Who Supports You When You Have a Problem?

When you’re struggling with an issue, whether at work or home, it can be hard to pinpoint where the problem stems from. Or even whether it’s important.

Does the problem keep you awake at night? Then acknowledge that it is important and it needs dealing with. When you confide in someone about it, don’t let them tell you that it’s nothing. If you’re worrying, then it is a problem, and you need help to figure out where to start.

When you reach the sleepless night stage, or the point where it’s constantly encroaching your thoughts, creating a Problem Statement really helps. Ideally, before you’re losing sleep.

A Problem Statement is a great way to drill down into what the issue is. It involves asking yourself four major questions; the answers should then provide the solutions.

Problem Statement

• Condense the situation into one short sentence. That’s not always easy. But the process of writing it down on paper, whittling it down to one sentence, helps to begin the clarification stage.
• Why is it important to solve? What will it give you that you don’t have now? It could be needing a career change; extra money in the bank; improved relationships; or more headspace, reducing anxiety and stress.
• Who can help you tackle this? List the people who could help. Or decide if you can solve the issue on your own, perhaps with some planning or some other strategy.
• When do you need to overcome this problem by? Having a timeframe can help with the planning stage.

These steps are all it takes to help you gain something that’s really important to you. As you go through this process, you’re not only gaining clarity on the situation but also strengthening your resilience.

As you find the solutions – identifying the people who can help and discovering how to overcome the problem – you’re also gaining control.

Chunking Helps Your Planning

Once you’ve created an overall Problem Statement and clarified what needs doing, then you can make a plan.

Drawing up a written plan is helpful when you need to overcome a problem, especially when you utilise my chunking up and down process. Doing this helps to break the issue down into small, easy to deal with areas.

Chunking is ideal for problem solving; chunking down helps to manage the process and chunking up helps you to find the motivation through what is important.

First, draw a line down the length of a piece of paper. Title the left-hand column: What I Can Do, and the column on the right: Where I Need Help.

As you break your problem down into as small pieces as possible using my chunking process, each of those ‘chunks’ will go into one of those columns. Put the name of the person next to the issue in the ‘I Need Help’ column.

Who Supports You?

Breaking problems down can be an arduous process. Happily, when you’ve finished the exercise, you should clearly see both what you know you can manage and who you need support from.

It could be that the very first thing you put on your list is to find support to break the problem down! A coach can really help in this situation.

Once you’ve found your solutions and you’re clearer on where you’re heading, adding some specific goals along the timeline of your plan will help you overcome the problem. To keep motivated, remind yourself of your answers to the second question – why solving the issue is important.

My Problem

When I competed professionally in Judo, I met a Brazilian competitor who I could never beat. I had to find a way to beat him!

That’s when I discovered David Brailsford, now Sir David Brailsford CBE. Well-known for introducing ‘Marginal Gains’ when training the British Cycling team, he aimed to improve by one percent a day. Every time the team went to the velodrome, they would look at every tiny detail – the tyre tread, oil on the chain, pedal size, and lots more. His tactics worked, transforming Britain into a dominant cycling nation.

Learning from Brailsford, we videoed the fights I had with the Brazilian guy and studied our techniques. That’s when we noticed various things that could be improved on, such as me needing to put my hand on a specific area of his jacket when he made certain moves. So, we went off and trained them.

To chunk my problem down more, we also had a psychologist to help with my mindset and a physiotherapist to help ensure my body was in good condition, especially after an injury.

Ask for Help!

Asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness. It’s recognition that the situation needs an outsider’s input when you’re too involved or overwhelmed by it. And it’s all linked to becoming more resilient.

So, when you have an issue to solve, create a Problem Statement and combine it with my Chunking technique. The entire process helps you to achieve your goals and turn what was a problem into a success.