Tag Archives: problem solving

The Amazing Race and Your Marriage

Last night one of my all time favorite shows kicked off a new season: The Amazing Race. This show appeals to me because of the adventure, the sights, and the tasks Racers have to complete, but it also grabs me on another level. The human level. Watching how people, especially the dating and married couples, interact with each other entertains me most. We’re Not Alone I remember watching the first season with Wayne and cracking up at a couple trying to follow directions to the next clue box. First they started out just bickering, then it escalated into hollering and … Continue reading →

Using Kids’ Ideas and Solutions

Who says parents have to come up with all the good ideas? Or why is it that parents have to be the ones who think up all the consequences and problem-solving in a family? Encouraging kids to come up with solutions to problems and offer ideas to help solve family concerns is an important way to build family unity, but it also encourages the development of problem-solving skills. You might be surprised at how good kids can get at helping to solve family problems. Plus, I believe that being involved on the problem-solving side of things further helps kids develop … Continue reading →

Do Your Values Affect Your Decision-Making Style?

We each of us has a way that we go about operating and growing our home-businesses. While entrepreneurs tend to have some basic characteristics in common, we are also quite different. Since each of us has a way of operating or a “style”–it can be helpful to understand how that style and how our personal values can affect the way we make decisions and actually “do” business… Personal values have a lot to do with how we do business. I know that you may have been led to believe that business and personal stuff never mix, but that isn’t the … Continue reading →

When You Don’t Know What to Do…Wait…

We single parents are quite used to making decisions under pressure and rising to the challenges that present themselves. But, there are those times when we may be at our wit’s end; we don’t know what to do about a particular parenting issue, a financial consideration, or whether to move, take a new job, start dating, whatever. As the solo adult decision-maker in our families, we might be tempted to put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make a great decision or choice YESTERDAY. Instead, when obvious answers don’t present themselves right away, ease up, take a break, and … Continue reading →

Do You Have Enough Information to Make a Good Decision?

When it comes to our home businesses, it is often NOT that we cannot make a good or reasonable decision when problem-solving opportunities arrive, but that we don’t gather enough information prior to making those decisions. We may feel rushed or as if we need to make a quick decision right now and we haven’t even gotten a clear picture of the problem or the situation yet. It may just be a matter of our needing to take time to gather all that information, in order to make sound and successful decisions. It takes some patience and persistence in order … Continue reading →

How Important Are Other’s Opinions in Your Decisions?

Our businesses do not exist in a vacuum, and if we are sole proprietors working away in our little home-based businesses, we do come in contact with other people. We also come in contact and are influenced by other people’s opinions and ideas. As you go about the daily grind of building your home business, how influenced are you by what others say and do? Surely there are trends in any industry, there are also “best practices” that pop up continually for the business world as a whole. Some people are able to stick to their chosen course without much … Continue reading →

Sleep On It!

How many times do I need to repeat this? Sleep is good for you. Apparently I have to repeat it a lot… a recent survey by Prevention magazine found that more than 50% of all busy women (that includes stay at home moms, ladies with full time jobs, business owners, and more) make sleep the first thing to go when the pressure is on. But sleep is good for you! Really! A study from Harvard Medical School is demonstrating (once again) that a good night’s sleep can make your brain function better. Folks who volunteered for the study were divided … Continue reading →

Making Decisions Under Stress?

I wrote earlier in the month about how exhaustion can impair our ability to make good, clear decisions. As single parents who are often doing and managing more than the average person, we can have a tendency to let ourselves get run down and so tired, we have trouble thinking clearly and meeting the needs of our families. BUT, we can also be susceptible to a great deal of stress and making decisions under stress can be disastrous. The problem is, however, we often cannot put off making decisions and solving big issues, just because we are stressed out or … Continue reading →

Are You Solving Other People’s Problems Instead of Your Own?

The idea for this blog came to me during a recent conversation with a colleague, he actually posed this question to me–asking if I was not spending too much time trying to offer advice and be available to all sorts of other people–friends, family, etc.–that I wasn’t taking the time tend to my own problems and business issues. Well, isn’t this always the case, though? It is so much easier to see what other people should be doing to fix their problems–than it is to see what we should do to fix and attend to our own! This can be … Continue reading →

How Many Ways Can We Solve This Problem?

Teaching problem-solving skills is one of the challenges of parenting. If we are to send competent, capable adults out into the “real world,” they need to be able to face life’s difficulties and solve problems. One tool for teaching kids to be good problem-solvers is to try to identify at least three different ways to solve a problem that presents itself. Helping kids understand that problems can be looked at from different angles and that there may be more than one possible “solution” is a great way to approach coaching problem-solving. You can even make a game out of it … Continue reading →