During the bleakest time of my life, my neighbor John stopped by to see how I was doing. Relieved that someone cared about me (I told you this was bleak), I rattled off a lengthy list of my latest woes. When I finished, John put his arm around my shoulder, smiled at me and said, \u201cBarbara, you\u2019ve got the wrong set of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
He thought for a moment and said, \u201cWell, you should be worrying about where to find a good mechanic for your Mercedes Benz.\u201d<\/p>\n
As dismal as I felt, John reminded me that this was a temporary condition. This conversation also awakened me to the fact that not <\/em>having problems isn\u2019t an option. No matter what level of success we achieve, to be alive means that we\u2019ll have problems to solve. Thank goodness.<\/p>\n Paul Hawken says there\u2019s an easy way to determine if a business is good or bad. \u201cA good business has interesting problems,\u201d he says, \u201cwhile a bad business has boring ones.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem with problems, then, isn\u2019t that we have them, but that we hold onto such petty ones. When we fail to solve our little problems, our everyday living problems, we forfeit any possibility of getting more interesting ones to solve. If you want to have intriguing problems to solve, you\u2019ve got to first solve the ones you\u2019ve got. Then you get to trade up for the interesting ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n $100 Hour.<\/strong> Ask yourself, \u201cWho\u2019s got a problem I know how to solve?\u201d Often when we have mastered something–whether it\u2019s installing a toilet or salsa dancing–we forget that not everyone that would like to do what we\u2019ve done has learned how. Solving problems is the basis for many profitable businesses.<\/p>\n Explore More:<\/strong> Clare Bean\u00a0 and Morgan Siler are single mothers who decided to solve a problem they had themselves…the isolation of raising kids on their own. They started\u00a0<\/span> i Heart Single Parents<\/a>\u00a0 to bring single parents together in a community where they could connect. They\u2019ve also just launched Single Parent<\/a><\/em> magazine to share more ideas and information with single parents everywhere.<\/p>\n Wise people put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During the bleakest time of my life, my neighbor John stopped by to see how I was doing. Relieved that someone cared about me (I told you this was bleak), I rattled off a lengthy list of my latest woes. When I finished, John put his arm around my shoulder, smiled at me and said,…<\/p>\n