Look for Opportunities and Focus on Solutions

Dohn Hoyle, Partners in Policymaking Faculty Member, Activist and Organizer
35. Look for Opportunities and Focus on Solutions
Well, I think there's another, there's one more lesson. And I think that is that there are opportunities almost everywhere all the time. But boy, you have to be open to 'em and ready for 'em. And if you're not looking for 'em, and sort of had an expectation for them, they might not come or you might not see them or you might miss 'em. But I think there's room for optimism. Even though I've said bad things about lots of things that are happening.
There's room for optimism. But there have to be optimistic people and there have to be people have to be thinking about opportunities as opposed to just what's wrong. And a part of that is how you set your expectation about what you want, and complaining about stuff and what's wrong is, from an organizer, again, is probably the wrong perspective. What you need to think about and concentrate more on is what the outcome would be or what the solution to what's wrong would be. Whatever it is you think is gonna solve the problem or be the solution needs to be the concentration, not what's wrong, not complaining about stuff.
And I think that's, people don't spend any time on that. I don't get enough speech therapy for my child. Well, what do you want? You want your child to talk to other kids? Do you want 15 minutes more? I mean, what is it you want? Not, "My child doesn't get enough." And I think the further you can get to the outcome is I want them to be able to ask for help. I want the better you are instead of complaining about what's wrong.