Have you ever wondered what Looking for trouble really means?

My mentor at a manufacturing plant in Toronto was frequently heard to say, “I’m looking for trouble!”  When I first asked him what he meant by it, he said, “It means I’m checking to find a mistake someone has made early on in the making of a production part rather than when it’s completed. It’s a lot less expensive than starting the whole job over again.” I saw merit in that way of thinking immediately but could I do it likewise? Mr. Ireland had the wisdom and related experience to take steps to anticipate problems and prevent them. He was a sleuth for finding trouble as if he kept a crystal ball in his pocket.

What if one was to go and look for trouble and found it? What happens next, depends on the kind of trouble you have found. Maybe it is just a little bit like the simple fact of your neighbour sharing his trouble with you. Because it has helped to ease his mind, you’ve made a difference. On the other hand, maybe the trouble you uncovered is just the tip of the iceberg. That type of trouble will take time and effort if you want to help in a tangible way. In both cases you have succeeded — discovering it was easier than you imagined. In fact, you would probably feel better for doing it! The secret of going to look for trouble is to reveal the person you really wanted to be. The old version of yourself sometimes completely disappears. Today, go out there and look for yourself. Look for others. Look for trouble.

In my twenties, I worked in Kingston and shared an apartment with a friend, who was just starting his career as a high school teacher. The apartment located above a variety store, was in the seedier part of town. One evening we heard a ruckus on the street below. Rushing to the window we saw three threatening looking guys, dressed in leathers and dismounted from their motorcycles. They had surrounded an unmistakably terrified teenage girl that they were harassing. Kenny reacted instantly saying, “She is a student in my Geography class,” and he dashed through the apartment door as I shouted to him, “Stay here or you’ll be asking for trouble.” Now back at the window with my finger ready to dial 9-1-1, I witnessed a vigorous but muted conversation until it shortly calmed down. Finally, the girl left the circle, relieved to be heading for home, while the dudes mounted their bikes and drove off in the opposite direction. Kenny came back in and to my utter dismay, he wouldn’t explain how he had appeared to charm those guys. He never did reveal his technique. We lost touch but on many occasions during confrontations of my own, I had wished I knew his secret weapon.

Someone told me once that when he began seeking out trouble, he still clung to his negative emotions subconsciously. He had grown up with negativity, fearing to let the habitual thoughts go as if locked into his mind by surreal handcuffs and no key. So, he persisted in the poor relationships and poor decisions, all of which kept him trapped in those imaginary cuffs. He eventually escaped his negativity trap by identifying with people who had mastered similar complications and by undergoing plenty of therapy. He eventually emerged out of his emotional hideaway to a transition of chronically self-sabotage to catapulting into a life of success, one that he never believed possible. He said, “And you know what? Happiness isn’t so bad after all.”

Small changes can have a serious impact. Such as environmentalists that collect satellite imagery of tropical forests to track changes over time in order to detect small alterations in the landscape. For example, if an unauthorized logging road was being built, at first the visual impact in a huge forest is so small that the human eye can’t see the difference. But as loggers use that road to clear more and more trees, the effects become more and more obvious. By looking for trouble with satellite imagery, that road can be spotted before much logging has been done. Activists and governments will now have a much better chance of preventing more damage to the forest itself. “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it,” Albert Einstein once said.

Skills are critical. If you want to build a house, you’d better have carpentry skills. If you want to build a life, you’d better have communication skills. Without either, you may end up alone and homeless!