Day 150: The ease of breaking

As a coach, I help clients break down their goals and challenges into smaller, more manageable pieces in order to conquer them.

As a human, this is something I struggle with. 

I've only recently learned the real ease that comes from breaking things down. Interestingly enough, this revelation firmly started to root when working on a challenge at work. A challenge I found incredibly frustrating and increasingly complicated the more I tried to solve it.

What made it so frustrating and complicated was trying to find a single solution for the entire thing. 

 

If something is complicated, that's a pretty good indicator that it involves different components. And if components are different, then it would make sense for them to be handled uniquely.

For the longest time, my focus was on finding a single solution to an entire problem. However, as I learned through my work challenge - and life in general - this approach isn't always helpful.

As I considered each component on it's own I noticed that my problem-solving felt . . . different. With each isolated component given its own attention, small steps of progress were visible. And rather than feeling frustrated that I didn't know the answer to the entire challenge, I felt motivated and encouraged by the small progress made. Confident that, with progress in each different area, the way to connect everything back together would become clearer as I went.

This approach feels light-years better than expecting to figure everything out all at once and putting pressure on yourself to do so.

I'm hopeful this was the experience needed to cement this breaking practice into habit. And at the very least, it will be a great framework to return to when faced with future challenges.