3 questions to ask when things suck...

• “toxic positivity…”

• “wish he would complain more…”

• “should be more real…”

These have all shown up on my leadership feedback survey results at various times over the last five years.

At one point, I even ran a little experiment where I tried to be intentional about choosing certain things I would be more vocally negative about in front of certain people. It was too hard to try and keep up with.

The truth is, I am always going to be optimistic.

I don’t expect others to share that same optimism. And, we shouldn’t misinterpret optimism for a lack of emotion or unwillingness to confront emotion. In fact, it’s my emotional processing that allows me to stay optimistic.

This week has sucked—actually, it’s been several weeks of suck and to be honest the forecast looks like more suck in the coming weeks.

And that’s what we’re going to talk about this week—how do we respond when things just suck?

I’ve got three questions I keep on speed dial that help me process the crappy times. If you’ve ever had a crap day, are having a crap day, or see a crap day on the horizon, try one of these questions and let me know how it goes…

How long are you going to let yourself feel like this?

My parents asked us this question growing up and I use this one all the time. Toxic positivity is a refusal to acknowledge what you’re feeling and to mask it with a positive facade. That’s not actually the goal. What we need is to improve our ability to meet an emotion and then dictate the terms of engagement.

You’re allowed to feel all the feels.

Feel them deeply.

And feel them as long as you want.

And then, when you feel it’s right, you need to take a step—a step that moves you away from that feeling and toward the place you want to be.

Multiple times this week, I gave myself until the next morning to feel it and react however I wanted in my mind. This timing tends to work really well for me. I let myself be angry, frustrated, and everything in between and I know when I wake up the next morning its time to take a step.

Depending on what’s happening, there are many times where I will give myself until the end of my next meal. Something bad happens in the morning and I let myself sit in it until I finish lunch.

What I love about this question is that it makes space to feel AND it doesn’t let me off the hook. It forces me to acknowledge that this isn’t something I should carry indefinitely. It also gives me the power over the emotion - I get to decide how long it can hang around and do what it wants, and I decide when it’s time to begin moving away from it.

And, in case you’re wondering how I take that next step, I have another question for you to use: how would the person you want to be handle this situation? This moves your mind to an aspirational place which you can then begin to try and reverse engineer the path ahead.

Now, what?

Maybe you’re saying, Kyle I don’t have time for six days of processing my feelings, let’s take the next step now.

Well, I’ve got the perfect question for you:

Now, what?

This is a no-nonsense question that puts your mind immediately into action.

• You got laid off. Now, what?

• This project at work fell apart. Now, what?

• Your clients are unreasonably demanding and have revolted. Now, what?

Try it. Think of some situation that you’re experiencing that just makes you angry, frustrated, sad, depressed, or whatever. Now, say these two words with me—”now, what?”

Questions are so powerful because they open up a loop in our mind and our minds are designed to close these open loops. Asking this question doesn’t change the situation or change what you’re feeling BUT it does change where your focus goes.

You’re not going to like this next question.

In fact, I’m going to place my subscribe button here so that if you want, you can just click away and use the two questions above.

How are you contributing to the situation that’s causing these feelings?

I told you.

I’m all about ownership and autonomy. Autonomy is something we crave as humans. We want to feel like we are in control. And sometimes with emotions, we quickly point our fingers to every possible external cause we can find. That’s normal.

That’s why this question is my unsung hero on this list.

“Extreme Ownership. Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.” (Jocko WIllink, Extreme Ownership)

Jocko is a former Navy SEAL and the quote is about leaders but make no mistake you are the leader of your life and should “own everything in your world.”

The quick caveat is that sometimes there are things out of our control. Natural disasters, crimes commited against us, etc.

But even when we think we are totally blameless, we are sometimes more involved than we think. Our home was robbed 10 years ago, I mean completely ransacked like a scene from a movie. Totally out of my control, right?

Kind of.

We learned from the police later on that the thieves were looking for homes where the snow had not been shoveled off the front driveway because they correctly assumed those people were out of town.

Yep. Because I failed to arrange for one of the neighbor kids to come by and shovel, our home was specifically targeted.

I have to own how I contributed to that situation.

The same is true of many of the situations we’re in. I may want to point the finger and call the other person crazy but I need to stop and ask this question and really thoughtfully look at how I’ve contributed to this situation.

This isn’t a fun question. But, I have grown significantly over the years as I’ve been willing to step into this space and own the ways in which I contributed to the very thing I was complaining about.

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You know what I love about this project? I am reminded every single day how impactful questions are. They can help in good times, bad times, and even just the day-to-day times. Questions work!

Which of these three questions hit most for you? Do you have a different question you use during tough times? Let me know!

Keep Asking,

Kyle