Category / problem-solving

by Nathan Coumbe

3 Easy Tips to Help You Get Unstuck

Being stuck is rough. It can leave you with feelings of hopelessness, frustration, or even anger.

Maybe you’re in a dead-end job you can’t stand…

Or your money situation is quickly moving from bad to worse…

Maybe you don’t even know why you’re feeling stuck. All you know is you are.

So how do you break the logjam?

The good news is there are a few things you can do now that’ll help you get unstuck:

  1. Learn Something New: This might be a new skill, a new way of doing the same thing, or just a new piece of information that helps you change your mindset. Pick up a book from the library or Amazon. Type your problem into YouTube and find 100 videos that’ll give you a new approach. Or listen to a really insightful podcast or TED talk. I wrote up an entire blog post on how you can get a free (or nearly so) education WITHOUT having to go back to school. Check it out here.
  2. Take a Break: One thing many folks do is bang their head against the problem over and over without seeing any new results. Sometimes the best thing you can do is stop and walk away from the problem. This could be as simple as going for a 20-minute walk outside. Or it could be even more extreme: a weeklong vacation to leave all your troubles behind. Regardless of how you choose to take a break, you’ll come back to the problem with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective.
  3. Find a Teacher or Mentor: This tip is the one that’s helped me the most. Coaches, mentors, and teachers have a way of looking at the same problem you’re dealing with and seeing it in a whole new light. I was stuck in my career, hating every single moment I was at work, but I thought there was no other way to live. “That’s just how work is…” Then I had a coach show me that work could be a part of my life’s purpose AND enjoyable. Now I’m in a job I love and doing work that matters. All thanks to an outsider’s perspective.

Speaking of mentors, my coach Dan Miller is hosting a free masterclass today at two different times: 1pm CDT and 7pm CDT.

And the best part? The whole thing is about getting you unstuck no matter your problem.

“5 Reasons Big Dreamers Get Stuck And How To Blast Through Them To Success”

You can register for your seat here.

If you’re tired of going it alone and want an outside perspective on your problem, I strongly encourage you to sign up.

You’ll come away with fresh ideas, a renewed sense of hope, and strategies for moving forward on your most important goals.

There’s still time to register, but it’s happening TODAY. So make sure you sign up before it’s too late.

Save your spot now by clicking here!

I’ll be there too. I hope to see you this afternoon.

by Nathan Coumbe

It Might Not All Work Out…

We have the definition of optimism wrong.

We think optimism means believing that everything will work out for the best. Over time and on its own.

That’s not true. Plenty of awful things happen whether we’re optimistic or not.

“Well geez, Nathan! You’re obviously a pessimist with that outlook.”

No, actually, I’m quite optimistic. Because I realize that I’m the creative force in my life. I’m the driver of my own destiny.

As long as I’m alive, I have the chance to make something good happen.

Optimism isn’t simply believing that everything is going to be alright: it’s believing that whatever happens, you can make the best of it.

So if you’re reading this, you’re still breathing. And that means you can make the best out of whatever situation you’re in.

That is true optimism.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Thrive in All Weather—Think Like A Sailboat Captain

(HT to Seth Godin and the “EntreLeadership” Podcast)

If you’re piloting a sailboat, you don’t care in which direction the wind blows. All that matters is that the wind is blowing.

If you have wind, you can adjust your sails and steer the boat in the direction you wish to go. Only when there’s no wind are you actually stuck.

If we adopt this same thinking in our work and personal lives, we’ll thrive no matter what happens to us.

Technology changes in your industry? Embrace them and move forward. Your job becomes obsolete? Re-skill and do something else. (Both have happened to me.)

Circumstances will always be less than ideal. Sometimes they’ll be downright awful. But we can’t change which way the wind blows.

Don’t complain about its direction—adjust your sails and keep going.

Photo by Geran de Klerk on Unsplash

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by Nathan Coumbe

Failure and Success Are the Same Thing (Eventually)

The best teacher in the world is failure. Nothing teaches us more or faster than trying and failing at something.

It’s how we learn to walk. It’s how we learn to speak.

What keeps failure from becoming success is a lack of perseverance. We fail once and assume we’ll fail if we try again.

Thomas Edison failed more than 10,000 times in creating the incandescent lightbulb. But he failed differently each time.

When asked about this by a reporter, Edison said, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” He implied that each failure got him closer to his eventual success.

Had he tried making his lightbulb the same way 10,000 times, he would have been living out Einstein’s definition of insanity. But he didn’t. Instead he chose to keep trying 10,000 different ways.

Failure is a reality, but it’s also a choice. We can choose to learn from it, change things up, and try again. That option will eventually lead to success.

Or we can choose to fail and accept it as a permanent part of our lives.

You’ll find life is much better when you look at failure and success as learning experiences.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Holding Others Accountable Is an Act of Respect

I am in the second week of a leadership course created by FranklinCovey based on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.*

This week’s topic is Habit 1: Be Proactive. For those of you unfamiliar with the 7 Habits, the first habit is about personal responsibility. It posits that we are the creative force in our own lives. We can choose how we respond to stimuli in the world, and these choices drastically alter our results.

One statement this morning stood out more than others:

“Holding people to the responsible course is not demeaning; it is affirming.”

—Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

We show respect when we refuse to let others blame circumstances for their situations. Holding others responsible tells them “you are where you are because of the choices you’ve made.” 

At the same time, we are communicating another message:

“You can make choices now that can lead you to a better situation.”

Of course, our environmental factors must be taken into account. Outside, uncontrollable forces definitely influence our lives. Our upbringing, sex, gender, or socioeconomic status can make things easier or harder. But they do not determine our lives! 

Each of us has within us what Viktor Frankl calls “the last of the human freedoms.” We can choose our response to any stimulus. It may not seem like much to you, but this idea was incredibly liberating to me. 

“Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.”

Show another person respect. Let them know they have the power to choose. 

When you choose, you change things.

*If you want to level up your leadership skills, and earn an industry-recognized certification in the process, check out FranklinCovey’s LeaderU courses at leaderu.us.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Encourage ignorance (and overcome it)

When you are serving other people (i.e., working), there will be times when you don’t have the answer to the problem in front of you.

Perhaps you work in customer service, a retail store, or banking. Someone is going to ask you a question for which you do not have an answer. What do you do?

If you went to a typical school or were processed through typical corporate training, you might have a few possible answers immediately:

  1. Tell the customer you don’t know, you’re sorry, and you can’t help them.
  2. Immediately go to your boss and ask her to give you the answer or take over the situation entirely (unless your boss is a crazy control freak and wants her finger on the pulse of every step you take, she won’t appreciate this).
  3. Try to figure it out yourself by moving through all the formulas, procedures, and company policies with which you were conditioned (definitely not the worst option, but it’s limited in its effectiveness).

Do you see a better option?

The better option

You are surrounded by people that know more than you, have more experience than you, and do the same type of work as you, either in person or resources on the internet. Ask them for help, but take it one step further.

Learn alongside the person you are trying to help. It’s easy and has two benefits: 1) the person in need gets the help he or she requires, and 2) you learn something new that will be in your toolbelt for next time.

Here’s your answer when you don’t know:

“I don’t know the solution to this problem, but I guarantee we can find one. Let’s find out what it is together!“

The flaw in our system

Most of our education and training conditions us to work by ourselves, independently from everyone else, under an authority figure who has all the answers.

“Only raise your hand if you know the answer” becomes “never acknowledge ignorance in front of customers!” That will only discredit you. They will lose faith in you. You will be humiliated.

Actually, no – by being humble enough to admit your ignorance, they will respect you for not lying to them, not giving them bad information that will fail or hurt them in practice, and not wasting their time.

The real world is full of collaboration, synergy, and needs us to use all available resources to find the answers. The real world is an open-book group test.

It is not full of, nor should we encourage, independent work with no outside help, an authority figure with all the answers, or a lack of information that you are not allowed to remedy by looking up the answer.

If the real world isn’t like that, why are we training people to operate that way?

Be bold, be brave, and admit your ignorance. Then go find the answer using every person and resource at your disposal.

“I don’t know – let’s find out together.”

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by Nathan Coumbe

Make a huge difference with one small behavior change

In his second great book, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, relates the story of Muhammad Yunus, an economics professor who founded the Grameen Bank – an institution that makes microloans to the impoverished citizens of Bangledesh. His story deserves to be quoted at length, but I will not do that here. What follows is a summary.

Muhmmad Yunus Saw a Need

Muhammad Yunus earned a Ph.D. and began teaching economics at a university in Bangladesh. While he was inside lecturing on macroeconomic principles, the citizens of Bangladesh were struggling to survive in a life of abject poverty.

One day when Dr. Yunus walked out of class, he passed a woman making beautiful, handmade bamboo chairs. Upon further discussion, he determined the woman was making two pennies per day.

Why? Because she was in a terrible arrangement with her supplier who only allowed her to sell the chairs back to him. Dr. Yunus then discovered that the woman only needed $0.20-0.25 cents to buy the materials herself, then she would no longer be in bonded labor to the supplier.

He discovered that other citizens were struggling in much the same way. His assistant went around asking how much money different people in his neighborhood needed to make a living: he reported back that all together they needed $27.

TWENTY-SEVEN DOLLARS! Dr. Yunus took that money out of his wallet, gave it to his assistant, and told him to tell those who were receiving the money simply to pay him back whenever they could (which they all did, eagerly and quickly).

Dr. Yunus Met a Need

There is much more to the story than that, including a long battle with banks in the area who did not believe anyone would pay back the money that was loaned to them (which they did). Dr. Yunus discovered, simply by opening his eyes and talking to people around him, that while he might not be changing the world with a $27 loan, he was changing someone’s world.

Dr. Yunus went on to create and found his own financial institution, Grameen Bank, which specializes in making small loans to people all over Bangladesh so they can create businesses, making a living, and pull themselves out of poverty. To this day it has loaned billions of dollars in microcredit to hundreds of millions of citizens, and it changed their lives.

Why am I telling you this story?

What You Need to Do

Change how you move through the world. Today, and each day for the rest of your life, when you drive around town, walk outside, or even scroll through social media, pay attention to the people.

What are they doing? What are they posting on social media? Can you identify a need in what they are saying? Are they struggling to accomplish a task or project?

Are they asking a question to which you know the answer or have a solution?

Assume, as Dr. Yunus says, “a worm’s-eye view” of the world. Don’t look for huge problems to solve: look for small, everyday problems. Find someone in need, ask yourself if you have the will and the skill to meet that need, and then do something about it. Show up, solve a problem, and keep doing that over and over again.

Ask yourself if you have the will and skill to meet someone’s need today.

You may not change the world, but you will change that person’s world. Do that enough times, solve enough problems for people, and you might begin to see a greater need that can be met by a business, service, or non-profit.

Find a need, meet the need, and make a difference today.

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*Note: some links on my site are affiliate links which means I make a small commission for purchases made. This does not affect you in any way.

by Nathan Coumbe

Leadership as an experiment

The only way to become a leader, or to improve as a leader if you already are, is to treat everything like one giant science experiment.

Start with a hypothesis: “If I do/try/encourage _____, then ______ will happen/change/get better.”

What are you positing? What are you already presuming? Start with an observation you believe to be true.

Here’s an example:

“My employees feel disconnected from the company’s mission.”(Observation)

“If I meet regularly with them one-on-one to discuss what they believe is most important, then they will feel involved, supported, and I might get some really good ideas about how we can improve things around here.”(Hypothesis and potential solution)

At this point the experiment begins. Set parameters: what do “regular meetings” look like? What sort of questions will I ask? Am I prepared to listen empathically, to really understand how they feel and what they think matters?

You’ll gather data and attempt to put the ideas into practice (another experiment, perhaps). Test the ideas; observe what happens; use the information gathered to make changes as needed; repeat the experiment.

Think like a scientist.

If you think like a scientist, you don’t simply run the experiment and assume that it works. A scientist doesn’t hypothesize something, put on a blindfold, call the experiment a success, and move on to the next idea. The scientist tests, observes, measures, and solicits feedback. When you get that data, it will show either progress or regression – support for your idea or arguments against it. Use that data to adjust your hypothesis and experiment again, until it either works or becomes obvious that your hypothesis was wrong.

You are going to be wrong. Often.

There is only one way to avoid being wrong: don’t try to become a better leader. If you are willing to become a better leader, you must be willing to be wrong. Since you know you are going to be wrong, you need to become comfortable with honesty and transparency.

“This idea that I had, this new way of doing things, it didn’t work. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

Humility and Trust

A leader must be humble and emotionally mature enough to admit errors and missteps. If you attempt to hide your failure, if you put the blame on anyone or anything other than yourself, if you pretend it all worked out when it’s obvious it didn’t, you will lose the trust and respect of those who serve under you. It will be very hard to get that back.

Think like a scientist. Test, observe, measure, and get feedback on your ideas. Experiment.

Most importantly, don’t ignore the data, and apologize when you’re wrong.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Paradigm shift

We would all like to believe that we are objective and see things as they really are.

We would all be lying if we actually believe we view things as they really are.

Stephen Covey wrote, “the way we see the problem is the problem.” One of his teachings was that we do not see the world as it is, but as we are. When something happens that causes us to see something in a new light, it’s called a paradigm shift.

I had one this morning:

I was driving to work and angry. I had been angry since the previous evening. Things had happened that were unplanned and unexpected, and I had hit my limit. I was at a point where I was essentially forcing my point of view on another person.

Then while I was driving, I used that wonderful human power of self-awareness to look at myself and my actions as if from an outsider’s perspective. I realized that, while I felt I was right and justified in how I was feeling and behaving, I was communicating to someone very close to me that I loved them conditionally.

I never said it, but my behaviors and actions were conveying a message:

“I will love you if you do things my way.”

That realization bowled me over: love is never supposed to be conditional. Once I had made the realization that I was unintentionally communicating this feeling, my whole frame of mind changed. I started to see the problem differently. I immediately apologized and let this person know that my love for them came without strings.

But words alone are not enough; anyone can say what I said. I had to go a step further and make it true.

I wasn’t just saying that would love unconditionally: I actually had to change myself and my feelings on the issue at hand. I had to genuinely accept that I was okay with a certain decision being made, even if I thought it was the wrong one.

That view, that I thought it was the wrong decision, was the problem itself. I realized that it was a decision, not a wrong decision; it was being made from a different point of view than my own. I had to genuinely accept the possibility of an outcome that I didn’t like because my relationship with another person was more important to me than getting my way.

This is one of the secrets to good living: look at the problem you are experiencing as if you were a stranger coming upon the scene. Imagine yourself as a third person looking in at an interaction between yourself and another.

To paraphrase Dr. Covey: how you see the problem is the problem.

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*Some posts contain affiliate links, which means I make a small commission on purchases.

by Nathan Coumbe

Perhaps you’re looking at the wrong map

One of my favorite teachings in Stephen R. Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is the one about paradigms. To summarize, he uses maps as a metaphor for paradigms: they are representations of real places, not the places themselves.

If you are trying to navigate through Atlanta, but the map you received was misprinted with Atlanta as the name but a layout of New York, you are going to have a very difficult time getting where you want to go.

This has resonated with me for the past two days. I have been feeling restless and unsettled about where I am in certain aspects of my personal and professional life. It’s a feeling of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I decided to take a step back and use my powers of self-awareness to look at how I was looking at these circumstances.

I won’t go into detail about all of the things I’ve examined for two days, but what I will say is that I have come to find that I was looking at my life through a certain lens. When I stepped back and looked through a different lens – when I picked up a different map – I had a sudden feeling of clarity.

Perhaps I am in the right place: where I am is allowing me to practice and make mistakes. I am learning and using skills that I have been trying to practice, and I am doing it in an environment that supports me.

My paradigm has changed from one of restlessness to one of purpose: I am here for a reason; I am doing certain things for a reason. I must live in the present for a while, so I can launch into the next phase of my life.

Take a moment today and look at your maps.

Make sure you are looking at the right one.

If not, get a new map.

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