Beautiful People,

Recently, I announced a new tradition: celebrating Fridays with quotes by fellow authors and friends. Send me your favorite quotes (yours, mom’s, grandpa’s, your children’s or someone else) in a FB message and I will post on Fridays with a credit.

This week I give credit to my friend Ruti Amit who said, “The best way to solve a problem is to take the fear of failure out of the equation and think of as many options as you can to solve a problem without excluding any option, no matter how irrational and unrealistic it may be.”

In trade, an option, just like a stock or bond, is a security. That is also true in daily life. During my immigration journey that took more than a decade, I faced countless adversities. Every so often I thought there were no options. But I was wrong.

Once I decided that giving up wasn’t an option, but a defeat, I started looking for other solutions. Suddenly, I found many options. Some had more security, some had less. But I had a pool of options to choose from.

I realized that failure means not choosing.

When my children come to me with a problem, I ask them to find solutions. When they protest that there aren’t any solutions, I ask them for their wildest thoughts about the ways the problem could be solved.

Guess what? They always find solutions. Obviously, some of them cannot be applied (illegal, require divine intervention or plain mean), but others can be with some tweaks.

Remember that options are securities, and look for them when you’re facing a problem. They will always show up. Even choosing a not-so-brilliant option is better than keeping a problem unsolved.

XO,
Sharon