Logic Versus Emotions In Problem Solving

Brian: Recently, I was at some batting cages with one of my sons in the batting cage labeled baseball very fast.  The pitches were coming in the strike zone about waist high at the front of the box and was below the knee by the time it crossed the back of the box.  My son, in the middle of the box, was swinging low at most of the pitches, but he thought he was swinging too high.  From outside the cage, I recorded several pitches and swings in slow motion and played it back for him.  I could see even without aide of the video that he was swinging low.  A different perspective could see the error that he couldn’t recognize right inside the batter's box.  Often, we need an outside perspective to see what we can't see that is right in front of us.  Today's JumpStart-U centers around this topic in relation to the emotional fog that can blur our vision and a rational outside perspective that can give us clarity.  Welcome to this episode, and without further ado, here's JumpStart-U.

Brian: Welcome to today's JumpStart-U.  Our topic today is very fresh in our minds 'cause this was based off of a conversation we had this afternoon.  Logic Versus Emotion In Problem Solving.  This is based off of a conversation that Trish and I had this afternoon regarding one of our children, but it created a teachable moment for us, both to ourselves and also to one of our children.  And the thing that was really interesting is the simple thing that we drew attention to.  Now this seems really vague and out there if you're just catching into the beginning of this, but the premise is this: sometimes in the midst of an emotional decision making element - so if you're caught up into the emotion of a situation and you're trying to solve a problem, and you're feeling the weight of the emotions tied into that decision, your focus is more on what you lack rather than what you have or the ingredients you have to work with; would that be a good assessment?

Trish: Exactly.  

Brian: So I think what I want to look at today is thinking in that regard, there's nothing in this world wrong with emotions.  Emotions are God-given.  They're a part of who we are as humans.  It's what we - that's what makes life have value and meaning in so many ways.  But sometimes the emotional element can get ahead of the experience itself and change the way we view everything. 

Trish: Mm-hm.  That comes from the mistake we can make -- I think I've understood this more in my middle age better than my kids do -- [Right.] that we assign a value of negative or positive to an emotion.  [Right.]  We can say, "I feel anxious," and that has a negative connotation, or we can say, "I feel excited."  Our bodies and that actual physical feeling we feel, the actual chemicals happening in our bodies that give us the physical sensation of excitement are exactly the same as anxious, fearful. [Right.]  We as human beings decide to place a value on it like [Yes.] it's negative or a bad thing, or this is really cool and a good thing.

Brian: Right.  And this gets carried into all kinds of categories.  One I think of that we've dealt with, with our kids and we deal with in our own lives is the idea of "I’m angry."  [Mm-hm.]  Anger is a secondary emotion.  [Mm-hm.]  And so from a perspective of just laying out there, "I'm angry," well, you're expressing I have a feeling.  Where's that feeling coming from?  What is it derived from?  What's the trigger?  And what is it that you're actually feeling to get you to this place where the emotional outburst or the expression of this is coming out as anger? 

Trish: Mm-hm.  And anger oftentimes feels weak very frequently -- well, depending on your personality -- can assign a negative value to anger, [Right.] and we stop at anger and we don’t deep dive and understand, "No, anger is secondary.  Let's say what I really am.  Right now I'm frustrated because I feel powerless.  I feel [Right.] out of control, and I'm going to assign negativity to that because I don’t like how that feels."

Brian: Now one thing I want to throw in here is Trish and I are both believers, which means we're Christians, and that has a strong influence in how we think and approach our life.  This podcast, per se, is not a Christian podcast, but we're not separating the elements that drive and how we focus and think about life.  [Mm-hm.]  With that being said, I want to throw in there that one of the things that's common - and a common conversation is the idea of anger being a bad thing in the sense of we're just - if you're angry, you're sinning or you're doing wrong.  But anger itself is just an emotion.  It's a charge, a surge of adrenal or whatever associated with fault.  There's a neat verse in the New Testament that says, "Be angry and sin not."  The idea is you don’t let the emotion then control a situation.  So you don’t act out of that place.  I think Chip Ingram was the one who did a message on anger, and he was talking about how anger was a motivating factor for him to start an organization that helped children, [Mm-hm.] and it was like an advocacy center, [Mm-his markedly.] and it was all because he was in an experience where he saw someone mistreat a child and it stirred him to anger so much so that he engaged the mother who had done wrong, faced her off, and told her to stop.  He goes home and he stays in this state of unrest and frustration, [Mm-hm.] and instead of staying there and remaining just angry, he said, "Okay, what I can do to solve this so this isn't a perpetual problem ongoing?"  And he developed the advocacy center for children.  

Trish: So I think this is a perfect example of first of all, an emotion -- anger.  Diving deeper, his anger stemmed from feeling powerless to actually affect positive change on a situation [Right.] that he did not like.  And then he changed - he used that negative, you know, emotion which first call to anger, then dig deeper, its powerlessness.  [Yeah.]  He used that to push him to action to fix the powerlessness.  [Right.]  To actually create a solution.  So he moved his emotion over into logic to logically come up with a way to solve this problem or to at least contribute to the solution.  

Brian: Yeah, and I think he expressed that the feeling that was associated with he could see how this child was mistreated, that became the fuel that pushed him and gave him the energy to stick with this thing all the way through to its completion.  [Mm-hm.]  And that's something we can think in relation to our personal lives and into business.  When you a place of anger, you get to a place of frustration.  Instead of just kind of sitting there, dwelling on it, let it destroy you, say, "Okay, what can I do?  What are the steps I can take to create or produce growth or produce a solution to make the situation better, [Mm-hm.] to solve it?"

Trish: Or to even contribute to a solution.

Brian: Yes.  Yeah.  

Trish: Like I think staying on emotions for a minute and how muddled they can be.  [Right.]  I've done some work on guilt versus shame.  [Yeah.]  Guilt is in the realm of a motivating emotion or feeling, and shame shuts you down.  It locks you down.  It freezes you.  You don’t get better [Right.] when you live in shame.  Guilt can convict you to do actions that are better or moving out of something you don’t want to be in.  [Right.]  But people kind of switch them in and out from each other like they're interchangeable for some people who haven't really thought about the true definition and the function of both of those things.  They're very different as far as what they do and how they make you function or not function.  

Brian: What's interesting is they both have a very similar vibe in how you would think of the use of the words.  We might even interchange them without thinking about it too much, but how relabeling a feeling or relabeling an experience to put you on the positive side of things, moving towards a solution rather than locking you into a victim mindset [Mm-hm.] can revolutionize what you do with it.  

Trish: We practice this with our children.  [Yes.]  Particularly one right now who, you know, she's really doing some work on emotions, [Yeah.] and we help her by redirecting.  When we hear a phrase like, "I'm so scared."  We say, "Could it be that you're so excited?"  [Yes.]  We remind her of the fact that she's learned when she isn't in an emotional state the fact and the logic of your body responds the same way to the chemicals that are released with fear and excitement.  Maybe this is excitement or maybe you could just decide to relabel this as excitement to put a positive spin on it.  And it doesn’t devalue or invalidate the mass of that feeling, [Right.] it just - you get to be in control of characterizing that feeling and putting a value on it to make it work for you.  You get to take control again.  

Brian: Right.  And when we leave it in a negative space, the negative drain, the negative energy, in line with what we've said so far, a quotation that I came across by Maya Angelou says, "What you're supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it.  If you can't change it, change the way you think about it.  Don’t complain."  Now, this is a slight different take on the whole idea.  This is something that's very relevant to what we're talking about in the sense of if you don’t like a thing, change it.  The idea of sometimes there could be a feeling, there can be a response to a feeling that you don’t like where you're going with it.  You don’t like what it's doing with you.  You don’t like the outcome that you keep getting with this feeling that you're holding onto.  So if you don’t like it, change it.  And then if you can't change it, change the way you think about it.  And this goes back to what we told our daughter [Mm-hm.] in regards to the challenges that she faces.  She can either change it or she can change the way she's thinking about it.  

In regards to challenges - you can either change them or change the way you are thinking about it.

Trish: Mm-hm.  We try to bring her back to control the things you can control.  [Right.]  What are those things?  That narrows it real quickly 'cause basically, that's yourself.  [Yes.]  Your responses, your actions, your decisions, your choices.  Those are the things you control.  We can't even really control the way we feel, but we can control how we act out of those feelings.  [Yes.]  So we remind her when she's overwhelmed by all the things happening that she doesn’t like, that she has no control over, bring it in.  Rein in it.  Control what you can control.  Take an inventory.  Look around.  Stop looking at what you don’t have.  Start looking at what you do have.  Those are called ingredients that make a good solution cake.  

Brian: Yes.  Yeah.  I like everything we've said on this so far.  [Mm-hm.]  This is really good.  I want to go back to the beginning of the conversation.  So I described it as logic versus emotions in making a decision, and I want to go back to the impetus for this whole thing.  A phone call was made to us, and the problem was our daughter had locked herself out of work, and she was closing for the day.  And so the challenge then is, "Okay, my keys, everything I have is inside of the building.  I'm locked out."  And then she was in a panic and concerned... and justly, reasonably so.  

Trish: There were a lot of factors that were out of her control that were unpleasant.  One, she was ready to go home and now couldn't.  [Yes.]  Two, she was not only locked out of the building, she was locked out of her car because her keys were inside the locked building.  [Right.]  Three, it's cool and rainy outside today.  Four, she's already had a stressful day, she's already feeling on edge, and this was sort of the tipping point.  Five -- I think I numbered those right.  [Yeah.]  I don’t know. -- there was someone waiting for her -- that would be her brother -- to pick him up from work a few blocks away.  [Right.]  So pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure.  

Brian: And what was funny is in the midst of this, she's focused on all the things she's lacking [Right?] which is no way to get inside the building which is locked with the key inside.  

Trish: I want to go home, and I can't.  Somebody's waiting for me to pick them up, and I'm letting them down.  I don’t know what to do.  I'm uncomfortable and wet.  

Brian: Right.  And I, as an objective observer...

Trish: I was the one on the phone with her.

Brian: ...told Trish, "She has her phone." Because obviously she had the phone and was able to call and let us know that she was in this predicament.  But the one thing that she failed to recognize was the solution literally was in her hand.  [Mm-hm.]  And the first thing she thought wasn’t to use this to get her to the place she needed to go, she used it as a call for help outside of the source.  And she was the source.  She had the means of accomplishing this thing.  [Mm-hm.]  And so what's funny is as soon as [Yep.] she recognized that the phone was in her hand and it was the solution, everything changed.  

Trish: Her breathing changed.  Her voice changed.  Her mindset changed.  [Yes.]  She calmed and immediately solved her own - she came up with her own solution by me just saying, "But you have your phone.  [Right.]  Focus on what you have, not what you don’t have, and come up with a solution."  And she - I didn’t tell her the solution.  I didn’t tell her I would come save her or fix it.  I believed in her.  We believe in her.  [Yes.]  She's extremely smart.  [Yes.]  But when emotions overtake you, it's hard to make logical decisions.  I mean, where in any of that was logic when she called me across town who does not possess keys to her workplace versus calling her boss and coworkers who have keys?  Like, that wasn't logical.  [Right.]  But she still came up with her own solution just looking at what she did have versus what she didn’t.  

Brian: Now, this is something really practical from a business perspective.  We tell the personal stories so that you guys can lock in on - these are takeaway moments for you now.  Think in relation to business and problem solving.  We get caught up into the emotion of things.  The pressure of having to pay a bill.  The pressure of keeping employees happy and satisfied in the midst of challenging times.  The pressure of where's the next [Mm-hm.] project coming from?  The next how are we going to solve these issues?  Supply issues.  

Trish: What we've lost.  [Right.]  If we've lost clients or business.

Brian: So focusing on all of those things can become overwhelming, distracting, and get us into a place where we're not actually stopping for a moment and realizing the phone is in our hand.  We have the means to solve the problem.  [Mm-hm.]  There was a quote that I came across a while ago.  I can't remember who said it, but it basically said, "You are your biggest problem in your company."  And the follow up to that was, "You're also the greatest solution in your company."  [Mm-hm.]  Think in that regard.  Don’t get lost in the emotional charge of feelings that flood and overwhelm and distract.  Rather focus on what you have, the ingredients, and use them in the solution to empower the problem solving that you need to do.  Trish, you have a great note on the board that says, "Empowering problem solving is different from giving the solution."  And this comes from the idea that you made note of, of teaching a man to fish.  In this same way, this is what I'm hoping to do to for you guys.  I want to empower you to solve the problem by taking stock of the ingredients that you have in hand and finding the solution that works.  [Exactly.]  All right.  Trish, we're kind of ready to wrap this thing up, so what do you think are some good takeaways?

Trish: Okay.  First, when emotions are high, and you're starting to assign a value to them -- negative, positive, whatever -- just pause.  That's always a good piece of advice.  Take a pause.  Just pause.  Take control of what you have control over.  Be honest with yourself.  [Yes.]  Take control of what you have control over.  That's going to be basically yourself.  [Yes.]  Your actions, your responses, your choices.  Take control of what you have control over.  [Right.] 

1. Take control of what you have control over.  That's going to be basically yourself. 

The next thing would be take inventory of what you have.  Get out of the space where you're only seeing what you've lost, what you don’t have, what you lack, where you miss the mark.  Stop it.  [Mm-hm.]  Pause.  Take a real genuine realistic inventory of what you possess.  What do you have right now?  What are the ingredients you really are working with to bake a solution cake? 

2. Take a real genuine realistic inventory of what you possess.

Brian: Yes.  And I'm going to add a third point.  Though we didn’t really address this per se, I think this is a good wrap up to the whole thing.  If you're in the place of leadership within a business, one thing that can overwhelm is the idea that you always got to be the one providing the solution.  If you've got people who are underneath you who are in places of decision making, empower them to become problem solvers in their own category.  Let them understand what their power is and what they can accomplish.  By teaching your employees to be problem solvers, it unburdens you to be more effective in accomplishing the things you need to be doing.  

3. If you've got people who are underneath you who are in places of decision making, empower them to become problem solvers in their own category.

Trish: I would say that's correct.  Maybe if you're listening and you're in leadership in business, in leadership in your home, in leadership in any kind of relationship or group, these first two things -- take control of what you have control over and take inventory of what you really have (the ingredients) -- [Right.] maybe you've kind of got that down pat, right?  So move that into your leadership of others.  Let it trickle down.  [Right.]  How you lead others to be good problem solvers isn't by telling them what to do all the time and [Right.] telling them what the solution is to their problems, it's asking good questions so they can own the solution they come to and feel proud of it and do it well.

(Outro)

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