Read a book

One of the biggest obstacles to solving most of the world's problems  today is ignorance. People simply don't know enough and suffer as a result. Sounds kind of crazy right? But it's true.

For example, teaching people where AIDS comes from and how it gets transmitted has been the number one factor in dropping the spread of the disease. Yes, new and better medical practices have helped, but reducing ignorance has helped more.

Another example of ignorance that is kind of funny is Gerber baby food.  In some countries in Africa where the literacy rate is atrociously low they put pictures of what is inside the food containers on the labels. If you are at all familiar with Gerber baby food you know that there is a picture of a baby on every single one of their products. It took a great deal of convincing on the part of those that can read to explain to those that couldn't that it was food for babies not food made from babies.

IF you know what foods are poisonous and which ones are not you can safely feed yourself and those you care about. If you know how to defend yourself from vicious predators, both animal and human, again you can keep yourself safe. Knowledge can help us solve or eliminate most of our problems.

That's fine. But how do we obtain more knowledge? There's two main ways. The first is the harder and more dangerous of the two and that is learning through personal experience and trial and error, what works and what doesn't. The second, much easier, much safer way is to learn by reading about the experiences of others.

A person who has more words at his or her command, can more adequately express their needs and desires. And the easiest way to learn more words is to spend time every day reading. As you come in contact with more and more books you will, over time, get a better vocabulary. A great deal of how we absorb new words comes from examples of them being used in context.

See, what happens is, you read a bunch of words that you do know and then you see one or two that you don't. But based on how they are used in the sentence you can generally figure out the meaning of the ones you don't know, thus increasing your pool of knowledge.

Also, reading can be both fun and relaxing. The time you spend reading is time that you are not focused on your daily routine. It can be a short getaway from your problems.

You can't personally teach the whole world to read. And you can't protect the whole world from all the dangers that are out there. But you can increase by at least one the number of people that know enough to save themselves from all the dangers the world has to offer, just by making a habit out of reading, both for fun and to stave off ignorance. Remember, a person that doesn't read, isn't any better off than a person that can't read.

Puzzles

Have you ever seen someone that you know struggling with an obstacle or challenge that you see a very clear simple solution to? Sometimes you can share your solution and just like that the problem is handled and that person can use that solution to assist them in solving future problems. But more often than not that is not the case. What normally happens is that the other person argues and tells you all the reasons why they feel that solution is not a good one. Why is this?

We all have different experiences during the course of our lives that make us who we are. Based on our inherent talents, our skills, memories and things that we have learned we all solve problems in different ways. Our methods of problem solving come from a variety of things that include both nature and nurture, what we have learned from and about ourselves and from and about our environments. Since none of us have exactly the same experiences in life we do not see things the same way.

Often, even if there is only one solution to a problem there are many ways of getting to that solution. As much as we would like to just give our friends and loved ones the answers to all their problems, it simply is not feasible. Even if you could just give people the answers, it has been proven many times that people tend to place much more value upon something which they have earned than something which they were given.

What you can do however is to learn enough about the people you care about to have an understanding of how they make decisions and then work backwards from your solution, down their line of reasoning to where they are currently then lead them step by step to the solution. This is not always an easy thing to do, but if you find yourself capable of doing it stands the highest chance of them seeing your solution as the right one for them.

Another more commonly chosen way is to describe yourself in their situation. Explain what is was like when you had the same challenge to overcome. Empathize with the issues that problem created. Discuss how you felt and what you were thinking at the time. Then logically walk them down the path you chose showing them how each step you took led to the next step until eventually the issue resolved itself. This method will only work if the other person is open to learning from your experience.

Sometimes a person will prove to be exceptionally stubborn and insist on solving the problem with no outside influence.  You need to and get to accept the fact that some people want things to be hard. Some people want to suffer as part of the process of overcoming difficult circumstances and nothing you can say or do will change this fact. As difficult as it may be, in that case all you can do is stand back and wish them luck.

Personally I would rather learn from others as much as possible.  I want my life to be simple and fun. So when I see other people go through things that I have difficulty with, I learn as much as possible from their solutions. It is important to note though that just giving someone a solution does not help them grow as a person. It gets them past that obstacle but does not help them if the exact same circumstance does not occur again. The key is to teach one another why the solution works for a particular puzzle because that is what leads to learning how to more effectively solve similar but not identical issues.

Don't give a man a fish, teach him how to fish.