want to arrive at a better solution, you need to be asking the best questions.

So that's step two. Better solutions depend on better questions. So how do we ask better questions? The first thing I like to do is actually a mindset shift.

Again, you may have heard that the Chinese word for crisis is weiji. Weiji is comprised of two characters. The first represents danger.

The second character represents opportunity. And I love that mindset. When you are faced with a crisis in your life, what appears to be a crisis, remember that there is danger and there is also opportunity.

So some of my favorite questions that help me shift towards that problem solving mindset, some of these better questions that help me arrive at better solutions, I like to ask, what are the opportunities? Right? What is good about this situation that I'm not getting yet? So an example of a question that's not going to lead to good results is something like why is this happening to me? A much better question, something along the lines of, how can I use this? How can this help me? Where are the opportunities here? Other bad questions are all of the it's not fair questions. And you know what I'm talking about. Anytime you're asking yourself, why is this happening to me? Why is life so unfair? All of these unfairness questions shift those to the growth opportunity questions.

What are the growth opportunities? How do I make a difference? Who needs my support? And finally, instead of the what's wrong with me? Questions, I like to use another tool that came from the business world called the Five Whys. The Five whys is an attempt to arrive at the root cause of the problem. Instead of asking why? Once you ask why multiple times and you'll notice as you're asking why, you're not asking what is wrong with you as an individual.

In fact, one of the tenets of the five whys is that human error cannot be the root cause of the problem. If human error is the root cause of the problem, then you've done the tool incorrectly. You've used the tool incorrectly.

For example, if you bombed a test that was important to you, instead of asking, what's wrong with me? Ask better questions. Go ahead. And at this point, use the five why strategy.

And all you do is you ask, why was the test bombed? Or in other words, why did I earn this score on the test? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that you arrived late to the test. Why did you arrive late to the test? Because I slept in. Why did you sleep in? Because I was up late studying for the test.

Why were you up late studying for the test? Because I hadn't studied ahead of time. Why hadn't you studied ahead of time? And then you answer that question. Maybe it was because I was distracted with other social activities, or maybe I was studying for other classes.

And you continue going, Why did this happen? Why did this happen? And you continue asking the question. Usually five times will get you close to your solution, but many times you ask more than five. Eventually you discover that you did put off the studying or you weren't as effective as you needed to be when you studied, or you didn't trust yourself or some other issue, and you get to the root cause of the problem.

And what I want you to notice is that when you're doing this tool, you're never going to be asking yourself what's wrong with you as a human being. You're going to be focused on the behaviors. You'll be focused on objective criteria.

You'll be focused on things that you did or that happened around you so you can find solutions that have nothing to do with your value as a human being. If your questions lead you to think things like, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy, I don't deserve, et cetera, et cetera, then let me be blunt with you. Your questions are not just avoiding solutions to your problems.

They are creating new problems for you, and actually, they're creating bigger problems for you. So adjust your questions. Change your questions so that better questions can lead to better answers.

Finally, we move to step three, because step one is about adjusting your mindset, shifting your mindset from if I'm feeling anxious, there must be something wrong with me, to if I'm feeling anxious, that's data, that something is at stake, something I care about, is happening here. And then step two, remembering to ask better questions so that we can get to better solutions. These better questions need to acknowledge the fact that anytime there's danger, there's also opportunity.

And when we've failed to live up to our own expectations for ourselves, we can remove judgment of our own behavior and our own actions from the equation so that we can start addressing the underlying causes of that behavior. But really, steps one and step two get us to the bottom of what we can do as an individual. We need to move to step three, which is to request support.

Because when you request support, you acknowledge that you need further data. You need to investigate through other perspectives, you need to consider other approaches. And so step three for any real issue, any real problem that needs to be solved is to seek out a mentor.

Or perhaps it's to seek out support in some other way. If you feel confident that you have arrived at a solution that works for you, I still want you to move to step three and seek out a peer or a buddy or a support system, someone who can provide social support as you enact your solution. Because if the problem that you're solving is a serious issue that has frustrated you or overwhelmed you for a long period of time, it will probably be very helpful to have someone else there as you enact your solution.

But that's a big if most of the time. Going through steps one and two will only get you to the best solution that you can come up with based on your current understanding and your current biases. And there is a better solution out there if you can seek out a mentor, seek out someone who has done this before.

Seek out someone who can help you approach the problem from a new solution. Or seek out someone who has resources that you just simply didn't think about or you don't have available to yourself. When I say seek out, that means think carefully about who the best person to reach out to is.

And it means actually asking for help, asking for support, asking a teacher, a librarian, a parent, a peer, a friend, a mentor, or someone in a community that you're involved with in some way. Someone that you think can provide a different perspective, can provide new resources, can provide emotional or other support that's going to help you find and implement the best possible solution to this problem. The key to step three is actually asking for the help.

So approach this person in a humble but also optimistic way. In other words, you're approaching them, assuming that they are happy to help. Most people are, but also recognize that they might be busy, they might have other issues that they're dealing with, and just be aware that you are asking for help.

In other words, you are asking for a favor. So approach it appropriately. There you have it.

My three step method for better problem solving. Step one, reframe your mindset around the energy that you're experiencing, the stress, the overwhelm, the anxiety. Realize that that is not evidence that there is something wrong with you.

Instead, it is just data that you care about something. Something is meaningful, which is great. That means you're living life more fully.

Step two get to the bottom of what you can do by asking the best questions possible. Shift your questions away from fairness questions, away from judgment questions, towards opportunity based questions, and towards the five whys or other tools that help you remove self judgment from the equation. And step three humbly but optimistically.

Go ask for support. Ask for help from someone who can provide you a new approach, a new perspective, new resources, or just the social or emotional or other support that you need to be successful.