What do YOU do when NOTHING is Working???

Who is ready to get a little bit better? You should say YES!!! I’m excited for this little conversation we’re going to have here, because I’ll tell you between clients, masterminds and friends. I am having some challenging conversations because it seems like times are shifting. Things are shifting in the business world, economic world… I am not going to get into the details, but you know. Truthfully, things don’t have to shift a whole lot if people’s perception of reality shifts a whole lot. When people start acting more in fear than they do in abundance, growth, vision, and purpose. And this all shifts some things in the landscape. That’s no reason for you as a business owner or whatever career profession you’re in to be nervous. 

All of this leads me to this conversation that I want to have because a lot of times we can get into this place or this thought pattern of nothing is working. Thinking I did this and I did that and I’ve tried this and I’ve tried that… so what do you do when nothing is working? Have you ever felt that way? I know I’ve felt that way. And here’s the answer I am going to give you and I am also going to give you some practical things. I actually did a little bit of this exercise on myself this week, so it is coming from a personal space out of the overflow. 

What do we do when nothing’s working? 

Foundational Principle: Ask better questions. If you think about it, what do I do when nothing is working, is a sucky question. Stop asking questions like that… What do I do when the economy sucks, what do I do when there is an election and people are walking around in fear, what do I do when transactions are down, when client count is down, when I am hemorrhaging finances? 

What do you need to do? Start asking better questions because they are going to get you better answers. You want solutions and here are three guidelines for the kind of questions to ask. 

1. Ask questions that are going to activate your imagination. I had a friend of mine share a little story about a massive breakthrough that occurred in his life in a way that was beyond comprehension. Literally, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars transacted because of the goodness of someone else’s heart. Has anyone ever written you a check for I don’t know $300,000 to $500,000 recently? As soon as he shared that with me, I started to ask better questions for myself personally. Like, if that can happen, how could this thing over here in my life that seems like a huge challenge be possible? How could the impossible be possible? How could that be turned upside down in an instant? How Could that debt that you are freaking out about be turned upside down in an instant? Can you see how when you start asking different questions how it can activate your imagination? All of a sudden, your brain begins to go to work and start looking for things you weren’t even looking for. I did this for myself and I started journaling. I’m not going to tell you the question or situation. But I was wondering, how could that happen? And it might sound crazy, it might be easy, and the literal language I would use would be supernatural, divine intervention. Then, I went a little deeper and asked, How could God do this? And just like that, my mind was blown beyond my imagination. I literally journaled a page and a half on the spot, woke up in the middle of the night, and wrote down another idea. And I kind of laughed because it could totally happen. And I want to tell you what has happened, I started seeing realistic things because I wasn’t looking for them before. Why? Because I got out of my head and into my heart. 
2. Ask questions that get you out of YOUR HEAD

Sometimes, those might be the same kind of question BUT to get into your heart, you have got to ask questions that get you out of your head. Ask questions like, what do I really want? There are times when we get so caught up in all the stuff and the numbers, metrics, dashboards and we need to ask ourselves what we really want? Why am I doing this anyway? How can I make a bigger difference in people’s lives? Take it back to the heart of why you do what you are doing. I’ve got people counting on me, I’m not going to get stressed out and overwhelmed and I am going to get from the place in my head that can do that to the place in my heart. And because I got out of my head and into my heart, I was able once again to activate my imagination in a different way. I started seeing actual solutions I wasn’t even looking for and there were some really viable things in my business, in my life that all of a sudden I started to see things I wasn’t seeing before. 

Activate your imagination, get out of your head. What kind of questions are we asking? Ask questions that are going to create new solutions; never before seen, never before done… ask questions that are going to create solutions that no one else has ever done. 

If you think about it, if you are only looking at solutions that you have seen done, if you only try to fix it in a way that you’ve always done it (or the industry), then you are limiting your capacity. 

Tony Robbins says It is never a lack of resources, it is only a lack of resourcefulness. 

The more resourceful you get, the more you create new solutions. Another friend of mine, Marshall, was in a group call recently and added this to that quote (I’m paraphrasing here), Our resourcefulness activates our faith, as well. And that is so true, when I’m starting to get resourceful, then all of a sudden I’m activating something that taps into that higher power. 

3.  Create new solutions. How has this never been solved before? How could this, if I took all limits off, be solved? What if all the boundaries were unlimited, what could change?

If we solved this in a new way, what could it look like if someone else solved it? What perspective would a stay-at-home mom versus my 10-year-old or someone else? Maybe a group of people? 

There are three ways you should ask these questions. And when you do these things, you activate your imagination, you get out of your head and you create new solutions. And you know what, you don’t have to do it alone. Get the right people in the room, people you trust, people with a different perspective, people with a different expertise, differing passions, diversity and you’d be surprised. And WRITE it out; journal it, put it on a whiteboard, type it into a document. 

So what do we do when it feels like nothing is working? First of all, there are some things that are still working, but you are asking dumb questions that make it look like nothing is working. If you haven’t already, you need to read The Gap and the Gain by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan. That’s a great little shift of perspective for you. And the biggest truth, don’t even ask what is not working because there is a lot still working… You’re still here, you’re still standing, you got this, you can overcome, you can find solutions. In fact, you have a hundred percent track record of keeping yourself alive and moving into the next day, so don’t doubt yourself. YOU GOT THIS!! I believe in you. 

I hope this served you.  Now go out there and give your greatness to the world because somebody needs what is on the inside of you. Go out there and give it away!!