Only We Can Choose

We all face problems everyday. Some are simple, like where to get the only cat food your finicky feline will actually eat? Others are more complex, like having the choose between paying for food or buying medications? Get a new job, move to a new home, and so many more that listing them all would in and of itself be a problem. Life is more about problem solving than we usually care to admit.

Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which they were created.

-Albert Einstein 1955

These words from Einstein made me think. In the problems I have how often do I simply employ the usual methods I have relied upon for years, and when do I gather up the courage to actually force change by altering how I approach them? It is more comfortable to face trouble and react the same way as before. We know that path, we know it usually works, and we know how to do it. And let’s face it, it usually blows over or allows us to move forward while keeping pace with our everyday life.

Einstein is reminding us that thinking within the same parameters we always employ lead us to solutions that only fall within the known. Maybe the problem we face will only get resolved and not return by looking outside of our normal thinking. Call it our comfort zone, our educated process, our normal channels, whatever we call it, what got us here is not going to get us to where we want to be in the future.

Which means problem solving is no longer just a one and done, it will take effort, energy, reflection and personal change in order to move ahead. So when to plunge in and fight for a bigger, better, smarter path to problem solving? And when to stick it out with what we’ve always done and be satisfied with the normal result? I suppose the answer is really another question, a tough one. How much are we willing to invest to get beyond the everyday and reach towards the incredible? Is the problem worth the effort, is the solution, are we? No one can really answer THAT one for us, only we can choose. And as life is mostly problem solving we need to choose the effort we want to exert in order to take our lives to the next level, beyond the framework we find ourselves living in today.