14 Ways To Solve Your Toughest Challenge

Stop trying. Stop struggling. Instead:

1. Read a novel. Thriller, classic, whatever. Somewhere an author has a character solving your problem.
2. Write extensively in old battered notebooks. Deep in your brain the synaptic pathways can knit to solve it. Simply give them a chance.
3. Go to a library. Choose books at random. Flick pages at random.
4. Cook. Smells of spices and textures of pastry will kick-start the solution machine.
5. Laugh. A lot. No more than that. There you go: easy to crack that one.
6. Go the gym and pump iron. An exhausted body will give up the solution.
7. Walk.The rhythm, the heart rate extended, the mind distracted. The solution manifests.
8. Look deep into her eyes. The soul can hide very little. 
9. Meditate on the subject.
10. Google/Bing it. But go beyond page 1.
11. Draw the problem, even though you cannot draw.
12. Re-listen to the lyrics of the greatest songs. Sinatra, The Beatles and Petrovich Mussorgsky have the very way forward you seek.
13. Listen again to the advice you were given but you ignored. Yep: it's good advice.
14. Ask yourself: if I had to solve it in the next 120 seconds, what would I do? Mmm, it wasn't a toughness issue. It was a procrastination issue.

BONUS: You, Only Better