The Most Powerful Question You Can Ask When Things Go Wrong

Think you know what positivity is? Think again. This is pathological positivity, where psychologist and author, doctor Paul Jenkins, challenges conventional thinking, explores the science of positivity, and talks with extraordinary people who put it into practice. Real psychology, remarkable stories, a radically different way to live. And now, here's your host, doctor Paul. Pathological positivity episode 727. The most powerful question you can ask when things go wrong. What do you ask when things go wrong? We all experience unexpected setbacks, frustrations, disappointments, painful circumstances, lightning bolts that just knock us off of our feet. And when something goes wrong, our minds immediately begin asking questions. One of the most familiar ones, why me? But usually it's not even a question. It's more of a whine. What happens next in our minds may be more important than the question itself. Possibly the questions that we ask ourselves have an enormous influence on how we experience life. In this episode, let's dive into the psychology behind that. Sometimes the question isn't the problem. The answer is. So we'll go over a four step strategy today. We'll talk about recognizing the question. Seeing it because sometimes it's hidden. After that, we have to tune in to what the answer is. We're gonna have some fun on that one. And then choose a more useful question. Finishing off with a really powerful skill to remain in the question. Are you ready? Let's jump in. Recognize the question. Are you asking a question or is this a statement disguised as a question? Is it a question or is it a complaint? Is it a question or is it a protest? See, our brains naturally seek explanations when something unexpected or unpleasant happens. And some questions are genuine invitations to explore some possibilities or to create some new meaning out of our experience. Others are complaints or protests disguised as questions. So here's a couple of examples. Well, what could possibly be good about this? Alright. Do you hear the exclamation point? It's not really a question. It's a protest. It's a statement disguised as a question. What happens if we turn it back into a question? What could possibly be good about this? It's a pretty good question, but my point is that usually it's not a question. Sometimes we'll ask, why me? Which we say in a whiny voice. I've heard some of my colleagues refer to this as whining or being a why baby. Why me? Really? Are we asking why me? Like, is it really a question, or is this a protest? Why does this always happen to me? Again, more of a protest. Why can't anything ever go right? Think about that for a minute. If we got the answer to that, we'd be like, oh. Oh, okay. I see. No. See, because it's not a question. Why can't anything ever go right for me? What could possibly be good about this? Why does this always happen to me? Why me? The tone and intention behind the question matter. A genuine question implies openness to discovering something we don't already know. If it's a little hard to see in yourself, think about your kids for a minute. You set a limit, and you get the question, why? Okay. Are they really wondering? Like, are they seeking information under your wise voice? Because if you were to say, well, honey, because this and that, and you explain it to them and they're like, oh. Oh, I see. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. No. They're not asking. And we get into the mistake all the time of responding to our kids as if it were really a question because we try to explain it to them. Well, how does that go? Yeah. Not so well. They just get more upset. They get more heated because they weren't asking a question. They were trying to get you to change the limit. And we do it in our own minds too, but we're kind of blind to it. It's it's more of a subconscious process. A complaint disguised as a question already has an answer to the question and it's not usually a helpful one. A genuine question opens the door to discovery. A complaint disguised as a question assumes the door is already closed, and we're really not looking for information. Curiosity creates possibilities. And you've heard me say before, awareness precedes choice. So as be... We become aware of this, it puts us in a very different position. I invite you to become more aware of the questions that automatically come up for you when something goes wrong. And here's where things really get interesting because sometimes the question isn't the problem at all. It's the answer. That leads us into this second point. Notice the answer. Your brain is really eager to fill in the blanks. And secretly, your subconscious doesn't want to go without an answer. So if you don't give it a good answer to a good question, it will totally make one up and it will come up with one that doesn't necessarily serve you well. I remember and I I share this story in my book Pathological Positivity. Same title as this podcast. I shared a story about a time, this was two decades ago now, when I was diagnosed with a neurological voice disorder. And this was a really trying time for me. My voice is my tool of production. I'm a professional speaker. I'm a podcaster. I'm a YouTuber. I need my voice. And here comes this diagnosis of a neurological voice condition. Well before I ever got the diagnosis, my brain was diagnosing it for me because the question, what's going on with me? Why is this happening to me? Why me? That was going on. I... And I was even somewhat aware of the question. What I didn't notice so much was the answer that my subconscious mind was feeding me. And your your subconscious will give you answers, completely fabricated answers based on however much or little information you have. Think about that for a minute. This is not a really great system, but it's how we're designed. And our brain is doing what it's supposed to do. So as I was noticing some of the strain in my voice, I'm a psychologist and the the information in my head was suggesting to me, oh, there must be something psychological going on. There's some unresolved issues or there... There's some drama somewhere in my psyche that's causing this manifestation to come out in my voice. That's not what's going on, but that's what my brain handed me and I didn't even notice it really. I just felt the effects of it. My brain was handing me this fabricated answer and I was raised in a very conservative religious community and upbringing, and so my brain took another swing at it. Oh, it's probably all those unresolved sins. Right? God is trying to call your attention to how inadequate you are, which is ridiculous and has no similarity to my current faith structure. But that's what my brain was trying to do to me. Well, when I finally got connected to a doctor who actually specializes in the condition that I was experiencing, He knew immediately what it was. He gave it a name. It's called spasmodic dysphonia. And that's a fancy name but it basically just means that I have neurological spasms that affect my vocal folds. It originates in the basal ganglia of the brain. It's similar to Parkinson's, but it affects primarily my voice. And when he shared that with me, it was an answer that I had never considered. And it displaced all of those fabricated answers that I had before. And I need to do another episode sometime soon about retiring the diagnosis because I've since retired that diagnosis. That's a whole other story. But the point that we need to focus on here is how our brain is going to answer those questions. Why questions are particularly challenging because your brain is gonna come up with all kinds of goofy answers because I'm a bad person, because nothing ever works out for me, because because God must be upset with me, or because I'm just unlucky. And these explanations can feel really convincing even when they have very little factual support. Once we accept an explanation, it influences our emotions, our expectations, all of our subsequent choices. And this is where it ties right back into our positivity model because we can't turn off our brain's tendency to evaluate everything. We're constantly judging. So recognizing the answer gives us an opportunity to examine whether it's actually true or useful and much of this happens on a subconscious basis. Now, sub means below, like subway, submarine. Conscious means awareness. So a lot of times it's riding just there underneath your conscious awareness. And it can come to your awareness when we have conversations like this because you stop and do a little metacognition. You think about your thinking, and you start to notice things that you didn't see before. Things that are happening automatically in your brain. I'm inviting you to notice and recognize not just the questions that you're asking, but notice your brain's default answers to it. And some of them are subconscious, so it takes a little digging sometimes. Coaching can be really helpful for that too. Your brain would rather have a questionable answer than sit comfortably with an unanswered question. Let me say that again. Your brain would rather have a questionable answer than to sit comfortably with an unanswered question. We'll come back to that in just a minute. Sometimes the answers we generate are based more on fiction and fantasy than reality. An answer can feel true simply because it's familiar to us, because we've practiced it or we're used to it. So when you notice yourself becoming discouraged or frustrated, you might ask, what explanation have I already accepted about what's happening? And without even trying to judge it as being true or false or helpful or unhelpful, What explanation have I already accepted puts you back into that position of awareness. And once we notice the answers we're generating, we can do something remarkably powerful. We can choose a different question. So that leads us right into this next point. Choose a more powerful question. The direction of your question influences the direction of your thinking. Questions are what focus our attention and invite our minds to search for answers to those questions. And remember, watch out because our brain is by default going to just hand us an answer. But we can deliberately select questions that encourage curiosity or gratitude or learning. New possibilities. This is an application of the creation side of the positivity model. So we start with what it is and then we can explore what might be possible from here. So I'm going to throw out five powerful questions to consider. Now I'm not saying these are the right questions to ask. They're going to be a little different from what you're used to, and that's good because we wanna shake up the mind a little bit here. Either you drive your thoughts or your thoughts drive you. So as we come into more awareness of this questioning process that's happening in our own minds all the time, we can't turn it off, just consider these five and how they might become useful to you when things don't go the way we planned. Okay. You ready? Number one. What's in this for me? Now that almost sounds like that selfish. Well, what's in it for me? Right? But it's a really great question to ask when things don't go as planned. What's in this for me? This opens the possibility of personal value or opportunity. Something that I've really come to notice through my own life experience, but also as a professional psychologist, is that there is value in every life experience. There's also upsides and downsides. And sometimes the downsides become so loud that it's hard to to notice the upsides. Right? That's why these questions can be helpful. Let's go to number two. What can I learn from this? This directs your attention toward insight and growth because if nothing else, you can always learn something from your experience. And my experience tells me that sometimes the painful ones are actually more powerful learning experiences than the pleasant ones are. Have you found that too? Here's number three. What is there to be grateful for in this? Now remember, keep the punctuation in order here. Make sure it's a question and not a complaint or a statement disguised as a question. What is there to be grateful for in this? No. What is there to be grateful for in this? It invites discovery of something that's worth appreciating and you'll find something. I have found this particular question to actually be life saving because I know people whose lives were saved by it. When your brain does not want to go there is probably the most important time to instruct it to go there. Get your brain working for you, not the other way around. Here's another one, number four. How is this perfect for me? This is a tough one. I knew I was getting good at this when I was playing basketball and I stepped on someone's foot, on the side of their foot, and my ankle rolled. I heard the pop. I felt the excruciating pain. I sprained my ankle. And as I slumped to the floor and I grabbed my ankle and I let out some kind of a sound that hopefully didn't break anybody's eardrums, I heard myself say in the next breath, this is perfect for me. And the guys I was playing basketball with weren't sure whether they needed to take me to the xych ward or to the emergency room for the ankle sprain. It's so strange, but I knew I was getting good at this because I had practiced that question in my mind and I knew somehow it was perfect for me. I could not see in that moment how it was perfect for me. That's why it's a real question. How is this perfect for me? It turns out that it got me out of a hike that I was planning for that weekend, which I wasn't planning to get out of. I wasn't trying to avoid it, but it opened up the possibility to be present for my family in a way that I wouldn't have been able to do had I gone on the hike. How is this perfect for me? There's probably some good answers to that. Let's go to number five. Given what it is, what could I create next? This question moves us toward possibility and intentional action because whatever you're going to create moving forward from here has to start from here. Where else could you start? And yet I've noticed that we as a species tend to complain about our starting place rather than just accepting this is what it is. Now where am I going from here? So given what is, what could I create next? Can you use those those questions? These questions don't require us to have immediate answers. K. Their value is in the direction they encourage our thinking to go. It's like we're instructing our brain to work for us. The question, how is this perfect for me? Can be especially powerful precisely because the answer may be initially very unclear or unavailable to us. We can explore possibilities without insisting that we already understand the ultimate meaning of our circumstances. The quality of your questions influences the quality of your experience. A powerful question invites your mind to explore possibilities it might otherwise overlook. These are hidden treasures in the troubles. And now comes what might be the most important part of this entire strategy. Our final point here today, you don't have to have an answer to the question right away. Remain in the question. I learned this from one of my coaches years ago that the ability to remain in the question is what often sets apart anxious people from confident people. I had a guest years ago here on the podcast who was a minister in Rochester, New York, and he shared a powerful personal practice with me that has stuck with me since. Now remember, he's a minister, so he's coming from a faith background. And often in faith circles, we talk about prayer. His focus was on meditation, and this is the man who taught me that prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening to God. The same man told me that whenever something unexpected or unwanted or painful happened, he would pause. He gave the example of when you see those red and blue lights flashing in your rearview mirror, and you know you're about to be pulled over by the highway patrol, the state troopers, the police. K. Do you know how that feels? Maybe you don't. I may be the only one who's ever experienced that. But whenever something unexpected, unwanted, or painful happened, he would pause. He would place his hand over his heart and he would say, Thank you God. What's the lesson? This is a beautiful example of humility, I think really. And also gratitude and openness. He didn't demand an immediate explanation. He chose to remain receptive to discovering something valuable. And that's what he turned into his practice whenever something like this would happen. You could do a similar thing. I think anything we do to change our old patterns can potentially serve us really well. There's a discomfort in not knowing and the there's nothing wrong with you. It's just built into the system for us as humans. Our minds prefer certainty and explanations. Unanswered questions can feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately, that sometimes has us rushing to conclusions simply to relieve the discomfort. Remaining in the question is a deliberate practice of patience and humility. So that allows us to continue learning as new information or experiences or perspectives become available. You don't have to know the answer to benefit from a powerful question. Just remain in the question. And and that humility of saying, you know, I I don't know. I don't know the answer to this. And that's okay. I'm just gonna sit in the question for a while. Sometimes the most powerful answer is the one you're willing to wait for. You know, over time, difficult experiences can reveal unexpected lessons or opportunities, relationships, strengths that we didn't know we had. And some of these discoveries may only become apparent with perspective, time, patience. We could remain open to value even when we don't yet understand what that value could possibly be or the meaning of our experience. But remember, your brain is a meaning making machine, so it's going to come up with something. And as we tune into that and put it on pause, the practice of asking and remaining curious can actually support peace now in the circumstance. Hope for better things to come and resilience to take this and do something productive with it. There are hidden treasures in the troubles, and sometimes patience is what allows us to find those. Now let's bring those four steps together. And the next time something goes wrong, notice the question that automatically comes to your mind. Pay attention to the answer your brain may already be generating. Intentionally choose a question that opens up possibilities and then remain in that question even if the answer isn't immediately apparent. You might even try my minister friend's simple approach. Pause. Put your hand over your heart. If that feels natural to you, just ask what's the lesson? Or choose another question that resonates with you. Allow that question to accompany you rather than demanding an immediate answer. Life is going to give us plenty of opportunities to practice this. And each time something unexpected happens, we get to choose the direction of our thinking. We can become increasingly skilled at asking questions that open up possibilities and patient enough to discover the answers that emerge. That's one more way to practice pathological positivity. Did you get what you came for? Now do something with it. Subscribe, share what you've learned, and give us a rating. Remember, positivity can become your practice.