Want to be a problem-solver? Focus on the positive, author says.
- - Want to be a problem-solver? Focus on the positive, author says.
Kerry HannonJanuary 17, 2026 at 10:09 PM
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Staying positive and tackling roadblocks when the world seems to be on fire can be tough.
A new book, “The Solution Mindset: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving,” by career consultant Nir Bashan, offers a breath of fresh air, spinning simple strategies to help us focus on possibilities and creativity to succeed in our jobs, our businesses, and our relationships.
“Creativity offers results,” Bashan says. “Innovation offers hope. When we combine the two, we get the best of humanity. It becomes a superpower.”
Here are edited excerpts of our recent conversation:
Kerry Hannon: What is the “solution mindset?”
Bashan: With everything going on in the world, you need to have a positive narrative around how useful humans can be. The news that we hear overall is negative, and it is time to look at a bit of the positive and wonderful things going on in our world, which are incredibly under-reported, so that people can feel good about the contributions that others are making, get inspired from what they're doing, and shine a new light in the world through their own lens.
We get ourselves out of our problems if we use creativity and innovation. I have learned to see the world as a shift in perspective from what is impossible to what is possible. When most people see darkness, I see light. When most people see limitations, I see opportunities. When most people see barriers, I see a way through. We can all learn to do that with practice.
What are the 10 superpowers you identify as steps to solving problems?
Just start. Invest in yourself. Use a filter. Take a chance. Untangle complexity. Look on the positive side. Embrace the routine. Fail successfully. Question the data. There’s no comparison.
What prevents people from pushing through some of their biggest problems?
Our own success prevents us from getting where we need to go. We're dependent on what worked for us yesterday. Many people have gotten to a certain point in life where things are pretty good, and so they want yesterday to be somehow replicated tomorrow. But what worked and what's gotten you to where you are today might not be what will work to get you to where you need to go tomorrow.
One of the things you tell clients is that they just have to get started when trying to find a solution to their problem. How come so many of us don't want to just start?
We get held up by our own brains. We get held up by focusing on what we can't do, instead of what we can do. We really need to try things and not be afraid of the failures because the failures are almost guaranteed. Nobody has a perfect career or makes all the right choices. We need to normalize failure so people then take a risk on trying different ideas.
The book is about positivity, but there is one exercise that advises folks to imagine the worst. How does that help us?
It helps you understand that what may happen may not be that bad. What I am afraid of is not that bad once I get it out, once I speak about it, once I write it down. We're so good at holding something in our mind and keeping it from getting out in the world. We’re more willing to take on that amount of risk when we actually see it written out.
The other exercise you suggest is to make a wishlist of courses or classes you’d like to take and then take them. Why is this important to shifting our mindsets to problem-solving mode?
When I ask an audience, “who has a class that they really want to take,” all the hands shoot up. They say they want to take a sewing class, a computer class, a classic literature one. Everybody wants to do something. When I ask, “okay, cool, in the last six months or 12 months, how many people have taken that class?” Almost every hand goes down.
It’s important to keep doing what it is that we want to be doing because taking that class then allows you to start the framework of maybe I should take this idea on, or maybe I should take this volunteer work on, or maybe I should do some consulting work, or whatever it is that you want to do. It opens the door to forward momentum.
You advise not to make friends at work. Can you please explain?
Work is a networking and collaboration tool, and not somewhere that you build friendships. Friendships are outside of work. They can be emotional. Work is for coming together for a common cause, whether it's getting more products out the door, or raising the profit margin on a particular venture, or some kind of goal-oriented work.
Many people's careers and lives get ruined because their bestie two cubes over is not that excited that you got promoted. People mistake their workplace for being a friendship zone, and they get into trouble when they cross the line of professionalism and friendship. That’s a trap.
I hear all the time from people that when they left a job, they never talked to the person they thought was their best friend there. Over the long term, if we're trying to do really good creative and innovative work, we need to stay away from becoming friends with people we work with.
Another nugget of advice is “use better words.” Let's talk about that a bit.
This is part of building your "look on the positive side" superpower. I've done a ton of research on this, and the English language has a 6-to-1 ratio of positive to negative words. For every good there is bad, horrible, terrible, the worst, crappy, on and on and on. One of the best incubators of creativity and innovation is positivity. And in our day-to-day interactions, we need to start using better words in order to get better results.
The side effect is that it shows that you are a decent human being in a subtle way, and that will get you more work, and it'll get you more money. It will allow you to perform different tasks down the road that you never could imagine if you didn't first choose better words.
What is your best advice for older workers who want to stay on the job and push back retirement?
It's all about trying things, changing, pivoting. You can't hang out and dial it in in today’s workplace. You need to continually make mistakes, learn from them, tweak them, iterate, and get better.
The more that we accept the fact that things will change, the more that we accept the fact that we need to keep up with those changes and adapt to them, the better we'll do in business, the better we do in just about everything in life.
Older workers who want to push back retirement especially need to be able to prove that they're relevant, vibrant, and in the loop, willing to try and fail. Most older workers in the workplace are not doing that. They want stability, to not create waves, but what worked yesterday is no recipe for what will work tomorrow, as I said before. We need to continually evolve.
Have a question about retirement? Personal finances? Anything career-related? Click here to drop Kerry Hannon a note.
What about if you want to make a career shift, but are stuck and you aren’t sure of what will light you up?
You have to go deep and ask yourself what you are really good at. Write it down. Ask other people you trust what you are really good at. Then be honest and have some fun thinking about what you really want to do.
Sometimes we don't know what we're good at because we take it for granted, so asking somebody else can give you some insight that you've never heard before.
Say you were an accountant your whole life and you ask somebody, ‘Hey, you know what am I really good at?’ And they go, ‘you're a people person.’ All of a sudden, you go, well, I really want to be a project manager or a program manager. It gives you the push. Getting that outside feedback — it might be completely different than what you've thought — helps unfreeze you.
Kerry Hannon is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a career and retirement strategist and the author of 14 books, including "Retirement Bites: A Gen X Guide to Securing Your Financial Future," "In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in the New World of Work," and "Never Too Old to Get Rich." Follow her on Bluesky and X.
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