Hi,

I want to tell you about this situation that my friends are in, because I think there is a lesson that we can all learn from it. They live in this huge apartment complex. I mean HUGE! There are like 3,000 people that live in this apartment complex! And the thing is that it looks real nice on the

outside and all, at least to the naked eye, and at least in dry weather. But here’s the rub – When it rains, the parking lots all flood! That’s because they weren’t paved right to begin with. But you can’t see that to the naked eye when the weather is dry, you can only see it when it rains.

So here’s what happened: So many of the tenants complained that management finally decided to do something about it. Great, huh? NOT! Well…They got the pavers to come out, and they inconvenienced the tenants by making them go all the way around the paver’s blockades to get to their respective apartments while the work was being done (which they didn’t mind, because they thought well at least the parking lot was finally getting paved and no more flooding, right? WRONG!) The next time it rained…The parking lots flooded even WORSE! That’s because all the pavers did was PATCH the parking lots where they were at their worse. They never fixed the REAL problem at its SOURCE.

So here’s the lesson I think we can learn: When you’re solving problems, you have to get to

them at their SOURCE. Or else they’re going to keep coming back at you again and again and again, just like that flooded apartment parking lot. If you’re having problems with your loved one and their bipolar disorder, for example, you can’t just “patch” them and expect things to get better. Oh, they might get better for a little while, but then the problem is just going to reassert

itself, possibly even worse. Say, for example: You want to stop the fighting. So you just start getting real quiet. And the fighting may stop for awhile, but since you never discussed with your loved one the source of the fighting, nothing is really resolved, and eventually the fighting will start up again. It’s just inevitable. Because you never really solved the problem. You never went to the SOURCE. In this case, you need to talk to your loved one about what is causing you to fight in the first place.

You need to practice this strategy whatever the problem is that you’re facing. As long as you go to the source, you have the best chance of actually solving the problem and not just patching it up.

Well, I have to go!

Your Friend,

Dave