Tag Archives: problems

Walk Away to Gain Perspective

I have yet to meet a home business owner who didn’t wrestle with problems at various stages in building a business. It is just the nature of things that we will need to put on our problem-solving hat and figure out how to fix things, work with challenging people, and grow and expand our businesses. I have found, however, that when answers just are not coming—sometimes it is necessary to walk away in order to allow some perspective to develop in order to solve the problem. I am not talking about complete abandonment here, but instead allowing time and space … Continue reading →

When There Is a Void…Something Will Fill It

When we hear stories of children from single parent families getting into trouble, it is often NOT exclusively because they have one parent in the home, but there are generally other issues going on that might have been more likely to be noticed if there were two attentive parents. Other issues pop up and there may be gaps or a void. I subscribe to the opinion that if there is a void, a child will look for something to fill it… I don’t mean to say that we should strive to live perfect, ever-busy lives–but if there are big gaps … Continue reading →

Keep an Eye Out For Possible Problems

I have written about how I am NOT on board with the general mythology and theories that children who are raised by single parents have more problems than children who are not. This said, I do think that we can be diligent and not bury our heads in the sand. We can still keep an eye out for possible problems and try to catch them before they become huge. I think it takes some care and balance to stay alert, without jumping to conclusions and assuming that every normal developmental shift or evolution is a potential “child of a broken … Continue reading →

Problems Don’t Always Have to be Due to Single Parent Status

Popular culture and the mainstream press tend to want to turn to the increase of single parent households as an excuse for all sorts of things. When our children have a hard time, go through a rough stage, or get into trouble, people often turn to the “single parent” status of our families and try to place the blame. I admit that there are statistics that prove things like single parent families have lower incomes and thus there may be problems that result from this, but I do not always think that single parent status is to blame for everything … Continue reading →

Problem Customers or a Problem with Your Service Delivery?

Complaining about customers and clients seems to go with the business territory. We can’t figure out why they don’t fill out their order forms correctly, meet deadlines, or contact us during our business hours. BUT, is it always the other person’s fault? If you are finding that routine problems keep popping up, it might mean you need to take a look at how you are doing business. The easiest thing is to blame someone else, why can’t they just do things right? However, if people are complaining about your web site, or are unable to figure out how to place … Continue reading →

Detaching From Conflicts and Problems

I knew someone once who called it “churning yourself into butter”–all that fussing and worrying a person can do when she is faced with a conflict or problem. I know that many of us think that when it comes to business we need to stay in there and focus–fight the good fight! Sometimes, however, the thing to do is to detach and take our energy and focus away from a conflict or problem in order to gain fresh perspective and actually reach resolution and solution. Detaching is different from just abandoning or walking away from a conflict or problem. The … Continue reading →

It is Okay to Say Things Out Loud (In Fact, It Helps)

How can we solve problems and face challenges if we don’t even know what they are? Or, if we do know in the deep recesses of our minds what the problem is, but don’t actually say it out loud and get it out on the table, how can we face it, tackle it, and get on with things? It seems that in dealing with our children, or with family issues in general, often the first and hardest step is stating the problem or issue out loud so that everyone can work on it. Unstated problems have a lot of power. … Continue reading →

Are There Unresolved Problems?

I suppose it is pretty well known that it is not so much the problems and issues we know we need to work on that give us fits, it is the ones that we have nor or are not facing. When it comes to single parent families—there may be unresolved problems and issues coming from divorce, separation, death, or other realities that we haven’t completely dealt with and worked through. As long as those issues and problems are unresolved, we will have trouble getting on with building a healthy family… Putting things off or not facing all of our problems … 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 →

Relationship Problems

Relationship problems are the easiest to identify in other couples and sometimes hard to even begin to diagnose in your own relationship. The problem in the identification is linked to the level of involvement. In watching a television show about a couple having issues, the viewer is often given an omniscient view of what’s going on with both parties. They can see what ‘happened’ and what was ‘said’ and even how it was ‘misunderstood’ or ‘misrepresented.’ In essence, they are the watcher and their emotional involvement doesn’t color their perception of events because they have the luxury of being a … Continue reading →