What has frustrated you lately? What have you found annoying and talked about it to pretty much anyone who’d listen? It is so tempting to ruminate on negative events in our lives. It can be easy to get stuck in a loop of talking about what you don’t like. Whether something professional or personal, there’s one powerful question that can break the cycle of focusing on what you don’t want:
What do you want?
Instead of continuing down a path of bemoaning the situation you don’t want and feeling powerless to change it, ask yourself what you do want. If you are honest about your answer, it can be the first step to effecting meaningful change in the situation that frustrates you.
Sometimes it leads to a conversation that needs to be had. “What she said didn’t sit right with me…” moves from second-guessing and ruminating about it to clarifying it. “You said something the other day and I just want to clarify what you meant.”
Sometimes, you come to realize that you need to change how you approach a particular problem. “I’m so tired of running from one activity to the next”, turns into “I’m on the verge of getting burned out. I just don’t have the grace for this that I used to have. What adjustments could I make that would allow me to be more fruitful and energized every day?”
And sometimes, you’ll make a plan for a significant life change. “What do you want?” is the question that led me to change career paths 16 years ago when I was frustrated in my former career. I knew the honest answer was, “I want to inspire and write and speak.” So I followed up the question with another, “How could you go about bringing that dream to life?” Finding my path and studying others who’d been there-done that became my next step.
