Unruly children can really cause a need for problem solving, and quickly. It seems nowadays, parents are finding it more difficult to control kids, let alone raise them properly. Contrary to popular misconceptions, a child’s environment today has shaped what seems to be unruliness and defiant behavior amongst youth.

Not Much Effort

It won’t take too much effort to get your child’s behavior in order. There are many reasons to believe it’s practically hopeless to teach a child discipline during this day and age, especially after a child has reached the age of 10, but you’ll be totally surprised learn you couldn’t be further from the truth.

Communicating With Your Children

Communicating with your children is the key to beginning the initial process of disciplining your children. If you are a parent that rarely speaks to you child, unless you’re reprimanding them, that can turn into a large mistake. Loving kindness will allow a child to open up to you more, and they are more inclined to pay attention. Many parents have used the scare tactic to try and discipline their children. Fear is not the way to go. Try drawing up a mind map of daily routines, expectations etc this allows the child to participate in the boundaries and guidelines~Try drawing up a mind map of daily routines, expectations etc}

Avoid Only Planting Fear

Avoid only communicating with your child through fear. You want to make sure that your child loves you, as well as respects you. Too much fear in a child will make them feel uneasy about communicating with you. Once your child no longer wants to communicate with you, their ability to follow order and pay attention could greatly diminish.

Share a Few Secrets

A great way to get your children to trust you, and obey your word, is for them to feel as though you hold secrets with them. Lots of parents have been fearful of this approach, hoping to not bridge the gap between parent and friend, but even the closest of family members hold secrets. If your child feels like she/he can trust you, and that you believe what they have to say is important, they will obey you more, because after all, you know their secrets, and they trust you with them.

Know When You Need to Change Roles

You must know when your role needs to change. You want to find that fine line between being your child’s friend, and being the prison guard in a jail cell. Inciting too much fear in your child will only encourage them not to respond to you at all. Instead of obeying you, they will simply cower away from you, and I don’t believe any parent wants this.

Each day should be spent putting on different hats, making sure that your child not only trusts you, and believes in your word, but also that your word is consistent throughout your household.

Don’t Argue In Front of your Kids

In marriages, parents will have issues, and arguments will happen. The best thing to do is to wait until you are alone with your mate or spouse to talk about those things. Fighting in front of your child gives them a different impression of you. If they see someone else, especially their mommy or daddy, fighting, they will try and test you, by instinct. Don’t get upset with your child because of this; it’s in their nature to learn and apply those lessons in life

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Many of us have been encouraged over the course of our lives to be active in problem solving. This is to say that if we perceive something unpleasant in our lives, our internal response is typically set to take some sort of action. An active response to problem solving in fact would probably occur to most of us as being the only reasonable response. There is however another possible response to problem solving.

Thinking exists that advocates taking no effort against problems whatsoever, and being mostly passive instead. This response can also be referred to as letting go. Letting go as a philosophy advocates no engagement of problems whatsoever. What this entails in not taking physical action of any sort while also not planning for any sort of solution.

A typical response to passive problem solving is concern about the problem never being resolved. What this type of thinking overlooks however is the concept that spiritual intervention can solve problems. While thinking like this probably isn’t especially mainstream, it certainly does have its advocates.

There is a form called ho’oponopono that embraces the notion of not trying to actively solve problems. The origin of the ho’oponopono method took place on Hawaii, where ho’oponopono has been used across generations. Hooponopono is known as a means for problem response. According to ho’oponopono, struggling with problems negates the possibility for spiritual intervention: a different and better approach instead according to ho’oponopono is to eliminate entirely the resistance one often interjects into the problem solving process.

What is sometimes referred to as traditional healing has gained considerable popularity and interest over the years. Ho’oponopono can also be fairly categorized as traditional healing, and it like other forms of traditional healing is gaining popularity. Might this mean a new focus in problem solving from engagement to letting go? While this prospect may not seem especially likely, it certainly can’t be entirely disregarded. For more information about ho’oponopono, visit God Help Me.

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Many of us have been encouraged over the course of our lives to be active in problem solving. This is to say that if we perceive something unpleasant in our lives, our internal response is typically set to take some sort of action. An active response to problem solving in fact would probably occur to most of us as being the only reasonable response. Another approach to problem solving however does exist.

A notion exists that a person shouldn’t take effort against a problem at all, and in fact should respond passively to any problems that may arise. Letting go is another way of referring to this process. Letting go as a philosophy advocates no engagement of problems whatsoever. What this entails in not taking physical action of any sort while also not planning for any sort of solution.

The obvious response to the idea of letting go in the face of a problem is that the problem will never be solved. This perspective however neglects the possibility of a spiritual solve to dilemmas. Though this sort of thinking may not be entirely mainstream neither is it without supporters.

There is a form called ho’oponopono that embraces the notion of not trying to actively solve problems. The ho’oponopono technique originated on the Hawaiian Islands and has been practiced there for generations. Ho oponopono is known as a means for problem response. According to ho’oponopono, struggling with problems negates the possibility for spiritual intervention: a different and better approach instead according to ho’oponopono is to eliminate entirely the resistance one often interjects into the problem solving process.

What is sometimes referred to as traditional healing has gained considerable popularity and interest over the years. Ho’oponopono can also be fairly categorized as traditional healing, and it like other forms of traditional healing is gaining popularity. Might this mean a new focus in problem solving from engagement to letting go? This may seem like an unlikely scenario, but the possibility for such a change is certainly there. For more information about ho’oponopono, visit I Need Help.

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What’s typically the most significant problem for the majority of people? Here the guess would be not having enough money. This is to say, most people would probably consider a lack of money as their most significant difficulty. Another way of expressing this problem would be to say a lack of resources. After all, money in and of itself has very little inherent value. Money’s greatest value is as trade for some resource or another: food for example, or shelter, or transportation, etc. So when a person says then that they don’t have sufficient money, what they’re actually saying is they aren’t able to obtain some resource or extravagance that they want to obtain.

The actual role that money plays is relevant to know because it can serve to impact one’s true priorities. It’s quite common to find citizens of advanced societies making it a personal goal to acquire the greatest amount of money that they can. But it’s not actually money that these people covet: it’s the goods and services that money can be exchanged for. Money is not the same thing as survival, and it’s certainly not the same thing as being content. As an exercise, a person might stop referring to money altogether and instead refer to those things that they would like to exchange money for. This may change a person’s outlook as they consider money to begin with, as well as reducing frustration when money seems as though it’s not available.

The consideration of personal outlook is one aspect of the ho’oponopono problem solving method. In the ho’oponopono method, it’s believed that any and every problem comes from the self. An expression sometimes used among ho’oponopono practitioners is ‘There is no out there’. The key then to solving a difficulty, including financial or resource difficulties, is to start problem solving from the self. From this point, change in a person’s actual experience can and does take place when ho’oponopono is implemented. Learn more about problem solving by visiting Ho’oponopono or God Help Me.

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Ask one hundred people to define quality of life, and you’re liable to get one hundred different answers. Part of the variation in expressing quality of life surely is that people place emphasis on different things. For some people, having fulfilling relationships with others is key. Some people find that reaching professional goals is especially significant. There are equally experiences within an entire culture that are often thought to represent a high quality of life: stimulating experiences, satisfying social relationships, being of good health, etc.

Another way to think of quality of life however may simply be the presence of ego satisfaction. A person who possesses those things they believe are important may consider themselves to be content. The person lacking things they believe are important may see their lives as inadequate. The natural follow-up to this is whether or not the pursuit of one’s ego desires is a worthy goal. Generally speaking, in Western civilizations achieving ego desires is celebrated. The person who consistently fulfills his or her ego desires is often seen in Western culture as a success; and on the contrary, the person who has a poor record of seeing their ego desires achieved may be thought of as a failure.

It is not absolutely accepted however that ego desires are something to be pursued. Some belief systems in fact consider the ego to be almost clueless as to what in life is genuinely beneficial and worthwhile. Ho’oponopono is a process that considers the ego to be nearly entirely inept at understanding and interpreting life meaning. Within ho’oponopono then there is a strong emphasis on refusing to be led by the ego, and on making an effort to let go of desires. Practitioners of ho’oponopono believe that true contentment is achieved, and only achieved, through consciously making a connection to higher understanding.

Though ho’oponopono may sound rather complex, it’s actually a quite simple process. It’s a near certainty that anyone with the desire to can engage the ho’oponopono method. As things stand today awareness of ho’oponopono is spreading remarkably quickly, and more and more people are making practice of the method a regular part of their lives. Find out more about the ho’oponopono method at God Help Me.

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It’s pretty fair to say, I think, that these are troubled times for lots of people: maybe even for most people. Naturally there’s always one sort of difficulty or other to deal with in the course of life: financial difficulties, difficulties with relationships, health difficulties. In today’s environment, however, you can add what seems to be a worldwide financial collapse to these life typical difficulties. Put it all together, and circumstances today can rapidly take on the appearance of being almost too overwhelming to deal with.

The first question in times of difficulty such as these is, naturally, can anything be done to change things for the better. At times, the steps that can be taken to improve a particular situation are easy to understand. There are other times when it appears as though circumstances are beyond a person’s individual control, and that there’s nothing that can directly be done to improve a particular scenario. Today’s world may seem to be one of those situations when there’s not much an individual can really do, except perhaps to hope that factors will eventually get better.

There’s one outlook however that claims any difficulty can not only be improved, but can be solved entirely. This same outlook claims that a problem — any problem — is not an external event but actually originates from the internal state of a person. In other words, there is no out there to speak of. This sort of an idea would strike some people, if not the majority of people, as unrealistic and even bizarre. Be that as it may, the outlook I’m speaking of is gaining increasing notoriety and more and more people are coming to practice it. It’s a method known as ho’oponopono, and it’s been practiced on the Hawaiian Islands for generations. Though ho’oponopono presumes a higher state of being, it has no ties to any particular religious belief.

Ho’oponopono is simple to do, and can be done anywhere, at any time, by a person of any background. Though the method may sound fantastical, it’s easy enough to determine whether ho’oponopono is in fact legitimate: try it. More about the ho’oponopono method can be found at Need Help.

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Where do problems come from? Most people would probably say that problems come from a variety of places: from our jobs, from other people, from financial institutions, etc. There’s an outlook however that says all problems come from one place and one place only; and when I say all problems, I mean problems that affect both a particular person and problems that seem to only affect others. Where does this outlook say that all problems come from? The individual.

A person might take the notion that all problems come from the individual as an issue of perspective; in other words, problems are only real if a person actually considers something to be a problem. For example, losing a job might be considered a problem for one person but not problematic at all for someone else. The idea that problems are actually a result of a person’s perspective and not something absolute is an interesting one, and may be applicable in different instances. But there are also circumstances that would likely be considered a problem whatever a person’s outlook is: being in the middle of the sea on a ship that’s starting to sink, for instance.

In any event, the outlook I’m referring to considers the notion of problems coming from the individual to be an entirely literal reality. As in, there’s something happening within the individual that has caused a difficulty to occur. Are you lonely? Are you broke? Are you sick? A reaction within you is responsible for making it occur. It’s equally true for those problems that seem not to impact the individual in any significant way. Is there a war taking place somewhere? Is there famine occurring somewhere? Did some form of natural act cause death and hardship in some part of the world? Regardless of where the problematic circumstance happens to occur, there is an energy from you that is causing it.

The idea that the individual is responsible for every problem he or she perceives, no matter how the problem plays out or where it may be taking place, is one that most people would automatically reject. This rejection is almost certainly motivated by the majority belief that a person can only control so much within the universe. But this sort of reasoning isn’t universally accepted. Those who practice ho’oponopono, the outlook I’ve been speaking of throughout this piece, believe that every problem an individual perceives comes from that individual. And perhaps more importantly, that the individual can resolve these problems: every one of them. You can get more information about the ho’oponopono perspective at I need help.

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If you want to be a better problem solver, there are three simple things you can do.

1. Learn problem solving techniques. The more you know, the better problem solver you can be.

2. Use the techniques repeatedly, until they are habit. This “programming” assures the power of your subconscious mind will be there to help you.

3. Allow many ideas to flow forth. You can always discard ideas later, or make them into something useful, but you have to have ideas first – and the more the better. Suspend judgment or any critical impulses until you have a list of possible solutions to look over.

Tools For The Problem Solver

The tools that you use as a problem solver are techniques, methods and approaches. As noted in item number one above, the more ways you know, the better your odds of finding creative and useful solutions to problems. Here is one to get you started.

Clarify The Problem

Have you ever had to stop in the middle of a project and ask “What exactly are we trying to do here?” A vague problem is a tough problem to solve, isn’t it? If your spouse is unhappy with your house, for example, and you want to effectively solve that problem, you need to find out what specific things he or she is unhappy about.

Suppose you have been assigned to design a better employee scheduling system for your employer. What’s better? Is it fewer hours on the payroll? Is it a schedule that makes for happier employees? These are questions that need to be asked.

To be a better problem solver you need to develop the habit of clarifying problems. Generally, this means asking the right questions. How do you ask the right questions? One way is to ask any question you can think of. For lack of a better way, this can work. It does tend to waste time, however.

What you really want is to identify the key elements of the problem. Asking “why do I care?,” or “why is this problem important?” can not only clarify the problem itself, but can help to determine which problems you need to be working on first.

Working up and down the hierarchy of values is another way to clarify what the problem is. For example, suppose you start with the problem of “where to go on vacation.” Asking why you need to solve this might lead you to the more important value of “wanting to have a good vacation.” Looking at this may yield other solutions that resolve the “where” or make it less important.

Ask why you need a good vacation can lead you to the more important value of “having a good life.” From that perspective, some might find that the vacation is an escape from an unsatisfactory job, and looking for a better career may be the more important task. In the end, you might just move your efforts back to choosing a vacation destination, but this process can help clarify why the problem needs to be solved, and suggest new ways to do that.

Clarifying what the problem is, and which is the most urgent or important part of the problem, is a great way to be a better problem solver. Add it to your arsenal of problem solving skills.

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Invent new ideas, exercise your brainpower, and have fun while you’re at it! There are many problem-solving techniques and idea-generating techniques you can use. One of the easiest, however, is to simply find new applications for existing ideas, products, services and systems.

This technique can be used to come up with new ideas in any area of life. Take an existing product, like a raincoat, for example. It takes just a minute or two to come up with new applications. How about a line of raincoats for dogs and cats? Raincoats for cattle? Maybe they lose valuable weight burning calories to stay warm during cold rains.

Evaluating the new ideas you come up with is another process. It is best left for later, if you don’t want to stifle your creativity. You only need one or two good ideas to make the effort worthwhile, and having a hundred ideas to choose from makes finding a few good ones more likely.

I saw an ad for a company that uses a dog to find mold in your house. Dogs can sniff out almost anything, and it reminded me of the news story from a while back, about a dog that could detect if you had cancer. My next thought was, “I wonder what else they could be used to find?” One idea that came to mind was to use dogs to find people’s lost pets. They track lost criminals so well, so why not a service to find lost pets? A sniff of the lost cats favorite rug, and the dog is on the trail.

New Ideas Beyond Inventions and Business

It’s common to concentrate on the invention and business applications. Perhaps these are the easiest areas to come up with new ideas in. However, that doesn’t mean this technique won’t work well in other areas.

Recently I applied Darwin’s theory of natural selection to my clothing selection. No more sorting laundry! The clothes that don’t survive the wash process are tossed and the ones that do are replicated when I buy new clothes. The ones that still fit survive. Survival of the fittest!

I once read about children who were tested for their ability to delay gratification. They were put into a playroom and at some point offered candy, but told they could have one piece now, or wait fifteen minutes and get two pieces. Some waited, and some didn’t. The children who could consistently delay gratification were tracked over the years. They were found to be more successful and happier.

What are some new applications for this idea? Hmm… Test all kids and sell a list of the impulsive ones to big companies who can sell stuff to them all their lives. More seriously, what if more tests like this were done, in order to put together a list of “happiness factors?” Perhaps it would lead to a more systemic and scientific way to raise happy kids.

Do you want some exercises to test this technique on? Think of a new use for paper. Find a new application for the idea of selling by phone. Think of several new uses for socks. Imagine how the idea of positive self talk could be applied to making animals happier. Try this technique, and you’ll see how easy it can be to come up with new ideas.

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It came to me in a dream. I was explaining the “add-subtract-change” problem solving technique to somebody. I had never heard of it before, but while awake I had been working on a book about problem solving. This new technique turned out to be a very useful technique when I tried it. It is an idea that has undoubtedly been thought of by others, but it was unknown to me until that moment.

I have had this happen before. I have had story ideas come to me in a dream, and solutions to problems. When I was younger, I even invented a way to sail my sled on the Lake Michigan ice in my dream. I tried it and it worked.

Maybe you have solved problems and had new ideas in your dreams as well. There is no doubt that it can happen, but how do we make it more likely, and more common? Try the following.

Getting Ideas In A Dream

- Think about it a lot. If a period of intense mental work on a problem precedes sleep, the subconscious mind has been “instructed” that this is important, and will continue to work on the problem during sleep.

- Write the problem down, and what qualities the solution may have, just before going to sleep.

- Practice with simple problems. See if you can get yourself to imagine a new kind of furniture, or a new poem in a dream.

- Keep paper and pen by the side of the bed. Write down any ideas you have when you wake up. The process encourages your mind to have even more ideas. A tape recorder is even better, because you can use it without a light and quickly go back to sleep.

- If you wake up without an alarm, you are more likely to remember your dreams. If you need an alarm for work, try problem solving in dreams over the weekend.

- As soon as you wake up, quickly review any dreams you can recall. This “sets” them in your mind before you can forget them. Then you can think back on them later, to see if there is anything useful there.

- If you don’t need sound sleep, try sleeping on the floor or in another slightly uncomfortable way. The repeated waking up and going back to sleep gives you more opportunities to remember dreams. I took notes on nine dreams one night in this way, and had two good ideas from them.

You can get good ideas in a dream. You can also have good ideas and solutions to problems come to you the next morning after you wake up. Review the problem mentally in the morning to encourage this latter process.

Are these scientifically “proven” techniques. No, and it is difficult to measure the “value” of an idea scientifically. What counts as an idea, if you are trying to measure the frequency when using these little tricks? Scientific proof in this area is difficult for now, but people have had productive dreams for thousands of years, and there is nothing harmful in trying to find an answer in a dream. Why not give it a try?

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