Entre-Talk: Useful Questions

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, Entre-Talk: Useful Questions.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master-certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hey, everybody, listen, first of all, I want to tell you exactly how I built a business from nothing to where it is today which is a seven-figure business with a staff of employees, and a pretty awesome schedule that I can choose when I’m going to work or not. And I want that for you if you want that. And so I created a free training where I walk you through exactly how I did it and exactly how you can do it too. So if you haven’t already gotten my free training, you’ve got to go get it. It’s at jodysfreetraining.com.

Today I want to talk to you about useful questions because a lot of the way that thoughts appear in our brains is in question format. And especially when you’re an entrepreneur there’s constantly questions. How am I going to do this? Why isn’t this working? What’s the matter with me? Is this ever going to work? Should I even be doing this? Why is she so much better than me? Why can’t I figure it out? Am I going to offend somebody? Am I doing this right? Did I make the right choice? How much should I charge?

I mean there are a few. Those are the questions that my brain offers me all the time. Maybe you have those and others but what I found is that if I choose a useful question, wait for it, wait for it, I get a useful answer. I get a bunch of hopefully useful answers. If I don’t intentionally choose a useful question my brain is just going to offer me a bunch of random questions that may or may not generate useful answers for me.

So those of you who are coaches like myself who were trained at The Life Coach School know that when we have a question, and the thought line we always used to answer the question. But here’s what I find. When I’m coaching a client and they ask me a question and I say, “Let’s answer that.” Then I watch them and of course, this happens because we’re slowing the brain down in coaching. We’re taking a look at it. So they go into their prefrontal cortex to answer the question.

And the prefrontal answers it in a really wise and logical and reasonable way. The problem is during the rest of our lives when we’re not slowing it down and being intentional, it’s not the prefrontal cortex answering that question, it’s the lower default brain that is not as wise or logical. It’s actually super dramatic, that part of our brains.

So for example, if I’m coaching somebody and I hear the thought, what’s the matter with me, they might ask that. Or let me make it a little bit more specific. Let’s say the thought is, am I a good enough mom? Am I doing a good job raising these kids? So in coaching, I might say, “Let’s answer that. Are you a good enough mom? Are you doing a good job?” And then they go to their prefrontal and they say things like, “Well, sometimes in some ways I’m doing a good job and maybe not in others but I know there’s no perfect mom.”

It’s a very lovely reasonable logical answer. The problem is when they’re not with me in a coaching session and their brain says, “Am I a good mom? Am I doing a good enough job?” The default brain says, “No, probably not. You’re messing them all up. You’re falling short. You’re never going to be good enough.” That’s the real reason that question is a problem because it’s not giving us anything useful.

So now let’s apply this to your business. If the questions are, “Why can’t this convert? Why can’t I get this to work?” Why can’t I get my ad to work? Why aren’t people signing up?” And you just default let those questions come and you don’t slow them down and pay attention then your lower brain is probably answering, “I don’t know.” Isn’t that the initial answer, why can’t I get this to work? I don’t know. It’s so not useful. There’s nothing useful about that question. There is nothing useful about that answer.

When you think the thought, I don’t know, guess how you feel? Confused, overwhelmed, frustrated. At least that’s how I feel. If I don’t know something that I want to know I feel terrible. That is not the energy by which you want to be building your business. So you can choose whatever other question you want that serves you. The way you know if it’s serving you and if it’s useful is by the answers that it will generate. Now, these answers may not come easily. Your brain might still try to say, “I don’t know.”

But as long as you’re prepared for that and you expect it and you open yourself up to maybe I could figure it out, maybe there is a way. Let’s be open to finding the real answer to this question then you’re on the right track. So why isn’t this working, maybe ultimately if you can open yourself up and when I don’t know comes up you can say, “But I bet I can figure it out, let’s stay open.” And that even could be a useful question. But I’m just wanting to give you today my most favorite question, are you ready?

When it comes to my business, this question has made me so much money, has helped me be more creative and brilliant than I otherwise could be on my own and it’s this. What would make this easier and more fun? I don’t know about you but part of my brain thinks that building a business and increasing conversions and all of the other stuff that goes into that isn’t easy or fun. It’s hard. It’s so hard. I don’t know how. I don’t want to figure it out. I don’t want to learn technology. I’m not good at technology. I’m not good with numbers. Anyone besides me have that happening in your brain?

So when I think there’s a right way, when I think it should look a certain way I tend to get stuck. But when I ask myself, what would make this easier and more fun, instead of what’s the right way to do this, suddenly I access my own wisdom for me. And it’s not wisdom that is going to work for everybody, it’s really not. It’s just for me given my personality, my strengths, where I am, what I’m trying to achieve and my business. This particular thing would make it easier and more fun.

Now, the next thing and I’ll give you some examples in a minute but the next thing you have to do is give yourself permission. Allow it to be easy and fun. This is kind of mind-blowing. So let me give an example. A few years ago we decided, when I say, I mean my husband and I. We decided we needed to hire more help in our business. We were ready to start hiring employees.

Neither one of us was super excited about that because both of us had experience in corporate with having employees. And that can at times be could, for us anyway in the past be one of the most challenging parts of our jobs. It is actually in some ways to me way easier to just do everything myself. And this isn’t even about employees. I had a lot of great employees in my day and so did my husband.

But still to try to figure out what’s in your head and get it out of your head in a way that makes sense to somebody else and explain it to them so that they can execute on it is challenging to do. It’s way easier to just do it yourself. The only problem is, at some point, you max out how much you can just do on your own. And so we realized we need to hire some people. And we wanted to hire some people.

So the hiring process alone, I was super overwhelmed with, I was like, “How am I going to find the right person and how am I going to know if they’re right? And how much do we have to pay them and do we have to give benefits? And how does that work?” And just so much drama and overwhelm my brain wanted to indulge in. And even down to writing a job description and posting it. I could not get my head around how to do that. And maybe just some of you, you’re like, “It’s not hard.” But for me it really was. I was really resisting it and fighting it.

And when I finally remembered my magic question that changes everything then it worked, it changed everything. I said to myself, “What would make this easier and more fun?” And you know what I decided would make it easier and more fun? Is, if I reached out to somebody else who I know and trust who is just a little bit ahead of me in terms of knowing how to hire employees and I got some advice. And it turns out that that person I reached out to, actually even said, “I would love to be involved in this process and help you if you would let me.”

And I said, “Great, that would for sure make it easier and more fun.” And I said, “Now, I want to learn it. I need to be involved with you.” And he said, “Absolutely.” But he guided me through it and he showed me how he makes it easy and fun for himself. So that is just one example of when that question has served me. But here’s the key. You can’t tell yourself that there’s a right or wrong way to do it. I’ve actually hired a lot of employees in my business who are either my family or my close friends.

And what’s the advice we hear about hiring family and close friends? Don’t do it. That’s what everybody says. So it’s not that I don’t consider people’s advice. I find out why people think that and I tell myself the truth about what I’m signing up for. But you know what makes it easier and more fun to me? Is to hire people that I already know a little bit about, that I already know I enjoy working with, that I already trust. That makes it easier and more fun for me to hire employees. And so I have allowed myself to do that. And I can’t even tell you how this question just opens your mind up.

And again, this doesn’t even have to be in your business. You could use this with all kinds of things. If you’re trying to lose weight what will make it easier and more fun? If you’re trying to figure out how to keep the house clean and how to get the kids and everyone to help, what would make it easier and more fun? I promise, there’s always a way. And you know what we like to do? Things that are easy and fun, that ultimately get us the result we want. Now, be careful because notice I said easier.

So that doesn’t mean we’re not willing to do challenging things but you can do amazing challenging things and make them as easy as possible, why not? So set big goals but make them as easy and fun for yourself to achieve, not just achieving the goal isn’t easy and fun but the process, what would make the process easier and more fun? Ask yourself that question. Ask yourself any other useful question you want to that’s going to generate possible useful answers.

And if the first answer your brain comes up with is I don’t know, just say, “Okay, but let’s just stay open. Let’s just try to discover it.” Don’t feel like you have to answer questions like this right away. I don’t usually know answers right away. I let myself live with the question.

I let the question be there in my head so that when I’m listening to a random podcast that has nothing to do with business suddenly something triggers in the answer, something that somebody says. Some story somebody tells, some example somebody gives, something I’m reading, something I see in the grocery store triggers an answer to the question if I have a good useful question and I don’t shut it down with I don’t know. Give it a try, my friend, ask yourself useful questions and you will get useful answers for your business. See you next week for more Entre-Talk, take care.

Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking. And it’s available now at Amazon in print or kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too. Just saying.