Tag Archive for life problems

Problem solving by changing your mind

November 27, 2007 / Luke / 16 comments

A problem can be defined as a mismatch between what we expect and what actually happens in our lives. As we come to identify problems we find that our problems are often linked to an expectation we have imposed on our surroundings. To take this definition further a problem is better thought of as being an expectation that we have that does not match what we presently experience. This means our present experience is defined by our expectations. Reality, is often not what we would like it to be.

Expectations: What are they?

An often easy out for us to say something like: just don’t have any expectations. Unfortunately this is not possible. An expectation is a desire for something you want to come to pass in your own life. That desire, is as much you, as you are you. Most of the time you don’t even realise that expectation is there until the heat of the day (circumstances) reveals it. Expectations are deep down desires that I think need to be cultivated, not ignored. In some circumstances, your expectations need to shift or be changed because some of them are poisonous. Ultimately, the problem you perceive is tied to some kind of expectation you have in your life. Now, we can take our definition of what a problem is even further. A problem is an expectation or desire that has does not match what we expect reality to be. The problem does not lie in reality as such, it lies in causal structures we have mapped over reality. Here’s an example.

The man and the flat tyre parable

There was as man who was driving home from work on a rainy afternoon when suddenly his tyre blew out. Angry at the situation the man slowly edges over to the curb and gets out to assess his problem. He studies his problem and doesn’t see the 18 wheeler approaching from behind. He is hit and killed. Now his problem no longer exists. Why? Because he is dead. Problems are perspectives on events that are tied to deep rooted expectations of what we take things to be. Here is another one.

The stock market problem

The CEO of SuperCompany Inc. (sorry burned out at the moment couldn’t think of a snazzier name), walks into his office one morning to a frantic Chief Financial Officer. He says to the lady, ‘My God Chloe, wants the matter, you look like crap?’ The CFO hands the CEO a piece of paper with a media report that the company is going bankrupt due to bad investments in Australian wheat. The CEO takes one look at the piece of paper and throws it in the bin. The CFO is amazed. ‘Why did you do that,’ she asks. He looks back at her and says, ‘That’s not my problem,’ he says, ‘my problem is that we are going bankrupt and you had to tell me via a media report!’

In this example we can see that neither the CEO or CFO were aware of the problem until it was created for them to believe. These are boundary judgments. Those ideas which we create that form rules and expectations of what we think is the case. In this case the company didn’t think it was going bankrupt. How much of what you hear is ‘actually’ the case? There is a reality and you can be sure it will impact on you but it’s a reality of intersecting ideas and thoughts some of which cause great problems (like the internet bubble burst) and some of which cause smaller ones.

Three ways of exploring a problem by changing your mind

There are three ways I know of problem solving by changing your mind. Here we go:

Doing nothing

When we absolve a problem we actually do nothing. There are times when a ‘wait and see’ approach is called for. Say you are building an adwords campaign to boost traffic to your website. You select a bunch of keywords and wait. They come back with a little bit more traffic everyday than the amount you had before. A bit more, a bit more and a bit more. Imagine if you grew impatient? You then start to muck about with keywords and ruin the campaign. In this case you should do nothing, observe and then take action if required.

Invoke dialectical processes

When you begin to examine life from many angles you begin to see just how limiting your point of view is. If you are facing a problem you can’t solve. Begin to play the devil’s advocate. Take the heart of the contradiction and expose it for what it really is. I recommend using at least four contradictory ideas to analyse the situation. Let’s go back to our stockbroker example above. What if he said the CFO, ‘I don’t believe the report because I trust your judgement… are we going bankrupt?’ He could have also taken the dreamers approach, ‘Now that I have read this report, I believe it will turn out for our good.’ In turn he could have taken a mathematical approach, ‘Show the numbers is this true?’ Then again he could have taken the view of a seasoned old veteran, ‘Listen to me, there is no crisis, people invent nonsense like this all the time. Put out a statement saying we are not going bankrupt and quote some numbers. People will believe that over some half-cocked media report.’ In short, take what you think the problem is and look at it’s enemy. By teasing out the enemy you will be able to see the faults in your own thinking.

Creative problem solving

Creative problem solving is the hardest and least likely to succeed in a problem solving intervention. This is when you take a brand new idea that hasn’t been tried which removes the old one completely. In this version you solve the problem by changing the expectation on which it’s framed. What? I mean you take the initial expectation of the problem, the idea that the problem is a problem and you begin to move into a new way of thinking that gets rid of the problem. In essence you change the rules of the expectation by shifting the ideas it’s built upon to a new solution that removes the need for the old one to exist. For example, our friend with the tyre problem had a death problem which is a nasty creative solution to his tyre problem. The tyre is the least of his worries.

When people create a problem it’s built on expectations and perceptions. Problems often revolve around what we think is the case. I know managers who will not make decisions because of fear. Fear stops creativity because it blocks the flow of anything opposed to it. You need to begin to create rather than do what you think you should. A creative solution is a new idea that moves the old out of the way. If a market problem emerges it’s because of perceptions. If there is a climate crisis, we have found that through our man-made data, analysis and conversations. If we find there isn’t… it’s exactly the same process.

When we change our mind about something new solutions begin to emerge.  As we learn to shift the perspectives that hold us back we will change our mind and new more creative solutions will spring up.

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Chuck Norris school of problem solving

November 24, 2007 / Luke / No comments

Many years ago I found out about Chuck Norris humour on the web and thought… there’s a fire and forget project. Man was I wrong. I got the email today as imagine most people have at least some time in their existence. So here we go the Chuck Norris School of problem solving:

  • In Pamplona, Spain, the people may be running from the bulls, but the bulls are running from Chuck Norris. (New!)
  • Chuck Norris uses pepper spray to spice up his steaks. (New!)
  • Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked someone so hard that his foot broke the speed of light, went back in time, and killed Amelia Earhart while she was flying over the Pacific Ocean.
  • Crop circles are Chuck Norris’ way of telling the world that sometimes corn needs to lie down.
  • Chuck Norris is ten feet tall, weighs two-tons, breathes fire, and could eat a hammer and take a shotgun blast standing.
  • The Great Wall of China was originally created to keep Chuck Norris out. It failed miserably.
  • Contrary to popular belief, Chuck Norris, not the box jellyfish of northern Australia, is the most venomous creature on earth. Within 3 minutes of being bitten, a human being experiences the following symptoms: fever, blurred vision, beard rash, tightness of the jeans, and the feeling of being repeatedly kicked through a car windshield.
  • Most people have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Chuck Norris has 72… and they’re all poisonous.
  • If you ask Chuck Norris what time it is, he always says, “Two seconds ’til.” After you ask, “Two seconds ’til what?” he roundhouse kicks you in the face.
  • Chuck Norris drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls.
  • When Chuck Norris sends in his taxes, he sends blank forms and includes only a picture of himself, crouched and ready to attack. Chuck Norris has not had to pay taxes, ever.
  • The quickest way to a man’s heart is with Chuck Norris’ fist.
  • Chuck Norris invented Kentucky Fried Chicken’s famous secret recipe, with eleven herbs and spices. But nobody ever mentions the twelfth ingredient: Fear.
  • CNN was originally created as the “Chuck Norris Network” to update Americans with on-the-spot ass kicking in real-time.
  • Chuck Norris can win a game of Connect Four in only three moves.
  • There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris allows to live.
  • Chuck Norris once ate three 72 oz. steaks in one hour. He spent the first 45 minutes having sex with his waitress.
  • What was going through the minds of all of Chuck Norris’ victims before they died? His shoe.
  • Chuck Norris is the only man to ever defeat a brick wall in a game of tennis.
  • Police label anyone attacking Chuck Norris as a Code 45-11…. a suicide.
  • Chuck Norris doesn’t churn butter. He roundhouse kicks the cows and the butter comes straight out.
  • Chuck Norris doesn’t wash his clothes, he disembowels them.
  • A Handicapped parking sign does not signify that this spot is for handicapped people. It is actually in fact a warning, that the spot belongs to Chuck Norris and that you will be handicapped if you park there.
  • Chuck Norris will attain statehood in 2009. His state flower will be the Magnolia.
  • Someone once videotaped Chuck Norris getting pissed off. It was called Walker: Texas Chain Saw Masacre.
  • If you spell Chuck Norris in Scrabble, you win. Forever.
  • Chuck Norris originally appeared in the “Street Fighter II” video game, but was removed by Beta Testers because every button caused him to do a roundhouse kick. When asked bout this “glitch,” Norris replied, “That’s no glitch.”
  • Fool me once, shame on you. Fool Chuck Norris once and he will roundhouse you in the face.
  • The opening scene of the movie “Saving Private Ryan” is loosely based on games of dodgeball Chuck Norris played in second grade.
  • Chuck Norris once shot down a German fighter plane with his finger, by yelling, “Bang!”
  • Chuck Norris once bet NASA he could survive re-entry without a spacesuit. On July 19th, 1999, a naked Chuck Norris re-entered the earth’s atmosphere, streaking over 14 states and reaching a temperature of 3000 degrees. An embarrassed NASA publically claimed it was a meteor, and still owes him a beer.
  • Chuck Norris has two speeds: Walk and Kill.
  • Someone once tried to tell Chuck Norris that roundhouse kicks aren’t the best way to kick someone. This has been recorded by historians as the worst mistake anyone has ever made.
  • Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy, it is a Chucktatorship.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is based on a true story: Chuck Norris once swallowed a turtle whole, and when he crapped it out, the turtle was six feet tall and had learned karate.
  • Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse… horses are hung like Chuck Norris.
  • Faster than a speeding bullet … more powerful than a locomotive … able to leap tall buildings in a single bound… yes, these are some of Chuck Norris’s warm-up exercises.
  • Chuck Norris is the only human being to display the Heisenberg uncertainty principle — you can never know both exactly where and how quickly he will roundhouse-kick you in the face.
  • In the Bible, Jesus turned water into wine. But then Chuck Norris turned that wine into beer.
  • Chuck Norris can hit you so hard that he can actually alter your DNA. Decades from now your descendants will occasionally clutch their heads and yell “What The Hell was That?”
  • Time waits for no man. Unless that man is Chuck Norris.
  • Chuck Norris discovered a new theory of relativity involving multiple universes in which Chuck Norris is even more badass than in this one. When it was discovered by Albert Einstein and made public, Chuck Norris roundhouse-kicked him in the face. We know Albert Einstein today as Stephen Hawking.
  • Chuck Norris doesn’t shower, he only takes blood baths.
  • The Chuck Norris military unit was not used in the game Civilization 4, because a single Chuck Norris could defeat the entire combined nations of the world in one turn.
  • In an average living room there are 1,242 objects Chuck Norris could use to kill you, including the room itself.
  • According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, the Native American “Trail of Tears” has been redefined as anywhere that Chuck Norris walks.
  • Chuck Norris does not teabag the ladies. He potato-sacks them.
  • Pluto is actually an orbiting group of British soldiers from the American Revolution who entered space after the Chuck gave them a roundhouse kick to the face.
  • When Chuck Norris goes to donate blood, he declines the syringe, and instead requests a hand gun and a bucket.
  • There are no steroids in baseball. Just players Chuck Norris has breathed on.
  • Chuck Norris once challenged Lance Armstrong in a “Who has more testicles?” contest. Chuck Norris won by 5.
  • Chuck Norris was the fourth wise man, who gave baby Jesus the gift of beard, which he carried with him until he died. The other three wise men were enraged by the preference that Jesus showed to Chuck’s gift, and arranged to have him written out of the bible. All three died soon after of mysterious roundhouse-kick related injuries.
  • Chuck Norris sheds his skin twice a year.

Category: life problems, rants / Tags: ,

How to dissolve a problem: A lesson from a six year old

November 11, 2007 / Luke / One comment

I went to the Mr Toys Toyworld yesterday to buy a Vmigo for my daughter.  She had some money she wanted to spend but she didn’t want to spend it because she really wants a DS lite. She got worked up to the point of tears about having to compromise one over the other.  Then as we talked about it she realised she could have both if she was prepared to wait for what she wanted.  If she simply waiting a few more months or perhaps up to a year she could get the Vmigo.  As I sit here typing this she looks very happy playing with the Vmigo.

The problem was: choose one or the other.  When in reality she could have chosen both and not had to compromise one or the other.  In academic circles we call this ‘dissolving the problem.’ This is where you take the higher order constraints of the problem and change the conditions that cause the issue to exist.  So instead of my daughter having to choose one or the other she came to a higher order conclusion where both were possible.  Try this way of thinking in your own life and why not let me know in the forum how it works out.

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The Pakistan crisis is a good example of a messy problem

November 6, 2007 / Luke / No comments

In management circles the idea that problems can be messy (not structured, poorly defined) has been around for some time. I was reading the news this morning and came across a good example of a messy problem. This is the Pakistan crisis. A messy problem is said to have no clear solution that will work and any idea that is used might make the situation better or much worse. In this article the writer points out how the Pakistan crisis is good for business. Two different viewpoints are offered here and we can express them meaningfully as a narrative:

“The Pakistan crisis threatens economic stability”

and

“Businesses are worried about their future because they attach it to Pervez Musharraf staying in power”

From a business point of view a political crisis is an economic crisis because later in the article the report notes the economy fell as a result of the news that the General may not be in control. This is perception is it not? The perception or idea that he is not control is causing economic problems. Think about it… that’s almost worth remembering and writing down!

So we see that what is happening in the political economy could make an impact on the business economy of Pakistan. Now to the solutions:

1. General Musharraf leaves

If he leaves the country may fall into economic turmoil destroying it’s livelihood.  There is a perceptual link between stability and Musharraf that needs to be handeld carefully here.
2. General Musharraf stays

If he stays political unrest may come anyway and then economic turmoil is coming anyway (apparently).

3. General Musharraf resigns his military post but stays on as Prime Minister

The market will see this as a show of weakness and in favour of political stability we have economic instability. This in turn would lead to more political instability in the long term and would keep the country in turmoil over a longer period of time.

4. General Musharraf keeps his military position but resigns leadership of the country

This option would see a new election. Possibly Imran Kahn or Benezir Bhutto could take power. This would mean a conversation would need to be struck between Kahn or Bhutto about how the military role would play out in the new government. I would think this is impossible given that both of the aforementioned people are currently on the run.

5. General Musharraf is ‘removed’ and a democratic election held… again

Say for a moment that Musharraf goes into exile and a new election is held. This would mean either Kahn or Bhutto would get in. Which would mean in the short term (according to the article) that economic unrest would follow. Now, for a country that already has a history of economic problems, this would be a huge blow. Economic turmoil always seems to follow political unrest.

6. Any of the above solutions may lead to unrest which in turn may lead to drug growth industries

Consider this article on Lebanon and the growing drug trade there.  When unrest occurs, the restrains are lifted off and crime begins to rise.  Unrest means chaos and this in turn means legal, political, economical systems begin to fall apart.  Sure, it’s the illusion of control but it’s an illusion that’s real enough alright.

These are just a few options that on the surface present new ideas which in turn present new problems. In order to effectively overcome such problems in life you need to dissolve the problem. How can this crisis be dissolved?  A higher order solution that removes the problems above is required.  Yet, none immediately spring to mind. Everything that I think of only makes new problems.  I could go on and list solutions here but what is really required is a change of perspective.   A fresh set of ideas.  Yet in a country that is in this much turmoil it’s unlikely that it will ever occur.  Do you have any ideas?

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Category: life problems / Tags: , , , , ,

4 ways to find a problem

September 6, 2007 / Luke / No comments

How do we even know we have a problem? Well this post will show you four ways you can know you have a problem.

1. Look for symptoms.

The first thing you need to do to consider carefully the evidence you have before you. What are the facts? Write a list of everything you think the symptoms are and consider them carefully. What is the evidence telling you? Remember problems belong to people and people form the world around them largely in their heads. Evidence can be created and facts manipulated. Look carefully at these things and see if a conclusion can be drawn… does a problem then become evident?

2. Looking for things that concern us

A clever trick our mind plays on us is that it makes us think that problems are somehow separate to our understanding of them. That is, people will use the language of ‘well I have this problem’ or ‘the problem is I have …’. All the while not realising that what bothers them is in their mind. When you take a good hard look for things that bother you then you will begin to see the areas of life that you think are problematic. If you are from the mathematical tradition you will think I why I just said is rubbish. But consider this, you now have found a problem because I am bothering you!

3. What is effecting us?

Another way you can identify a problem is to look for things that you don’t control that are effecting you. For example, say you are out in the rain getting wet… you are in total control of where you stand but you are not in control of the rain. Problems are exactly the same. However, you can recognise that which comes from the outside and that which falls on you simply by thinking… what are the things I am not controlling that are effecting me in this situation. By doing this you can begin to see bigger picture realities. These bigger picture things are often how other people treat you, how your work operates, how the economy operates and political things. You can’t control those things to suit yourself but you can recognize their influence on you and begin to identify the problems you are seeing.

4. Looking for things that are ‘all in your head’

The final way to identify a problemis the issue of their not being a problem. Now, there are things that effect us in the way the world operates as discussed above but there are times when the problem we have is nothing more than a construction of our psyche. In a recent interchange with a person I work with I noticed that they were greatly upset by something I had said in a group email that was not even intended for them. I ended up having to apologise for something that I didn’t even do wrong. Why was this the case? The person who read what I had wrote took issue as if it was directed at them when it was directed as somebody else. They created the problem. Apart from them thinking it was an issue there really was no issue at all.

These kinds of problems are usually related to underlying issues of the mind and emotions. I ended on this point because it’s a really important one… what you think the problem is… the problem is. If you have a tendency towards technical solutions you will look for technical problems. If you are led by your heart then you will gravitate to heart solutions. Ultimately the rest is up to you but that is another post for another day.

There is a podcast associated with this post which you can download for free here. Thanks for reading.

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Why is business so heartless?

August 25, 2007 / Luke / One comment

Sometimes I wonder why people forget that human beings are the ones that work in a business. As these people say: it’s easy to maintain your heart and keep your business growing. Recent trends in emotional intelligence point us towards the need to pay more attention to these things. Have you ever noticed that in each place you have worked there seems to be an essence to it? There is a spirit to the workplace. There is a heart. Modern business focuses a lot on making money and profiteering but very few businesses focus on the heart. Now, a wise man once said to me you cannot have a business and have a heart at the same time. Not true.

Some people put profits before people and in their mind separate business from being human. Phrases like, ‘well this is business’ is your way of saying, ‘I value money over human relationships.’ Another one I hear is, ‘I am in business to make money.’ Of course you are but exactly who are you going to make money from? Who is going to help you make money? People. Behind every employee is a heart. Each time you mistreat people you shifting your heart away from business and onto things that are less important.

Heartless people… heartless practice

I am amazed at how people think they can succeed by bullying and coercing people into making them do things. Recently, a person who was working for me was told that they might not have any work. Instead of talking to me directly they went straight to my supervisor and told them I had to hire them because of their qualifications. When that didn’t work they went even higher. My reaction was one of shock… all I said was there might be no work. When I was asked about it I had no idea how to respond and felt as if my role as supervisor had been marginalised. Due to this I was later forced to remove two other people who were less qualified but had more heart. Qualifications are important but not more important than the human spirit.

I have had close personal friends do me this way as well, people who favoured the business end and the money in preference to friendship or collegiality. I have heard it said that we should never go into business with our friends because the heart decisions we will have to make will obscure our judgement. On the other hand I have also heard that if I can’t trust the people I am in business with then my business is unlikely to succeed. I would say it this way, trust people you are in business with and treat them with the heart first. Never allow your desire for money overrule your heart in business. This is a great mistake and one that you will live to regret for years.

Keeping the balance

There is however a chance that you will look for heart issues where there are none. You can always put people first and make those kinds of choices but there comes a time when decisions need to be made for the sake of the business. What happens when you can’t pay someone? Wave goodbye and say ‘good luck’. No. There is still a way to deal with this in the heart way. Help the person find alternative employment. Exhaust all avenues, go the extra mile. People love to do the wrong thing and then make excuses for it. ‘Well I just had to let him go.’ Of course … but how did you set them on their way… what did you do to help them? After all, didn’t they work for you for years? How about showing some respect for the time they gave to you outside of regular hours? Sadly, we keep expecting more for less.

In closing this post I would like to remind you that you are a human being first and whatever comes next second. Your identity is born through the fact that you are a human. When you say things like: business is business. You are separating the heart from business. Business is heartless because we have placed the heart on the outside when we make decisions. Even in contemporary so-called spiritual practices we do this by focusing on what we can accumulate for ourself instead of focusing on what we can do for and with others. I would ask you to rethink how you handle your customers and your co-workers. Do you treat them with heart or as a resource to be exploited. People will always have heart no matter how tough their exterior may be. Why not bring the heart back to your business and do what’s right.

Category: making decisions, rants, the heart / Tags:

Life Skills: building skills that matter

August 9, 2007 / Luke / No comments

Over the next few months I am going to post regular sections about life skills in this blog. As a university lecturer I am astounded to find people that lack the qualities that make for a good life. I am not talking about reading and writing I am talking about being able to succeed in life. Have a look at this quote:

“You grab a challenge, act on it, then honestly reflect on why your actions worked or didn’t. You learn from it and then move on. That continuous process of lifelong learning helps enormously in a rapidly changing economic environment.” John Kotter (American Academic at Harvard Business School in Fortune, 22 August, 1994).
People I meet at University couldn’t grab a sandwich let alone challenge. I am not speaking only of undergraduates but people
who have been working for many, MANY years. These people are the ones that seem to think it’s okay to sit back and let things come to you
without having any idea what to do about it. I encounter this kind of victim mentality’ all the time. So what’s missing?

Life skills are those essential qualities we need to possess in order to have a reasonably successful life. Without them all we have is empty vein ideas
about what works and what doesn’t. At University all we do is teach people how to remember facts without actually imparting any of these skills
to the people that will be the managers of the future. I am speaking about generic skills like: problem solving, time management, creative thinking and the ability to learn and grow over the course of one’s life. People I meet in graduate and undergraduate circle generally lack these kinds of skills. Oh, they are good are knowing what to write and how to put the words to make it sound appealing to their tutor but they are these people the next generation of world leaders and problem solvers? I think not.

As a personal response to this problem I want to introduce the topic of building a skill set for life. These are the skills I see our graduates are missing and are in desperate need of attention. What are some of these basic skills:

  • Learning: Being able to think for oneself
  • Strategic Thinking: Understanding the diversity of views and opinions available and the inherent complexity of social things
  • Problem Solving: Being able to solve problems by offering better solutions to previously ill-defined problems
  • Communication: Being able to send a message clearly and understand not just what is being said but what the sender means
  • Managing relationships: Understanding the roles relationships play in our lives and how this works
  • Creative Thinking: Making use of lateral thinking and out of the box ideas
  • Perspective Shifting: Moving between different points of view to come up with ideas that match the problems faced
  • Bridge Building: Knowing how to take steps forward to improve problems rather than make excuses for living with them
  • Reflection: Thinking back on what’s happened, milking mistakes for learning purposes and planning future action to take advantage of it

Life skills to me are not being able to read so much as knowing what the writer means. It’s not being able to add up endless reams of mathematical equations as it is
the applicability of ideas to problems. It’s not knowing who to step over but understanding the chain of relationships in any environment and where you can go from there.
You see, the stuff of life is not like what we teach at Universities. It’s real. Really real. We need to move towards understanding these things if we are to get
serious about the future of our planet.

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Category: life problems / Tags:

Problems Problems Problems…

August 4, 2007 / Luke / 2 comments

Welcome to my first post on this blog. What can you expect to find here in coming months? Lots of articles, podcasts, things and more things! To start off this new venture I have embarked on I decided that the best thing to do would be to give you some kind of idea as to what you might find on this site. So here we go: what are problems?

The oft quoted definition of problems (by way of Herbert Simon no doubt) is that they are a gap between what we expect and what eventuates in life. So a better way of saying is that problems occur when our expectations are not met. So, for example, I recently didn’t get a journal publication I was really hoping for so a problem arose for me when I noticed that it was an issue. However, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that ‘reality’ gave this problem apart from me expecting it. That is, I really wanted to get that publication out and I really wanted it published. I had the expectation and hope that it would get up and I would have it but when I didn’t my expectations changed. The problem technically existed before I was rejected from the esteemed publication in question. More to the point the problem does not exist in reality because I have formed the problem in my mind. If I changed my mind there is no problem.

When we set expectations above our capabilities and think that the world will accommodate us we are sadly mistaken. Why? There are standards people set in these journals for whatever reason (academic gatekeeping ) that I think I could never really meet. At the same time, I want to publish my work and have a reputation. Getting into these journals is a career requirement for us academics. The problem came about by me perceiving the situation at work to be one where I am required to get high ranking publications in order to get my career going. This is a condition imposed upon academics in general and one that is of debatable value.

So my problem resulted out of the pressure of my work environment through me perceiving the need to publish in such a journal and through the various reasonings I had formed in my mind as to what the problem I really had actually was! In plain English: I made it up in my head based on what people told me to expect. Should we do this? No. Why not? Simply because the problems we perceive are the problems we receive. I cannot say for sure that I even need to get into this journal to have a career… perhaps I don’t nevertheless while I think about it … the problem remains.

I thought about it some time later and realised that perhaps I had the wrong kind of expectations and maybe this kind of journal wasn’t for me. If I accept that view then the problem ceases to exist. I can change the way I think about the failure and find another avenue for delivery. I can find somewhere to put that publication where it can still get some exposure but maybe not as much. But, the problem still remains in my expectations. At some stage I would like a publication in that journal! So not getting the publication wasn’t the problem as such it was me expecting to get the publication… that’s the problem!

So there you have it. I am not sure what I have written makes a great deal of sense … but I am new to this whole environment so forgive me while I learn the ropes.

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