How? Yes!
There is a fabulous business consultant who authored 3 best selling books prior to writing ‘The Answer to How is Yes”. Interest piqued for more? At a time of the year that we have struggled, perhaps drudged through the remains of the last decade only to embark on a brand new beginning, why need the new begin with leftovers? Now, there is nothing wrong with leftovers…I eat them all the time…no waste, please. When those ill fated ‘resolutions’ begin losing their mojo around Jan. 30th, we may begin to start beating ourselves over the head with the feeling of failure. Is it something we did? How did we propose this change? Author, Peter Block, proposes that our questions of ‘how?’ may largely be our way of avoiding purposefully. Avoiding real resolution, that is. It’s as if we do not know how to do it, by golly. We need a formula; we apply the formula and then we sin. In the famed fitness industry, especially at this time of the year we adopt a new fangled, jingle jangled similar thing to re-solve. Battling fat with fitness and spicing it up with fashion. Oooo-la-la, what a plan. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that often times we are just trying to a new version of what already is. The answer to the question is not how do I do this? The answer is YES. Stop asking ‘how?’ What is it that really matters in your life that you are staying stuck? It seems like a stall tactic and if we can pause and ask ‘how do I?’ we put that question outside of ourselves as if we will find it OUT there. ‘How?’ grants us a pause, delay, stall, hindrance, interruption or all out avoidance for the time being. Reduced to the ridiculous the pause is the doubt. Can we yield to the demands of being practical? Simple? Sensible? Why need we think that a solution, formula, latest & greatest is the answer for our curious ways? Might you know in the not-too-deep down that you know the answer? You do. C’mon, really. It’s practical, it’s real and you know it. Some years ago, Jim Walker, a change agent who worked with a large struggling AT&T way back often asked, “What do you do when you find yourself in a hole? His answer was simply “The first thing you do is stop digging”. Right on Jim! What is really worth your effort and what need you become aware of to make a change? What is the better question to ask in getting yourself closer to that change without the stall of the ‘how do I do it?’
It is quite a curious wonder at how many apparent solutions have been exploited to the advantage of those who can capitalize on the weakness of the questioners and seekers. It is what I call ‘net-catchers’. It begins with the hook. They want it now, the solution…do you have it? Good. How can I get it? Make it easy, done for me and delivered yesterday and I’ll buy it. Seven seconds? That’s what we got to impress…and catch in the net. Quicker, easier, smaller, and portable and you’ve got a gold mine. Yaaa-hoo. Sometimes we can giggle when we realize that we’re hooked. Why do we giggle? Is it the fact that exploitation feels good because what is going to feel better if only temporarily is a solution? We give in, cause it feels soooo good. We have weaved our way to wander for the answer. Out there. Out there has expanded so much that ‘out there’ can be as close as your keyboard.
The answer is YES. Most likely hidden in plain sight is the key to your success. How about if formulas, solutions, programs, tickets, blueprints, methods, and the like were really just distorted images of the already known answer dumbed down, divided into the square root of its least common denominator , and multiplied by its mirror image? That makes about as much sense as what we typically find our American selves doing on a Saturday.
Check out your big bag of answers. Chances are you’ve got one in there for what you need now. And I don’t mean other people’s answers…those in the formulas and blueprints. Your answers may require a new set of questions beyond ‘how?’… because ‘how?’ will only delay you and life is waiting.
Ahead of you may be a profoundly different way of acting and moving forward….if you simply select another question and then change the ‘how?’ to YES.
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