Every time I get with my oldest group of friends we regress to being 12-year olds. During a recent regression one of my buds said, “Dude! You had the best comeback of all time! Remember when that guy said ‘Didn’t your mother teach you to wash your hands after you pee?!?!’ And you fired right back, ’My mother taught me not to pee on my hands!’”
I’ve always been (even when young and dumb) a believer in continual improvement and understanding why something was happening so that I could fix it once and not repeatedly. I find it’s a good practice to identify if you are dealing with a SYMPTOM or a CAUSE when problem solving or discussing issues.
Say you cut your hand in the kitchen using a knife. It’s easy to see the symptom - bleeding from a cut - and do something to fix it - put a band-aid on it. The identifying and addressing the underlying cause can be a little bit harder and take a bit more effort. In this case it might be not knowing how to properly use a knife or having poor manual dexterity. And the fix might be to get training on how to use a knife or PT for your hand. More time to address but just think of the band-aids and lost blood you will save!
Now, for a moment, think of a significant issue you are dealing with in your live that you want to address. How much would it be worth it to spend a little more time upfront, in digging until you think you have found an underlying cause, and spend your efforts into addressing to causes not the symptoms?
“The measure of success is not whether you have tough problems to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.” - John Foster Dulles
“It’s so much easier to suggest solutions when you don’t know too much about the problem.” - Malcolm Forbes
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