As I am working on Adjusted Sails: Are You Ready For What’s Next?, my focus has shifted to my own next as I consider strategies, plans and priorities.

Perhaps you find yourself here as well.

A productive practice to consider is integrating into our thought processes what I call the other question. I’m always intrigued with inverse statements and questions. There is always another one there.

What we are considering is a fundamental practice in order to experience the full range of possibility thinking. We must be able to look at every side of our choices.

In my work as a strategist over the years, this has proven to be what has made the difference between goals and objectives that are reached with greater ease and those that create struggles or even get lost along the way.

There is always another question to consider. The other question is also what quite often delivers us the greater return.

Questions that drive insight are the ones that move us forward.

Here are three to consider that will help you develop a possibilitarian point of view that leads to creative resilience:

What is the real change I want to achieve?

Know your true objective. Keep asking until you find it. There are several schools of thought on this in terms of how many layers of questions to go through. For each answer, you ask why that is important. My experience has taught me that somewhere between questions five and seven we get to the true answer.

I want to achieve X.  Why? Because XX.

Why do you want XX? Because XXX.

Why do you want XXX? Because XXXX.

Why do you want XXXX?

Because V!

You cannot stay on track if you don’t know where you really want to go. What we want to get to is the core value being served by taking on the work. I just recently went through this practice again myself about my personal values around health. It’s the most powerful exercise we can do to get to our own truth for what we want to achieve. Of note is that sometimes this exercise helps us identify what we can stop trying to accomplish because our underlying reason isn’t of any real value. But in most cases, we get to what will be our true motivation.

The more you practice this, the faster you will get to your core value. When we keep our core value at the forefront, resilience is a natural result because we are not looking at a circumstance without context. We are examining everything against how it can serve what matters to us in our life and work the most.

What options am I avoiding?

This is crucial because quite often what we refuse to consider is our best choice. We all have non-negotiable positions. That’s not what this is about. This is about what we might be afraid to try or think isn’t a possibility for us. It’s about removing limitations, not compromising boundaries.  When we are practicing a resilient lifestyle, how we perceive things will change and what we never considered before can move front and center.

It’s also about tackling resistance head-on.

What is important is that we exhaust every possibility without limiting ourselves to probabilities or what we think we want to do.

What am I missing?

Where are the blind spots? What aren’t we considering that needs to be addressed? What are the risks? If you know them, you can mitigate them from the start or at a minimum, have a plan in place to address them should they happen.  If you do not know the risks, you have not fully defined what you want.  If this is a challenging area for you, start with your assumptions. Your risks will be in your assumptions. What are you assuming to be true? What if it is not? What are you assuming is not true? What if it is?

One of the many gifts I received from my iPEC family where I studied for my certification as an Executive Life Coach was a very special stone. I’ve had it for a number of years and it stays with me as a kind of talisman when I’m thinking through something challenging.

On one side, the word problem has been engraved, covering the entire surface. On the other side is the word solution. The solution resides within the problem itself. We have to examine it from all sides to find it but it is there. The other question is what will take us to the other side.