When what we are doing doesn’t work, we often try it again, only this time louder and harder. Sometimes this persistence yields results (as any weak parent who gives in to the relentless pestering of a child can tell you), but more often it keeps us from getting what we want.

One way to solve a problem, then, is not to analyze why the problem arose, but to change what you are doing to solve it. The way to do that is to determine how you keep acting in the same way over and over again (the problem pattern) and begin to experiment with doing something different (breaking the pattern). This can even work when the problem is another person, for if you change your part of an interpersonal pattern, the other person will often change as a result of your change.

Bill O’Hanlon, Do one thing different