Lucien Loubiere had a problem. A big, angry, snorting problem. It was early 1961, and the actor commanded the spotlight before a live audience in Périgueux, France. As he stood center stage looking regal in a brilliant bullfighter’s costume, he suddenly found himself facing an unexpected and unwelcome challenge: an enraged young bull, set loose by practical jokers in the show’s company.

Audience members began screaming and scrambling from the front rows, but Loubiere remained calm. Reaching inside his costume, he quickly extracted a pistol and fired three shots, killing the bull as it charged. Then turning to the audience, he announced with a dismissive shrug, “It’s the modern way to do it.”

Most problems don’t find such ready, um … solutions. So if you’re racking your brain trying to solve personal or work dilemmas, you might find it helpful to ask these questions:

• Do I really want to solve this problem?  Sometimes the reason problems seem insoluble is because subconsciously we don’t want to solve them. Whether or not we realize it—or want to admit it to ourselves—we’re getting some kind of hidden payoff keeping things exactly as they are. Or we’re afraid of what might happen if we make changes. And even if we aren’t the ones responsible for maintaining the status quo, the same principle applies. The boss, colleague, family member, or friend who keeps derailing projects and undermining relationships is deriving some sort of satisfaction from those setbacks. The goal is to discover the reason for the self-sabotage or interference and put a stop to it. Once that’s accomplished, problem-solving will be much easier.

• What went right? Remember the last time you took an assignment, planned an event, or managed a crisis and everything went smoothly? So … how’d you do it? What do you mean you don’t know? Good grief, everything went perfectly, surely you wrote down what you did so you’d be able to duplicate that perfection?

No, you probably didn’t.

When people die of cancer, doctors factor their deaths into the data—further proof that people with this type cancer at this stage are likely to die at this point. But what if they live? What if their oncologist swears they have less than six months and they live 10 more years? Or 20? Do doctors poke and prod and study them to find out what spectacularly right thing they did so they can help create a map for others to follow? No, not as a rule. It’s customary in most fields to analyze things that go badly, not things that go well.

Want to conquer a difficult problem? Start thinking about problems you’ve already conquered—and how you did it.

• What does solved look like?  Imagine your problem is poof! solved. Exactly what’s different now? What’s working that wasn’t before? Who’s involved? Who’s gotten out of the way? What’s been added? What’s been eliminated? What was the spark that started the chain reaction? Use these questions to prompt ideas that may lead you to the elusive next step in the process.