Today’s motivation comes from Terri Lonier:

“Emphasize the error, not the person committing it.”
— Terri Lonier: Authority on entrepreneurship

In our society, things go wrong and when they do, we look to the person that is responsible for the error. For way too long, we tend to look at the person who commits the wrong and not focus more on problem itself. In other words, we look at the sinner and not the sin.

Many times before, I’ve observed how our society commits this error. For example, in Nathanial Hawthorne’s classic, “The Scarlett Letter,” Hester Prinn must endure heartache because she decides to have a child outside of her marriage. Instead of naming the father of her child, she must wear a scarlet “A” on her chest for the rest of her life. The letter A implies that she has committed adultery. For the rest of the story, we must bare witness to a society that prefers to look at the crime Hester has committed instead to trying to determine why she committed the crime.

I wonder why is that? Who knows for sure but we all must look at the sin itself and determine why it occurs and how it affects us. When we focus more on the error, we can analyze the situation properly. Once that’s done, then we can focus on a solution that is fitting to the error and hopefully, that will solve the problem.

The Beatles once said in a song, “We can work it out.” Well, I believe we can work it out provided that we focus more on the error and less on the person committing the error. From my experiences in life, when you shift the focus towards the problem, that is a first step in determining what the solution will be. Nothing can be solved by constantly focusing on the person that committed the error.

Remember, whenever you’re in a situation, always work on shifting the focus to the problem at hand.