We all know that resilience involves the way we overcome setbacks and deal with challenges in order to become stronger and gain more willpower. These skills come with time and practice and get better through experience, but there are ways to improve resilience by analyzing our previous experiences as well. There are many ways to become a more resilient person, but one of the most important is to analyze and improve the way we handle conflict and uncertainty.
One important quality that all resilient people share is the confidence in oneself to make important decisions without seconding guessing or self-doubt. This can be an extremely difficult task when the decision impacts the lives of many people, so it is important to build up this skill through daily life before being put into a larger situation.
Making decisions confidently requires a person to be open-minded and solution- oriented in order to have strong problem-solving skills. Below we will discuss what problem-solving skills consist of as well as how to improve and be a more confident problem solver.
6 Skills for Problem-Solving
Problem-solving skills are crucial when trying to build up your resilience. When your mind acts as a toolbox for conflict, you will have all of the skills necessary to face obstacles and uncertainty and act with confidence.
In order to step out of your comfort zone, you must believe in your problem- solving capabilities and use them to your advantage. Below are a few skills that are crucial to problem-solving.
1. Confidence
Trusting and believing in yourself is the most important quality of a good problem solver. Confidence improves your performance and allows you to step in and speak up even when the outcome is uncertain.
Being confident allows you to think through situations and voice your opinion regardless of who is in the room listening. Through confidence, you will find yourself trusting what your gut is telling you to do and will find solutions in new ways.
2. Open-Minded
Being flexible to the opinions of others is crucial for problem-solving. When large conflicts and uncertainty arise, you will likely be required to brainstorm with others and talk through potential solutions. When you are put in situations like these, you must be a good listener and be open-minded about what others have to say.
This will allow you to build off of their opinions and gain the respect of others during challenging times. Being open-minded requires you to look at things from many different perspectives other than your own in order to solve a problem which can be a difficult but crucial skill to possess.
3. Solution-Oriented
Being solution-oriented requires a sense of resilience and mental toughness that makes problem solving simpler and enjoyable. When you are looking at conflict as a place for a solution rather than a place to give up and let go of your dreams, you are letting go of your sense of resilience.
By being solution-oriented, you are constantly looking for ways to fix and improve which allows you to become the best version of yourself. Being solution-oriented means that you take an active approach rather than sitting back and letting problems get you down. This is extremely important when trying to become productive, efficient, and most importantly resilient.
4. Looking at the Bigger Picture
When setbacks arise and there are tons of uncertainty, you must learn to look at different perspectives. When you are extremely focused on something, you may find yourself in tunnel vision and set in your ways.
Looking at the bigger picture allows you to take a step back and look at the process as a whole. This can allow you to see solutions that you may not have in the past and figure out new ways to solve a problem.
Also, you may realize that the problem was not as impactful as it seemed.
5. Communication
When conflict arises, communication skills are necessary because you will often need advice and opinions from others. Being a good communicator requires that you be an active listener and listen with an open-mind. This can allow you to discover new solutions and talk through problems rather than trying to figure it all out on your own.
Make sure that when you feel stuck, you can reach out to others who are able to lift you up and support you because they can offer perspectives that you would have never thought of before.
Realizing that you are not alone and that others have gone through the same thing can build up a mental toughness and resilience necessary for facing tough battles.
6. Letting Go of Self-Doubt
Self-doubt is one of the biggest obstacles you will ever face. When problems seem daunting and impossible, self-doubt will take away your solution-oriented perspectives and make you want to give up.
Learning how to come to terms with self-doubt and analyzing why it occurs can make you emotionally strong and resilient towards obstacles.
6 Ways to Be a Better Problem Solver
We all face problems and decisions every day of our lives, so we can use these to our advantages to practice and find examples to analyze our skills. From deciding which roads to take to get to work in the morning, to whether or not you should
move to a different city, life is full of places where decisions are necessary. In order to take control of them, there are many different techniques to learn problem-solving skills.
When you notice yourself getting in your head or being filled with self-doubt during crucial times, it is important to sit with your thoughts and figure out places where you could improve your problem- solving skills. There are many ways to become a better problem solver and below are a few examples and techniques.
1. Brainstorming
One of the most important and effective problem-solving skills is brainstorming. When a problem arises, write down every possible solution you can think of with a pen and paper.
The act of writing out potential solutions will trigger the mind to become more solution-oriented and more ideas will arise. Eventually, you can analyze everything you wrote down and build off of these ideas to determine the most logical solution.
2. Ask Questions
When you are unsure of the best way to handle the problem, it is important tokeep asking yourself questions that begin with “Why.” This will allow you to go deep and find the roots of the problem in order to fully understand each aspect of it.
Ask yourself why the problem is there, why it is significant, why certain parts of the problem have gotten there, and other idea triggering questions. This will help you to go deeper when you have a problem and be resilient to the problem.
3. Find Support
Another important thing to remember when going through
difficult times is to reach out for support from others. You likely
know someone who has gone through the same thing or something similar that can provide important and useful points of advice for you.
By asking them questions and talking through the problem, you can discover new ideas that you have not thought of before. The support from your surroundings that comes from talking about problems rather than bottling them up allows you to be more confident and resilient making you less likely to give up.
4. Be Creative
It is important to step out of the box and be creative when an obstacle puts you at a standstill. You should be looking for solutions that seem crazy and out of the ordinary because these can sometimes be the most efficient ones.
Looking at things with a creative and open mindset provides you new perspectives that can be very important in problem solving. Creativity is an important way to solve problems in new ways that can help you to improve your problem-solving skills on your own.
5. Sleep
Although this may not be the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about being a productive problem-solver, sleep keeps your mind sharp and efficient. Sleep allows your brain to make associations between different ideas that are unrelated and let go of decisions based off of memory.
When you feel that you are at a standstill and cannot think of a solution for your problem, sometimes the best thing you can do is sleep on it and allow new ideas to resurface while sleeping. This can help your mind to step back and take a break and gain a fresh and sharp new perspective in the morning.
6. Logic Puzzles
Puzzles and games that stimulate the mind are great ways to build up new connections in the brain and significantly improve brain function. When you incorporate logic puzzles into your daily routine, you will train the mind to enjoy problem-solving and you will naturally become better at it.
When your problem-solving skills improve, you will feel more confident facing important conflicts in the workplace and in your personal life which will make you more resilient. Logic puzzles are a great way to begin practicing ways to becomemore solution oriented. Examples of logic games include Sudoku, Rubik’s Cubes,and Crossword Puzzles.
Conclusion
There are so many different ways to improve your problem-solving skills and become a more solution-oriented person. Being solution-oriented and open- minded allows you to look at problems from different perspectives and not fear uncertainty. When you sit down and analyze your thoughts and the ways that you solve problems, you will become more independent and able to solve problems confidently.
Being able to solve problems using skills like confidence, communication, creativity, and flexibility allows you to train the mind to be resilient. Resilience means bouncing back from conflict and allowing yourself to learn from and overcome it, so it is inevitable that problem- solving skills are strong.
Start by doing small things that you can incorporate into your routine to shift your mindset and become a better problem solver. Each day you are faced with many different problems to solve that can be used to your advantage for practice.
Take these small opportunities to shift the mind and you will find yourself confident and resilient making crucial decisions that impact the lives of many people.
Training your mind to solve problems allows you to be an effective and respectable leader. In both your personal and professional life, this sense of respect and trust is crucial to your resilience when taking risks and stepping out of your comfort zone.
