Three questions to ask of tasks or projects you avoid like the plague
Hello smart human,
This week I’m keeping it really simple, thanks to three questions I shared with a client in a coaching session today.
My client shared that their physio had recommended a series of exercises to regain strength and range of movement after an injury. They wanted to recover - but had a hard time actually doing the exercises on a regular basis.
I decided to pull out three of my favourite coaching questions:
What could make this easier?
What could make this lighter?
What could make this more fun?
These questions have the power to quickly free up new space in your brain.
Not only will this take you outside the small box in which you’ve been thinking about your task, but it will also pull you away from all the moaning about how horribly boring/frustrating/etc it is.
So what does this look like in practice?
You, too, probably have some activity you ‘should be doing’ but that you’re avoiding like the plague.
Let’s say you have to do your taxes and you’re not looking forward to it.
Instead of dreading it and constantly telling yourself you ‘should be doing it already’, why not get creative?
Can you play your favourite songs and sing along REAL LOUD whilst finding invoices?
Can you enter data whilst standing on one leg?
Or maybe even do something as simple as temporarily painting all the Excel sheet cells mint green or purple for the sole purpose of making you giggle a little.
What we’re trying to do here is not so much changing the task or project itself.
Trash still needs to get taken out, taxes still need to be declared, dish washers still want to be emptied out, whichever way you look at it.
Instead, it’s about shifting your energy so the task stops being so daunting.
In the case of my client, they quickly figured out that it would probably be a lot more fun to involve their three newly adopted kittens in a workout. That idea immediately shifted their energy - and mine too (just imagine a workout with three kittens, I mean, come on, you cannot not smile).
And it helped me realise that rather than sitting down to write an entire newsletter from scratch today, I could simply share these three powerful questions with you.
So this weekend, when you start feeling resistance around something on your to-do list or calendar, instead of pushing through - or running away- I want you to ask:
What could make this easier?
What could make this lighter?
What could make this more fun?
And listen for the answers.
Yes, you sometimes do need to do things you don’t love or even like.
But you don’t need to push through.
Instead, involve playfulness and the brilliant creativity of your smart mind to shift the way you feel - and then go do it.
Have an easy, light, joyful weekend,
Else a.k.a. Coach Kramer