[00:00] Do you feel like you’re stalling, like you’re kicking the can down the road on some important things that you know you’ve gotta get to in your life? Do you want to ignite a fire under yourself so you can pursue your next big thing with clarity of action and peace of mind? Well, then this episode is for you.

[00:19] Welcome to another episode Success Through Failure, the show for successful people in those who want to become successful, the only podcast that reveals the true nature of success through conversations with world-class performers, as well as sharing my own lessons of success through failure. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr.

[00:39] And today I’m bringing you a solo episode. In this episode, I’m sharing a brand new set of powerful questions that will bring you breakthrough in clarity of action. In peace of mind. There is a quote that’s often attributed to Einstein. There, there’s a lot of quotes attributed to Einstein, uh, who knows what he actually really said because like every other quote you read is like from Albert Einstein, but apparently he said this, he said, if I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining

[01:12] the proper question to ask because once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes. Again, that’s attributed to Albert Einstein, who knows if he actually said it or not. But the concept is brilliant. Like when you have the question, when you ask the right question, it’s gonna lead you to the answers that you’re looking for.

[01:32] I have some brand new questions for you today that I’ve never shared before that will lead you to these breakthroughs that I’m talking about. This clarity of action, this peace of mind before I share those with you. If you enjoy the show, there’s one single way that this thing grows, and that’s. Your shares on social media, your comments, your likes, your ratings, and review.

[01:53] That’s what grows the show. So give this a share. If you know somebody who likes this kind of thing, tell ’em, Hey, check out the Success Through Failure podcast. We’re on every platform. Amazon Podcast, Google Podcast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, you name it. we’re there. Give this a share, give it a light, give it a rating and review.

[02:12] That is what really helps this thing grow, so thank you in advance for that. All right, so let’s get back to the questions. Let’s say your house keeps flooding and you’re asking yourself, gosh, how can I make my house stop flooding? Well, you can get the right answer to the wrong question. Like if that’s the question you asked you could dig a.

[02:32] You could put the house on stilts, uh, you could build a dam upstream from the creek that’s in your backyard that keeps overflowing and flooding your house. But maybe there’s a better question. Maybe the question you should ask is, where should I move to? Right? When you ask the right questions, you get the right answers.

[02:50] You can ask the wrong questions and get the right answers to the wrong questions, but that’s not what we’re looking for here. Here’s another example. If you’re struggling to maintain your weight and you’re asking yourself, why is this so hard? Well, that’s the wrong question. The answers to why is this so hard are, well, because there’s lots of good food everywhere and it’s cheap.

[03:12] Uh, because there’s a McDonald’s around the corner from my house in every house in America, practically, there’s often cookies and donuts in the break room at work. There’s all kinds of reason, all kinds of answers to the question, why is this so hard? But if you change the question, you could ask, how could this be?

[03:31] Oh, how could this be easy? Well, maybe I could find a fun exercise routine instead of the high-intensity interval training that I hate doing, right? Or. Maybe I could get an accountability partner that would make it easier. Or I could, I could just throw away all the junk food that’s in my house right now, just go home, empty out my cabinets, throw away all the junk food, like these are different ways to make it easy.

[03:55] You ask a different question, you come up with a different set of responses, a different set of answers. I was talking to a friend of mine this morning. He’s a, an amazing entrepreneur. We met up at the gym and worked out and was talking to him about one of the many businesses that he owns, and he had, he started a staffing company and it was all based around a simple concept of most staffing companies ask the question, could they do the job, could this person do the job?

[04:24] And if they have the right degree and the right experience, then yes, they could do the job. So they’re qualified. But they base their business off of another. Would they do the job? Like would they actually do it? Would they do it, and would they do it well? Would they be motivated? Would they have the desire?

[04:41] Would they have commitment and focus and consistency and character? All of those things that actually make somebody worth hiring. Quick interruption. If you like what you’re hearing here and you want to learn how you can implement this into your life, just go to JimHarshawJr.com/apply to see how you can get a free one-on-one coaching session with me.

[05:04] That’s JimHarshawJr.com/apply. Now, back to the show. All right, so these are the. Questions, and I’ve talked about questions and asking the right questions a lot on the podcast over the years. So I’ve talked about it with the concept of the productive pause, the productive pause for you longtime listeners, you can probably share and say this with me now in the definition of a productive pause is a short period of focused reflection around specific questions that leads to clarity of action and peace of.

[05:37] Clarity of action, peace of mind. That’s what we all want. I actually have multiple episodes where I go deeper into the productive pause. One of those is just back in episode 350 titled The Secret to Success that Nobody’s Talking About and How to leverage it for outsized results. Back in episode 3 21, I talk about getting unstuck.

[05:56] Five productive pause questions that will instantly amplify your results. And then back in episode 2 0 8, I have a conversation, a solo episode around magic Questions. The title of that episode is Magic Questions That Lead to Clarity, focus, and Breakthrough. Now, what I’m sharing here today are different questions.

[06:16] So this Magic Questions concept is, is totally different from what I’m sharing today. In the sense that there are these different magic questions that lead to clarity in different industries and different jobs that you may work at. But what I’m sharing today are eight questions that I’ve identified and I’m a collector of questions, and I’ve identified these over the past couple of years, and I’ve not had the chance to share these yet on the podcast.

[06:39] And these are gonna be really helpful for you if you feel like you’re stuck, if you feel like you’re stalling, if you feel like you don’t have the clarity that you need to get from where you’re at, to where you want to go, or maybe you don’t even know exactly where it is that you want to go, and that’s what you’re looking for clarity on.

[06:54] So these questions are gonna help you and. Just for reference, the action plan for this episode is going to be a worksheet. Alright, so episode 321, which I referenced there a minute ago. That episode, the action plan for that is also a worksheet format, so you can print it out and use in write on it, or you can download it and type on it.

[07:17] But that is an episode where I created a worksheet for the action plan. We’re gonna do the same with this one. All right. I’m actually gonna take the questions, the questions from those other three episodes that I referenced episode 208, episode 321, and 350. I’m gonna combine all those questions, dump those into the action plan for this episode, and then share with you these.

[07:38] Eight productive pause questions. All right, cuz these are gonna lead to real clarity for you. I’m pretty excited to share these with you. But listen, uh, these questions don’t work just if you listen to them. It’s not like you listen to them and then they, they start working like you actually have to do the work.

[07:53] You have to download the action plan. You have to print it out, or you have to type on it and answer these questions. If nothing else, you can just answer these questions out loud, like actually talk through these questions, the responses, your answers to these out loud. Wherever you’re at right now, maybe you’re at for a run and people will see you talking to yourself while you’re running down the road.

[08:13] Or maybe you’re in your car and you can just respond to these questions as I ask them to you, but you actually have to do the work, like no one’s gonna do this work for you. Got to do this, right? If you want to work with somebody as they walk you through these, you can hire a coach. And of course, I own the Haw Group.

[08:30] This is a coaching firm. We have some amazing coaches who work with us and can bring you the clarity that you’re looking for through questions like these. Okay? So I’m gonna share with you these eight questions. All right. And before I do disclaimer here, like I said, I’m a collector of questions. I just copy and paste these things and I dump ’em into a Google Doc, and I don’t always remember where I got them from, but I’ve gotten them from somewhere, or at least I’ve gotten some form of that question.

[08:57] A lot of times I’ll modify it to whatever I think would make the question even better. But actually, the first question is that new one that I discovered recently, and I do know where I got that one. But the rest of these, I don’t actually know where they came from. And a lot of them were just like modifications.

[09:11] My own questions or questions I’ve heard that I’ve modified for myself. Okay. Here’s number one. How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want? How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say that I don’t want? That’s Jerry Colonna. He’s another, he’s an executive coach. We all have influence on our conditions, the conditions, and the circumstances that we’re creating.

[09:36] Yes, there are external conditions, of course, there’s always gonna be external circumstances and situations and things that impact us, but how are you? How are you complicit in that? Okay, so that’s number one. I told you there’s gonna be eight. Number two, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? This question cuts a little bit deep because we don’t like to admit what we’re afraid of.

[10:00] but if you answer this question, you can often find clarity because what you’re afraid of is often holding you back from what you want. The thing that you want is often on the other side of that wall. The thing that you want is often on the other side of fear, like what are you afraid of? And really evaluating like, is that worth being afraid of?

[10:20] And how can I mitigate the risk? Okay, so that’s number two. What am I afraid? Number three, what would my 90-year-old self tell me? What would your 90-year-old self say to you about whatever decision you’re thinking about making? Whatever fear that might be holding you back? What is that version of yourself who is pretty much past the working stage of your life, sitting in your rocking chair?

[10:48] What is that version of you Tell yourself that’s number three, number. , where do you feel a sense of resistance? Where do you feel a sense of resistance? Oftentimes we don’t hit the pause button long enough to actually answer this, right? There’s resistance to, you know, working out or there’s resistance to eating the right foods or the resistance to starting that business or starting that podcast that you wanna start or reaching out to that person you wanna reach out to, or sending that email or whatever it might be like.

[11:24] What is the resistance like when you can identify it? You can often. that resistance and sometimes eliminate it altogether. Like what’s holding you back, right? Are there ways to minimize that resistance? Like can you chunk that big scary thing down into something much smaller, right? You wanna start a podcast and you’re like, it’s like this big nebulous thing.

[11:45] I don’t even know where to start. What’s one place you can start? Can you sign up for a course? Can you buy a microphone? Can you record one test episode that you know that you’re gonna delete? Right? Those kind of things. Or reduce the resistance. Number five, how can I set conditions so that this becomes inevitable?

[12:07] Whatever it is. Maybe it’s the success that you want to have somewhere, the consistency, the focus, the accomplishment of some goal that has always seemed out of reach for you. How can I set conditions so that this become. Inevitable. Of course. This is kind of a hypothetical question because it’s hard to say that something could be guarantee that it could be inevitable, but hypothetically, if you could set those conditions, what would you need to do?

[12:32] Would you need to sign up for a course? Would you need to join a group of people? Would you need to make some kind of commitment? How can you set the conditions so that whatever it is that you want to achieve, become. Inevitable. That’s number five. Let’s go to number six. How would you be acting if you could actually achieve your 10-year goals in six months?

[12:52] Right, and I’ve talked about this before. Used this question before of, you know, achieving your 10-year goals in six months or 10-xing your goals. How would you be acting if you actually could do those things? If you knew for a fact that you could achieve those 10-year goals just six months from now, what would you be doing right now?

[13:10] Would you be doing what you’re doing right now? Would you be doing the same thing? Would your to-do list look the same today and tomorrow? What would your calendar look like? What kind of phone calls would you be making? , how would you be acting if you actually could achieve your 10-year goals in six months?

[13:26] That’s number six. Number seven, what do you believe internally? What do you believe now about achieving your 10-year goals in six months or 10-xing your goals. What do you actually believe? Do you believe it’s bs? Do you believe that I can’t do it? And here’s the second part of this question. Number seven is still on number seven.

[13:47] The second part of this question is, what would you need to believe? To actually accomplish this. What would you need to believe to actually accomplish this big goal, this 10 year goal in six months, or to actually 10 x year goals? What do you believe now? What would you actually need to believe? There’s a difference there.

[14:09] There’s a delta there. You’ve got to identify that and start shifting your beliefs. All right, here’s number eight. That was number seven. Here’s number eight. Whenever you’re facing an adversity, a setback, Something that’s holding you back. Ask yourself this. What does this make possible? What does this make possible that wasn’t possible before?

[14:32] This is a way to turn obstacles into opportunities. There are obstacles out there. I don’t know when you’re listening to this. I’m recording this, you know, in late 2022. It doesn’t matter if you’re listening to this now, when we’re looking at an economy that is, you know, not looking good for 2023, but guess what?

[14:51] Maybe the recession never comes or maybe we go into a recession. Maybe we’re in it right now as you’re listening to this, but what does this make possible? That wasn’t possible before. Where’s the opportunity here? And if you’re not willing to entertain the possibility that this question could bring some fruit for you, then you’re not gonna get the value out of it.

[15:09] You actually have to suspend whatever limiting beliefs you might have right now and ask yourself, what does this make possible? Because if you’re just assuming. That things are harder and this doesn’t make anything new possible. Your head’s gonna be down and you’re gonna be following the path and looking down at your feet as opposed to your head up, looking around, looking for opportunities.

[15:31] What does this make possible? So those are your eight questions. I’m gonna run through ’em real quickly again here. Number one, how am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want? Number two, what are you afraid? Number three, what would my 90-year-old self tell me? Number four, where do you feel a sense of resistance?

[15:54] Number five, how can I set conditions so that this becomes inevitable? Number six, how would you be acting if you actually could achieve your 10-year goals in six months? Number seven. What do you believe now about achieving your 10-year goals in six months? What would you need to believe in order to actually accomplish it?

[16:17] Number eight, what does this make possible? Now listen, I told you that these questions, just knowing these questions and hearing these questions isn’t going to do you any good for me. When I was preparing for this episode, I was looking through my list of questions and I’ve got a ton more questions. I was so excited because I identified these questions and I can’t wait to go do some journaling on these.

[16:37] Listen, you don’t have to do all eight. Don’t do it. Don’t do all eight. Don’t go, I’m gonna do all eight, and then you’re never gonna. That’s resistance. Like where do you feel a sense of resistance? Question number four, I’ve got eight questions to answer. I gotta do this action plan that Jim said, no, you don’t have to do eight questions.

[16:51] You have to do one. One. Just pick one. That will bring you clarity of action and peace of mind that will lead you to breakthrough. As always, if you want to do this with a coach, if you wanna work with amazing people who can lead you through a process to bring you breakthrough, to bring you clarity of action and peace of mind, give us a call, find a time on my calendar.

[17:11] Go to JimHarshawJr.com/apply. I’ll look forward to talking to you. Download the action plan from this one and take action. Good luck. Thanks for listening. If you want to apply these principles into your life, let’s talk. You can see the limited spaces that are open on my calendar at JimHarshawJr.com/apply, where you can sign up for a free one-time coaching call directly with me.

[17:37] And don’t forget to grab your action plan. Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. And lastly, iTunes tends to suggest podcasts with more ratings and reviews more. You would totally make my day if you give me a rating and review. Those go a long way in helping me grow the podcast audience. Just open up your podcast app.

[17:58] If you have an iPhone, do a search for success through failure, select it, and then scroll the whole way to the bottom where you can leave the podcast, a rating and a review. Now, I hope this isn’t just another podcast episode for you. I hope you take action on what you learned here today. Good luck and thanks for listening.

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