HOW can I get this done?

How can I get the good food?

Goat’s Question: How can I reach the good stuff? (see answer at bottom of blog!)

It is the same old question every day… In the summer it is multiplied because everyone is around all the time: What’s for dinner? What’s for lunch? What’s for breakfast? Arg… usually I am just getting myself together and the question comes… My natural response is: “I don’t know… what do you want?” That gets the natural reply, “I don’t know…”. And we are in a vicious circle. And it is repeated EVERY day, often multiple times a day, by multiple people. It drives me crazy. But hey, I’m the mom. It’s my job to figure out the meals and get them organized. But sometimes I just feel STUCK.

I was listening to a Brian Tracy,  a well known motivational speaker. His CD plays in the circulation of CDs in the car where I once again spend LOTS of time.  He said something simple: change the question. Change the question. Now that’s an idea. Instead of thinking about what’s for dinner, I can reframe the question to: how am I going to get dinner on the table? Brian didn’t say ANYTHING about dinner, he just talked about changing the question. I formatted the reframe to fit my personal pain point, which is dinner.

How can I get dinner on the table? Suddenly the focus shifted for me. How can I get dinner on the table. There are the basic options. Make it myself, make reservations, pick something up, ask someone else in the family to make it. Reservations are a big deal since we are a family of 6 and eating out becomes an investment. Pick something up keeps the onus on me since we live 15 minutes up a circuitous mountain road and I am the chauffeur. Ask someone else to make it. That opens up a few choices. Usually my husband does the cooking since he excels in that area, but he works like crazy and can’t usually do that during the week or he’s traveling. Ah! But three teen-age kids! That could be a viable option! I run through what each can make: scrambled eggs, salad, toast, spaghetti, Mac and cheese, hot dogs, quite a growing list! Or I can even cook and they can help set the table, make the salad or even keep me company in the kitchen. By reframing the question from WHAT to HOW, possibilities open up for me. When I have the WHAT question, probably since I get that question so often, I shut down. HOW is a great reframe.

How can YOU use this in your life outside of the dinner dilemma? Let’s say you want to learn to speak English better. The question becomes: how can I speak English more often? List all of your options—brainstorm! Write down as many options as you can think of and don’t edit the list! Just keep writing down ideas! Then afterwards you can go through each option you came up with and think about its feasibility. Think of all the situations in which you can use your language skills. Helping lost tourists, joining English speaking groups, traveling, finding a conversation buddy… 

What if you have been looking for a job? The reframe could be: How can I find work that satisfies me? Go through the same process. See how many different ideas you can generate.

Maybe your question is: how can I be successful in my new job, or in college, or with whatever project you are working on? Then again brainstorm your ideas. Or be creative and ask Google… what ideas pop up there? This could get to be fun!

So this is the take-away: when you are stuck with something, a question, a problem, a situation, think about how you can REFRAME the situation using a different question to see the situation in a different light. With my dinner example, the shift came from ME having to do it all, to me having to think about how to get it done which then opened up new options.

If you have a reframe what works for you, ping me back and let me know. Or, if you have some better ideas for dinner, I would be excited to hear about that as well!

Until next time! Be in the arena!

We all need a little help from our friends!