QMusings

Ability is about Attitude and Information. I’ll begin with my usual back-story…

My toilet lever broke the other day. You may not remember this, but I’m Handy.

My first thought was, how could I fix this? I wasn’t worried about not being able to; I was more worried about the hassle of finding parts. Had I ever fixed a toilet lever before? No. But I knew I could do it.

I took the parts to Home Depot and whaddya know, there was a toilet lever replacement kit.

As the commercial might say:

$4.30 for lever replacement kit

Boost to self-esteem: Priceless

I was telling a friend of mine about my toilet repair job – he’s even more handy – and he said, “Toilets are interesting. People think they are really difficult to fix, but they’re not. You do something like reconnecting the little chain and you’re a genius.”

What he said was true.

It got me thinking about what we think is hard and what we won’t attempt. I looked inside the toilet tank and thought, huh, how hard could fixing this be?

I thought I could fix it, and I did.

Some people might believe that they could not fix the toilet, that it was “too hard.” They might hold the broken lever in their hand and not even lift off the tank cover to check it out.

The ability to do something is about attitude and information.

When approaching something new, instead of immediately making a decision about anything (good or bad), get more information.

5 Questions To Ask Yourself:

1. How can I deal with this?
2. What information do I have that may be useful?
3. What tools do I need?
4. How much time do I think this will take?
5. Do I have the time?

Let’s say you went to flush the toilet and instead of water gushing into the bowl you end up with a bit of plastic in your hand.

Instead of thinking, “I can’t do this, I have to call a plumber.”

Ask your questions:

1. How can I deal with this?
You could look lift up the lid to the toilet tank to get more information.

2. What information do I have that may be useful?
The handle must be used for something so I’ll try to figure out what it was connected to.

What information would you find?

• You would see what the handle was attached to and that it was something that might be easily replaced.
• You would see that you might need something to unscrew the handle and release the chain.

3. What tools do I need?
I have a wrench so it looks like…no new tools required.

4. How much time will this take?

• You need more information about this so you get more information: you call up a hardware store.
• You may make multiple calls to gather more information.
• You learn that there is a repair kit that matches your needs.

5. Do you have the time?

• You gather more information to save time by asking who has the kit and who has the tools you may need.
• You decide you have the time.

The key here is attitude: Approach something with the thought you can do it, gather more information and then decide if you want to do it.

Sometimes you could do it, but don’t want to. I could change the oil for my car. But going through my questions, I realize that I don’t want to.

How about for fixing a “Big” problem?

How big something is all about perception. If you begin with the belief that a problem is “big” you may think it’s so big you can’t handle it.

1. Don’t make any judgments about the problem. (This is awful! This is bad!)
2. Start asking your questions and gathering information.
3. Try breaking the problem into manageable pieces.
4. Ask your questions for each piece.

I’ll share with you something I had to handle but had no experience with. Yes, it deals with home repair.

My mom calls me up and states, “I’m a popsicle!” Yeah, she’s cute like that. Big opening statement and then the explanation.

Turns out that her heater isn’t working and she’s really cold. Luckily, it wasn’t dangerously cold.

My immediate response was “Aaggh! Big time major expensive repair!!” with visions of having to get a Home Equity Line Of Credit.

I took a deep breath and told myself that I should not make a judgment or leap to a conclusion as the only thing I knew was that her heater did not work. I had no idea how it was not working. I needed more information. So I asked myself:

How can I deal with this?
The problem seemed big so I had to break it into manageable pieces.

What did I know? I knew that she has an old central heater that uses gas. Mom is pretty handy too, and she told me that the pilot light was on. She had already called the utility company and this wasn’t something they would repair.

We both needed more information. We start looking up heating firms. I did some online research.

My mom scheduled someone to look at her heater. We decided on a place that charged a low inspection fee as we didn’t know what was wrong. In this case, low was about 50 bucks. The repair guy came out. He said that it would cost us about 600 dollars to repair. That’s a lot of money but what did we know? We needed more information.

I look at a checklist I had found online and asked him a few specific questions: What parts did he think he needed? How long would it take to repair? Could we have it in writing?

He would answer none of these questions – just stated that it would cost us about 600 bucks and he would write up everything after the job was done.

What did we find out?

• That we didn’t want to deal with this firm (at least this particular person)
• It appeared the problem could be fixed and would not require a loan.
• We should get a second inspection. The checklist recommended that it was worthwhile to get a 2nd estimate if the first was over $500.

Based on the information, we had a smaller problem.

• My mom schedules an inspection with another firm. In this case, we used one that was highly rated by a local consumer rating firm.
• The repair guy comes out and he determines that there is a short in the thermostat. He repairs the thermostat, there are no parts to replace and all my mom has to pay is the visit fee of about $90.

Now we had no problem! Some may look at the fee the first person charged as a waste of money. I look at it another way: it was a small price to pay for valuable information.

So you have a problem. What do you do?

First: try not to make any judgments about it. It’s not good, bad, horrible. It’s something that needs to be fixed. Judgments can prevent finding solutions.

Then ask your questions:

1. How can I deal with this?
2. What information do I have that may be useful?
3. What tools do I need?
4. How much time do I think this will take?
5. Do I have the time?

• Approach problems with empowering questions.
• Empowering questions lead to an empowering approach.
• An empowering approach leads to solutions.

Success breeds belief in more success.

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