🎤 PODCAST • Solving Hard Problems ~ How to tackle hard thinking problems - a short interview with presenter Jean Moroney
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The Selfish Path to Romance. Download Chapter 1 for free at drkenner.com and at amazon.com. You're so conceited, Clint. Why are you like that? I'm not saying that to be conceited. I'm having to go along with everything my friends say. Then why do you do it? No, I don't... You don't understand. You don't... You're not friends with the same kind of people that Annie and I are friends with. You know, you just don't understand the pressure that they can put on you.

What do you do when you have to make really tough decisions in your life? I mean, the ones that keep you awake at night or the ones that you've been putting off, you've been procrastinating, and yet they're smack dab in your face every single day. With me today is a thinking expert. Jean Maroney has her master's degree in psychology from Carnegie Mellon University and her master's degree in engineering from MIT with 10 years of experience in the engineering field.

So put that all together, psychology, philosophy, and engineering. And Jean has taken this all to the table, all of her knowledge and skills, and she's become an expert on thinking skills. Jean, welcome to the show. Thank you, Ellen. A pleasure, pleasure to have you here. Jean, when I think of my own hard thinking, things that were tough for me, it was very hard for me to get myself back to the gym.

It was very hard for me to decide on what career I wanted in life. It was very hard for me to decide on how to raise my kids. I mean, that's not an easy problem. I mean, that's not an easy task in life. If you could take one of those and tell us what tips you might give us for one of those.

Sure, Alan. Well, I think the first thing to keep in mind about hard thinking is that the fact that it's hard is normal.

The thinking is going to be hard whenever you're approaching a new task, like, for example, the child rearing. When you first become a parent, you are a new parent. It was mind-boggling. I went to all the books I could find on it, and I felt like I was swimming in a sea of advice with no direction, with no rudder.

Right. One of the things you were experiencing there is that you had to, there is a body of knowledge known by others that you didn't have. And in order to do thinking, you need to draw on knowledge. And when you don't have those knowledge bases, one of the things you have to do is some studying to fill in the details.

And then I would find that they'd give me conflicting advice. How do you discipline kids? You put your foot down, you do it, you know, make them obey you. And then I'd get more advice that says, no, just listen to them, become their friend. And the advice was all over the place. Right. Research isn't enough because the fact is that you have to use your own mind and your own independent judgment. And so the question is, how do you go about doing that?

The first piece of advice is

actually make it a point of, hey, I'm going to think about this. You'd be surprised at how many tasks there are that are kind of pushed aside as, well, there's nothing to do about that. So, for example, the fact you said that you had trouble getting back to the gym. A lot of people have trouble keeping on an exercise schedule or keeping on a diet. And one of the things that would help that is to actually stop and sit down and think. And I actually recommend doing the thinking on paper and longhand.

Think about, well, what is it that's actually stopping me here? If you can sit down and actually assemble, what are the facts? What are the facts here that are stopping me, say, from getting to the gym? Maybe it's a scheduling problem. Maybe it's...

that you don't actually like your gym? It could be. What were the particular things you ran into, Ellen? Partly, I was really tired at the end of work, and I would be promising myself, oh, it's dark out now, and you're so tired. You deserve to go home, and you look healthy anyway. I looked healthy, even though I was not toned for my whole life. I've been one of these lucky people.

But I never worked out at the gym. I rarely worked out at the gym. And then I would... So those are some of the barriers. Just the self-talk in the evening where it was competing with...

this wonderful offer of a mini vacation after work. Exactly. So part of what happens when you actually look at the actual concrete obstacles that you are facing, say with your child or with your going to the gym, that is where you will actually find the kernel of the solution.

The books can give you generalized things to look for, and they can give you generalized advice. But the actual problem solving is going to be coming from looking at... Hey, I've got to interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that's it. A very quick ad, and then Ellen will be back. Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where's that ad I saw?

Ah, here it is. The Selfish Path to Romance. A serious romance guidebook. Download Chapter 1 for free at SelfishRomance.com and buy it at Amazon.com.

Hmm, the selfish path to romance. That is interesting. The actual problem solving is going to be coming from looking at your concrete problem. So I don't know actually what your solution was, but I bet that your solution somehow gets around the fact that at the end of the day that you're tired.

Did you change the time of day that you were going to try to work out? I did a fabulous thing. I did a reverse role play with someone. I was trying to show a method of how to take your negative self-talk and all of the specific things I said to myself that...

gave me permission not to go to the gym. And I had to answer each one. Well, it's dark out. Well, what does that have to do with it? You'll love it if you feel fit. You'll love looking at a belly that doesn't have a bunch of rolls in it. You'll love looking at arms that don't have flabbiness hanging from them. And so I started to focus on the benefits of going to the gym.

Yes. And then I hit another snag, which is that it's terribly boring to get on a treadmill or go from machine to machine and do nothing with my brain. Right. Hold on one second. I want to point out two things about your thinking there. The first thing is that when you looked at the actual problems, when you said, well, what is actually stopping me from going to the gym?

you immediately identified that as a kind of problem that you know a general kind of solution for. So you thought, gee, you know, it's negative self-talk, which is something that you've been teaching people how to deal with negative self-talk for years. And this is my own. And this is your own. The fact is that the identification of the problem is not something that happens automatically. You have to stop, look, identify.

And when you do that, you say, gee, I know this kind of a problem. I know a solution. And what you did there is you said, gee, you know, this is just negative self-talk. I know a solution for that. So you went through and you answered them. And what you did, so you knew a solution for the first level of problems.

Once you solve that problem, you came and you found that there was a new problem. Now, this is also totally normal. Whenever you are trying to achieve a goal, and hard thinking has the goal of solving a particular problem, which means that, you know, there's an end point in sight, you often uncover multiple obstacles. So once you've solved one by some hard thinking on the first thing, it is not...

non-normal or something wrong with you that it turns out then there's a second problem. In your case, you found the second problem was this is boring. Well, you know, that's another solvable problem. How did you solve that problem, Ellen? I got a CD player and a tape player and I listen to choruses or I listen to music. I'll choreograph dances while I'm doing it or take wonderful choruses. So now I can't wait to get to the gym.

and I miss it. If it's 8.30 at night and I know I still have a half hour, I can get to the gym, or 8 o'clock, not 8.30, then I'll get in my car and go there. And I feel great at the end of the day. I can connect now that I love the way my body feels now. That's terrific. And I think it is a wonderful example of the fact that if you think about the problem, you basically turn your energy to the problem

identify concretely what it is, you can then harness the other knowledge you have about how to solve this kind of problem. Right. Jean, how can people get in touch with you? If businesses wanted to run a seminar, I know you give seminars for businesses on how to tackle hard thinking. That's the title of your seminar. How can they get in touch with you? The easiest place would be my website, which is www.jeanmaroney.com.

That's J-E-A-N-M-O-R-O-N-E-Y dot com. And I've taken classes with Jean, and she is wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jean. Thank you for having me, Alan. For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to drkenner.com, and please listen to this ad. Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the Serious Romance Guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Alan Kenner and co-author Dr. Edwin Locke.

Wanting appreciation for your good qualities and actions, which we call wanting visibility, is the opposite of wanting approval to eliminate your self-doubts. The essence of love is not filling a self-esteem void, but valuing genuine good traits in one another. Parents can greatly harm a child by acting irrationally and convincing the child that whatever goes wrong is the child's fault.

Parents can also instill self-doubt and anxiety by not showing love and concern for their child. Some poorly treated children spend their lives trying to undo the damage by getting others to parent them, often their partners. This does not work. You need to learn to value yourself, perhaps with professional help. You can download Chapter 1 for free by going to drkenner.com. And you can buy the book at Amazon.com.