Uncover the root cause of your problems for a more permanent solution

It's incredibly simple to shift the blame rather than take ownership.

Imagine playing a game of pool. You have a big stick and you need to get the balls into the pockets. But here’s the catch - you can’t just hit the balls directly into the pockets. You first have to use a white cue ball to hit the right ball in just the right way.

So, what causes the balls to go into the pocket? Is it the white cue ball? Well, sort of. The white ball hits the numbered ball, which then goes into the pocket. But wait, there’s more to it. The player is the one who sets everything in motion by hitting the cue ball with the stick.

Understanding why things happen is important, especially when it comes to distractions. Root cause analysis is all about finding the main reason for a problem. In the game of pool, the cue ball isn’t the root cause. If the player didn’t feel like playing, nothing would happen.

In life, it’s not always easy to see the root causes of our problems. We might blame others for our failures instead of looking at our actions. Just like in the pool, the cue ball isn’t always to blame. It’s up to us to figure out the real reasons behind our challenges.

Sometimes we argue with our partner about silly things like who forgot to do the dishes, and we blame the fight on that small issue instead of looking at the bigger problems we've been ignoring for a long time.

We like to point fingers at people who have different beliefs than us and say they're the reason for all the bad stuff happening in the world. But really, we should be trying to understand the deeper issues causing these problems and how we might be contributing to them.

These little things we blame for our problems all have one thing in common - they help us avoid taking responsibility for our actions. It's not that the dishes or a rude coworker don't matter, but they're not the whole story.

If we don't figure out the real reasons behind our distractions, we'll keep feeling like we're just getting pushed around in a world we don't understand. We'll keep blaming things like TV or social media for our problems, but those are just the surface issues.

Just like a pool player can always find another cue ball, we'll always find something else to distract us if we're not careful. The real reason we can't focus lies deep inside us, and until we figure that out, we'll keep playing by someone else's rules.