Trying to solve your problems with the same old thinking is a sign of stubbornness and stubbornness will keep you stuck in the past and doom you to repeat it.

Trying to solve your problems again and again with the same old thinking is also a sign of insanity.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

A few years ago I witnessed a perfect example of insanity. On a beautiful spring morning I was sitting in our breakfast nook enjoying a cup of tea when I noticed a chickadee fly into the window in the door of our garage. The little dirty brown bird hit the glass with a thud and dropped to the ground.

A bird flying into a window is not so unusual. What was strange is that after the little fellow shook off the impact of hitting the window he flew up for another try. Once again he whacked the glass with his head and fell to the ground. Then he shook himself off and did it again, and again, and again. For almost 30 minutes the bird tried to fly through the glass into our garage. Now that’s insanity!

But truth be told, I’ve whacked my head up against the same problem again and again a few times myself. Maybe you have too.

If life is dangerous or difficult for us when we are children we learn to live a certain way in order to survive. That thinking and behavior might have pulled us through our dilemma when we were kids but when we’ve tried to solve our current problems with what we did in the past it hasn’t worked.

To keep trying to solve new problems with old thinking and behavior is stubborn and a bit insane!

When I was a boy I felt a lot of anger. I felt angry when kids teased me. I felt angry when my parents fought and dragged me into the middle of it. I felt angry when I was sexually abused.

I learned to stuff my anger because anger was unacceptable in my family and the amount of anger I felt seemed dangerous to me.

So, like the bird hitting the glass, I followed the same line of thinking and repeated the same behavior over and over. I stuffed my anger time and time again. But that didn’t solve my problems. It only made them worse, until one day I exploded with anger. The explosion ruined my marriage and career and didn’t solve my problem.

It took some serious new thinking to appropriately deal with my anger and solve the problems it created. I learned that new thinking from someone older an wiser, someone who knew about anger and its causes.

What problems are you facing today? You can’t solve your problems with the same old thinking. You have to try a new approach.

In order to live out of your imagination, not your history, you have to be willing to change your thinking and behavior.

Find someone who has “been there and done that” successfully and ask them for help. Listen to what they tell you so you can avoid making the same mistakes again and again.

Take it from the bird and me. Insanity is painful and doesn’t work! Stubbornness dooms you to keep reliving yuor past.

You can’t solve your problems with the same old thinking. For your past not to become yur future you have to try some new thinking and behavior.

Next time: Your past is not your future if you accept that life isn’t fair. It’s what you make it.

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Next time: “Life isn’t Fair, It’s What You Make It”