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You’ve got something you have to do. It’s at the top of your handwritten list of goals for the year, with an underline and a doodle for extra flourish. It’s represented by a meticulously cut out photo on your vision board. Your hands ached from the precision of your cutting. Your heart aches for what realizing this vision could do for you.
This accomplishment is the universal key card that will unlock everything else you want in life. You’re convinced, but I’m skeptical.
It’s not personal. I hear this line of thinking come up all the time in my work. When someone tells me they have to get more followers on social media or go to grad school or quit their full-time job, my first response is always a question.
I ask, “And what will that get you?”
In answering that question, the real desires come spilling out like water from a showerhead after a deep clean. What you really want is to be respected, to have more opportunities for collaboration, to place more of an emphasis on your creative work, or to make more money.
Sometimes I can see the perspective shift happen as if you’ve flipped the switch on an old school View-Master. You’re already seeing more pathways toward your desires.
When someone needs a nudge, I follow up with, “And why does that matter?”
That question jolts people into one of two directions.
1. You realize it doesn’t actually matter to you. That was my response when I was certain I had to phase out my work with FranklinCovey and Google to be a “true entrepreneur.” Try as I might, I could never come up with a convincing (to me!) reason to derive 100% of my income from my own products and services. This question revealed something that didn’t matter to me, and freed me up to figure out what did.
2. You uncover your intrinsic motivation. You want to be respected because achieving mastery in your craft is important to you. You want to do more creative work because you feel most connected and fulfilled when you’re regularly creating. You want to make more money because that’s one way you can provide a sense of safety to your inner child.
What will that get you? Why does that matter? Two revelatory questions, but I’m a sucker for the rule of three. The first two questions cause pattern interruption. You were used to seeing only one path to your desired outcome. Now you’re questioning that belief. The final question invites you to imagine alternate pathways.
Ask, “How else can I get the same results?”
When you answer this question with both silliness and sincerity, you realize that the path from here to there doesn’t have to be so convoluted. Maybe you don’t have to grow a social media presence to 50k followers as a prerequisite to making more money. You could also build deeper relationships with 15 connectors. Maybe spending two years on a certification isn’t the only way to prove your expertise. What if you just started sharing the depth of knowledge you already have? Switching jobs is one way to inject challenge into your career, but you could also do pro bono consulting through a group like Compass.
You might reflect on these three questions and end up walking down the path you originally envisioned. The goal of these questions isn’t to change your mind; it’s to open your mind—to desires you didn’t know to name and to possibilities you wouldn’t otherwise consider. These questions nudge you closer to what you really want.
