Focus on the Solutions, Not the Problems

It is truly empowering to expand your focus beyond the problems to the small things you do that tend to make things better in your life.
When You Focus on the Solution, You Become Expert in What Works:
When you focus on the problems, you become an expert on your ineffectiveness and unhappiness. Focus on what isn't working creates discouragement and undermines your confidence and self-esteem. When you switch your focus to your small successes, you become an expert on the choices you make that can improve your life.
Think Small:
True lasting change occurs in tiny increments practiced over time until they become new habits. Slightly larger successes build on previous wins. Gradually, winning habits of thought and behavior get established and become the new norm. Life is made of little things. You make thousands of choices throughout the day - choices about how you act or react, choices about how you think or view the circumstances of your life. Most of us are not aware of the choices we make. We just act.
How to Become an Expert on the Solutions:
First identify problem areas in your life that you'd like to change:
• It drives you crazy when your spouse does those same things you've been complaining about for years.
• You'd like to shed a few pounds.
• Sometimes you're late paying your bills because they get lost in those mountains of mail on your dining room table.
The first step toward becoming an expert on the solutions is becoming curious about alternative choices you may never have considered before. Consider what you might do differently to impact on these situations.

Lasting transformation occurs through the aggregate of these small actions repeated over time. By focusing on the solutions - choices you can make to improve the situation - rather than getting stuck on what isn't working in your life, you bring about lasting positive change.
By the third or fourth session, my clients become expert at answering the ‘different and better' question.