There are many ways to look at problems. You can simply call them “projects,” for example. You can see your problem as someone else’s solution. If you dig deep, you might even realize that the problem itself is the answer. But at the end of the day, whether it’s through reframing or addressing, at some point, every problem needs a solution.
In chemistry, a solution is a liquid mixture of at least two substances. That means it’s flowing. In your life, solutions, too, are permanently in flux. Like a river running through your garden, they come and they go—and that makes for boundless possibilities. You can use a river’s water to nourish your plants, but you can also drink it. You can bathe in it, boil food in it, even wash your clothes. With a river of solutions running through your life, you’re never short on ideas.
When Nat Eliason had to shut down his newly opened café due to COVID, there was no way to make up for that setback with another restaurant venture. So instead, he focused on his online course and SEO agency, and his wife went into real estate. “When a business, project, investment, anything is starting to lose money, our first instinct is to fix the leak,” he wrote about the experience. “But the whole benefit of working on a variety of projects is that if one starts to become a cost center, you don’t have to make up the difference there. You can make it up somewhere else.”
We have a natural understanding of this concept in some areas, but rarely in the ones where it counts. When a plant in your garden is about to dry out, you don’t just dig into the earth around it, do you? After all, what could you possibly hope to find there? It’s much easier to go to the river, get some water, and give it to your plant. There was no solution anywhere near the source of the challenge—so you got one from elsewhere. This habit should come naturally in our careers and personal lives, too.
When your project isn’t working, an industry keeps rejecting you, or your child doubles down after every punishment, stop. Don’t dig where you stand. Go to the river of solutions, and fetch a fresh cup of water. Breakthroughs are abundant—if only we are willing to look at life as more than walls.