{"id":5097,"date":"2025-01-16T10:33:20","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T10:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.coachmentoring.co.uk\/articles\/?p=5097"},"modified":"2025-01-17T10:41:37","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T10:41:37","slug":"the-problem-with-fixating-on-the-problem-so-whats-the-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coachmentoring.co.uk\/articles\/2025\/01\/the-problem-with-fixating-on-the-problem-so-whats-the-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"The problem with fixating on the problem \u2014\u00a0So, what’s the solution?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FigureDrawing attention to issues and hoping that they will be fixed or solved is normal. It\u2019s what we do every day: There’s a problem, like a dripping tap or a flat tyre or the mobile phone has no power, and we ‘analyse the problem’ and fix it easily. But when it comes to people, like interpersonal and social problems, things get complicated. That\u2019s why I think we need to change our approach and focus on finding solutions. And that starts with the being<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Being shapes our consciousness, socialisation and therefore behaviour. Every milieu, with its values and norms, influences how we grow up and act. For instance, green politicians raised in an academic environment communicate differently from those from a rural background, even though they share the same political views. Similarly, individuals who were not allowed to express their own opinions as children may struggle to do so as adults. Jumping over the shadow of one\u2019s own socialisation and changing one’s way of being is a (un)learning process in which consciousness moves along with it. The Being<\/em> is the door to consciousness, not the other way round.<\/p>\n

The problem of changing thinking and behaviour<\/h2>\n

\"ChangingIf you want to influence ways of thinking and behaving, you have to start with the being of those you are addressing. However, both NGOs and other movements usually tend to put the cart before the horse when we want to bring about transformation. Perhaps this is why we fail more often than hoped in our endeavours to change society for the better. By addressing a problem, we normally start with awareness. This is because we believe that the following three steps work and follow each other linearly, as in the mentioned daily experience:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Informing people about the problem to be addressed<\/li>\n
  2. leads them to awareness and<\/li>\n
  3. from awareness follows behaviour change.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And so we try to educate with information about a problem.<\/p>\n

    About rainforest deforestation, marine pollution, under-performing team, climate change, fracking, palm oil production, staff retention, the ocean of plastic, meat consumption, pesticides in the soil. However, this kind of education does not warm up, but rather cools down those who are not already convinced. In this case, repetition has no, or even the opposite effect, on the being of those addressed.<\/p>\n

    From Being to Consciousness<\/h2>\n

    To start with a solution-oriented approach to being, you need to stand upside down. Here is an example to illustrate what this might look like:<\/p>\n

    An NGO was commissioned by a Vietnamese ministry to investigate and eliminate a widespread disease among children in a region of Vietnam. The NGO staff used a different strategy than the usual “analyse the problem and fix it”, namely by first asking what the few but still existing families with healthy children were doing differently from those with sick children. They focused on the good behaviours that were already in place and found that the healthy children ate the same amount of food four times a day instead of twice, but in smaller tolerable portions and that these contain protein and vitamin-rich shrimps and sweet potato greens.<\/p>\n

    To teach the ‘solution behaviour’, the NGO people invited the mothers of the healthy children to show the mothers of the sick children what and how they cook. Following the principle of peer learning, i.e. “what my peers do is also possible for me”, the mothers of the sick children largely adopted the necessary behavioural changes. Six months later, 65% of the previously sick children in the village were healthy again and the problem was largely solved.
    \n(from: “Switch”, Chip and Dan Heath, 2011).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Shifting from a\u00a0deficit-orientated focus<\/h3>\n

    This shift in focus is also familiar from psychology, which for a long time was primarily deficit-oriented. In other words, once the psychological damage had been done, attempts were made to alleviate the symptoms. Without lasting success, except that sales of psychotropic drugs increased! This repair approach was also used by most\u00a0psychiatrists to deal with the problem of post-traumatic damage suffered by US war veterans, without really being able to help those traumatised by wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and\u00a0Iraq.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"See<\/p>\n

    It was in the noughties that Martin Seligman said to himself: “If 15% of veterans have post-traumatic symptoms, that means 85% do not”<\/strong>. He asked himself what can be learnt from these 85% for trauma prevention? And from this change of perspective he founded the “Positive Psychology” (from: ‘Tomorrowmind’, Kellermann and Seligman, 2023, p. 47ff).<\/p>\n

    Note: While positive psychology focuses on positive emotions and resilience and sees itself as a science. Humanistic psychology, on the other hand, which emerged in the middle of the last century, is concerned with the pursuit of personal growth. For instance Abraham Maslow, one of its founders, also turned the question “What makes people sick?”<\/strong> on its head and asked: “What makes them healthy?”<\/strong> However, both approaches aim to improve well-being and quality of life.<\/p>\n

    Every solution needs a problem<\/h2>\n

    \"ZeroSolution-orientation does not mean ignoring the problem; it just means focusing on the solution. And it is basically about the attitude of prevention. As with health: prevention is better than cure. Strengthening what is healthy, so that what is making someone ill becomes less likely. Just as a medication can have strong side effects, the consequence of a mechanical, and therefore often apparent solution to a problem, is that further problems arise that have to be dealt with again. A social hamster wheel. “Away from endless problem solving and towards the creation of healthy connections”, propagates the “Zero-Problem Philanthropy” [1].<\/p>\n

    Look for the bright spots and clone them<\/h3>\n

    Chip and Dan Heath call their above-mentioned approach “Look for the bright spots and clone them”. It is similar to systemic therapy, in which existing resources, i.e. healthy behaviours that have already been demonstrated before, are strengthened so that they occur more often, thus displacing the problem, so to speak. What works individually in therapy and coaching could be considered collectively: Creating, reinforcing,\u00a0and spreading good practice \u2014 said bright spots \u2014 so that it takes over. These bright spots already exist:\u00a0Traffic-free cities, 2000-watt housing estates, organic farming, peace villages. Thousands of them. Everywhere. These small fires just need to grow into wildfires.<\/span><\/p>\n

    How to spread the solution wildfires?<\/h2>\n

    If the solution isn’t quite able to succeed (due to political measures, laws, bans, incentives), as it should. What else can be done?<\/p>\n