no decision at all. We just went. “You have to go out, but you don’t
have to come back” is the mind-set required for search and rescue.
Better/Worse
Very few things are perfect. Almost every situation or possibility has
disadvantages. Clearly different solutions have different disadvan-
tages. It’s a good idea to give up your search for the ideal and, in-
stead, begin to make small improvements. Instead of looking for
the ideal, look for something better than what you have. As you be-
gin to make small improvements in all areas of your life, you will
discover that some are quite minor; then sometimes you will accom-
plish some improvement that has a far greater effect than you had
anticipated. The expectation of perfection causes some people to
overlook the small improvements that they could make. For exam-
ple, you will always have financial problems of some kind. Winning
$10 million from your state lottery would solve your current finan-
cial problems. But it would create problems in areas where you
don’t even have areas now.
Access Your Creativity for Problem Solving
For most people, creativity is similar to an unused set of muscles.
Next we will take your creativity to the gymnasium and get it into bet-
ter shape so that you can use it in any situation, whenever you want.
Scientists have the reputation of being coldly logical. If you
think of science as a collection of unchangeable rules governing
the behavior of the universe, then science is, in fact, logical only.
The most successful scientists, however, consider science to be a
method—a method of testing and verifying assumptions about how
things work. The testing and verification aspect of science can be
dry and logical, but good scientists use their creativity to devise the
assumptions to be tested and clever ways to test them. For this rea-
son, almost every scientific breakthrough involves some leap in
logic, some intuitive assumption that no one had tested before.
The zigzag in Figure 8.3 describes the method you already use
for solving problems. First your creativity comes up with a solu-
tion. Then you shift gears to the analytical part of your mind
where you analyze the possible results of the solution. The solu-
tion probably has pluses and minuses, which the analytical mind
evaluates. If the solution has greater disadvantages than advan-
tages, then you will discard it and perhaps feel upset and de-
Access Your Creativity for Problem Solving 139