Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Creativity is contagious. Pass it on. Albert Einstein

Are we building the life we want by being creators, or are we reacting to the problems we see? How many of us think if we can just solve the problem our life will be better?

Problem-solving is taking action to have something go away. Creating is taking action to have something come into being.

This is the difference between focusing on the problems and focusing on creating what we want. We are focusing on what we think are the ills of society. Are we putting as much into focusing on what we want our society to be as what we don’t want it to be? We know that sometimes we have to do things in the midst of a problem like hunger for instance. Giving food to people in a famine does help but it doesn’t provide food security which is what they need.

The problem with problem-solving as our main way of doing things is even when we are successful we now have the absence of the problem but we do not have the creation of something we wanted.

If we have a problem with weeds in our garden we can pull the weeds but we have not created a beautiful garden just by pulling the weeds. To create a beautiful garden we will have to plant the garden we want and tend it and it can become the masterpiece we create.

We seem to be very good at knowing what we don’t want, are we as good at knowing what we do want? Have you ever gone into the kitchen knowing what you don’t want to eat but if you can’t figure out what you do want or what you will make nothing happens? My husband knows he doesn’t like celery in his soup (or anything else). It doesn’t answer the question, what does he want?

The more we answer the question “What do we want” instead of focusing on what we don’t want the better our life will be. We can create what we want, or at least try. We may hate our job, it’s easy to quit a job, but did that solve the problem or just give us a new and worse problem? What do we want, a new job, a business? Then we need to know what kind of job, or what kind of business? Could we perhaps get a job that would pay our bills and create a business part-time that will feed our spirit? Now we have a win/win we are creating a life, maybe a life we will love.

It is a sobering thought to realize we are spending our time focusing on the wrong things. How much time do we spend thinking if I could just fix that problem? But, fixing that problem is not what we want, we need to focus on what we want and we may think getting rid of things like problems is what we want but really don’t we want to build and create the life we want.

Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else. Les Brown

Is it true that the more we focus on problems the more problems we get? What difference would it make in our lives if we became builders of our lives instead of problem solvers in our lives? What if we build a happy family instead of trying to fix the problems which we may always have to deal with? We will never see things the same, there will always be challenges, but as we build what we want those differences will not be as important as what we create. We will always have problems but focusing on fixing problems seldom leads to final success.

In fact, focusing on our problems often leads to a problem cycle:

The problem leads to action to solve the problem, which leads to less intensity of the problem, which leads to less reaction to the problem, which leads to the problem remaining, and the cycle continues.  

This is the life cycle of problems. Many of us pride ourselves on our problem-solving abilities. We may even call ourselves creative problem solvers. Problem-solving can be distracting at the same time it gives us the illusion we are doing something crucial and important.

One of the things we are fighting about is if we don’t see the same problem, or the same solution to that problem. How heartless are we if we don’t care about someone else’s pet cause, and how heartless when they don’t care about ours? We can feel the romance of being the individual against the elements, the machine, big government, injustice, inequality, racism, sexism, the division between rich and poor, global warming, and there are more. We certainly have enough problems that everyone can find a noble cause to make them feel good.

Problem-solving gives us a false sense of security. If we didn’t have these big problems to focus on what would we think about, what would we talk about, and how would we let people know how noble we are? Instead of asking ourselves what problems do we want to solve? What if we asked ourselves what do we want to create? If we get more of what we focus on and we focus on problems are we getting more problems to focus on? What if we focus on creating the life we want, we focus on our circle of influence, and as we create the life we want our circle of influence enlarges. What if this is better than focusing on our problems? What if this is what is behind the saying, “Give a man a fish and he will eat for today, teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”

Imagination and creativity can change the world. Unknown

Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected. William Plomer

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. Arthur C. Clark

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read again. Have a blessed life filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

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