1 Important Lesson a Cold Shower Can Teach You About Problem-Solving

Hi, dear reader!

Again, it’s been some time since my last post and I apologise for that. There are a few reasons:

Firstly, I have still been encountering various tech problems with my blog and have had to nail these to make sure you get the best experience with your visit. There are a couple of small niggles that still need fixing, but everything should be pretty much working now.

If you do encounter any issues, such as being unable to leave a comment or share my posts, then please let me know by dropping me an e-mail.

Secondly, I am in the process of transferring parts of my business infrastructure over to other platforms. This will allow me to better serve my audience in a number of ways. But for now, it just means that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes.

So again, if you come across anything that doesn’t seem to look quite right or behave in the most logical way, then it’s likely due to this reshuffling and tweaking.

But I miss my regular blogging and all the interaction that this brings, so I am endeavouring to get back into my regular schedule.

So, without further ado, let’s get into today’s topic…

It Was Just Like Any Ordinary Day…

A couple of weeks or so ago, I was taking a shower. No great big dealio there.

Aside from the fact that cleanliness is majorly important, I was showering on this particular occasion because I was heading out for the evening.

I don’t know about you, but I find myself going into my own little world when I shower.

Some people sing, maybe some people dance? I don’t know! (I don’t do that – well, okay, I may sing now and again, but I’m a singer anyway, so I can get away with it 😉 )

But me, I just kind of drift off and allow my thoughts to just run wild and free while the hot water cascades down all over me.

Imagine how quickly my thoughts returned to the here and now when, all of a sudden, the cascading ceased.

Without fanfare or warning, the water just stopped.

For a moment I just stood there, wet, half soap-sudded perplexed as to what was going on.

Had the electricity gone off? No, because the lights were still on.

Then I recalled that the shower had its own fuse in the fusebox underneath the stairs. So perhaps it was just that the fuse had tripped for some reason.

Regardless, I was still half soap-sudded and there was no way I was going to crawl around under the stairs in that state.

Meanwhile, while I was standing there in this wet, half soap-sudded, befuddled and increasingly chilly state, time was marching on.

So, in addition to the current sans shower state I was in, the realisation that I would probably now be late for my appointment began to set in too.

The next stage in this series of events was despair and frustration.

“Why NOW??” I cried, “WHY does this have to happen when I need to be somewhere? If it’s going to do it, why couldn’t it do it when I wasn’t in a rush?”

A Decision Had to Be Made!

So, I got to thinking. If I was going to be late, I was going to be late. I couldn’t change that.

What I needed to do, was address the problem at hand, which was the fact that I was still half covered in soap.

Do I just wipe the soap off with a towel?

No, I decided that this wasn’t going to be a good idea for my skin.

Okay, so I had eliminated that option. So, my shower wasn’t working, I wasn’t going to just wipe off the soap with a towel, so that meant I had to wash it off with water.

But the shower wasn’t working.

BUT – the bath taps were!

Simple – I could run a bit of water into the bath and wash the remaining soap off that way.

That would have been great, except for that fact that I had no hot water at that moment. The water that comes through the taps is heated via a gas boiler, which wasn’t on right then.

But water would still come through…

So, that was my solution. I had no other chance than to rinse myself off with freezing cold water.

Ugh!

So, that is what I did.

There was no way I was going to actually immerse myself in a bath of cold water though, so I just had to throw the water over me.

So I ended up finishing my shower – it was just freezing cold and I had to do it manually!

By this point, I was so frustrated, uncomfortable and late that I was beginning to wonder if it was even worth going out now. I just didn’t feel motivated anymore.

But no. I gave myself a mental kick up the backside, got myself into overdrive and carried on regardless.

Eventually, I made it to where I was going, albeit a bit late, but in the end I was glad that I’d made the effort and not just given up because I’d hit a few stumbling blocks along the way.

The Lesson

Have you ever had a similar experience in your online business?

I think we all have, right?

This is probably especially true when just starting out.

We have our schedule all planned out, we know the things that we need to do and in which order and we start off well enough.

But then something unexpected happens and it throws a spanner in the works.

Initially, we just can’t see a way around it and we just end up getting more and more frustrated, even to the point of losing our motivation and feeling that we may as well just jack it all in and give up.

Have you ever felt like that? I know I have – many times!

The thing I took away from my shower experience, though, is that there is always a solution to a problem.

It might not be the most ideal solution. It might not be the most convenient solution. It might even make us feel uncomfortable. But it gets the task at hand done.

The whole situation might take us off track and delay us for a while. And we may, at that moment, feel so disheartened that we lose our joy and enthusiasm and feel like just giving up.

But it’s only temporary. Once we find the solution we can move past the problem and carry on.

And once we have found a solution to deal with that particular problem and got past it, we can then go back afterwards and address what caused the issue in the first place.

By the way, the problem with my shower was exactly what I suspected – the fusebox had just tripped, for some reason.

But I didn’t find that out until later. Once I’d manged to get myself ready, I went out and enjoyed my evening.

It was only when I got back home and was able to address the issue of what had caused the problem in the first place that I found the root cause and was able to fix it.

Have You Had a Similar Experience?

Have you ever found yourself confronted by an problem for which there seems no way around?

Did you find a solution?

What led you to that conclusion?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and any tips that you may have for tackling problems.

Please leave a comment below!