Learn the Three Questions That Will Change Your Life - Every Day (Part 3)

The Three Daily Questions (3Ds) are extremely simple, in concept - almost too simple. And that's why many people ignore their value. They think that simple doesn't work - for if it did, everyone would already be doing it.

But simple and easy are not the same thing. As simple as the idea of daily analysis is, VERY FEW people manage to do it. Distractions of everyday life get in the way. And without consistency of making small changes each and every day, the changes they expected to see in their lives, never happen - habits stay the same and results are seen.

The past two day, in Parts One and Two of this three part article, I focused on the first two questions, "What three things worked for you today?" and "What three things didn't work for you today?" Today's article is focus on the third question.

What ONE thing can you do differently tomorrow to make it a better day than today?

All too often, we look at our lives and try to change everything at once - we go on a diet (because we are overweight), try to better manage our time (because we feel disorganized), start training for a marathon (health, health, health), and spend more time with our family (because our home life is struggling). This is truly akin to trying to eat the whole metaphorical elephant in one sitting. And without a doubt, no matter how motivated you were when you started this life changing effort, one by one, you will quit each of the activities until you are back to square one. It's just too much, too quick for our psyche to handle.

So the question is . . . are you serious about changing your life, or changing your lifestyle. If you want to change your life, then keep doing what you've always done and getting the same results - on and off diets, clean up and mess up, run and quit, and / or a confused family not knowing what you are going to do next. You will change again and again and again - some in the right direction, but most in the wrong direction.

If you want to change your lifestyle, it's not about how much you change today, but how permanent you can make that change.

That's the essence of the third question of the series of daily questions. It's easy to understand this at a cerebral level, but our passion still wants to change it all RIGHT NOW. Give it up - it ain't gonna happen. The more you try, the more you subconscious resists - the more you create the "peaks and valleys" of life.

So rather than making large changes once a week or once a month, make small changes every day and watch the immense growth that takes place in your life - not today or tomorrow, but over the course of the next months and / or years.

Ask yourself, "What one small thing can I do in my life, to change how I look at life, that will help tomorrow be a better day than today was?"

And do your best to make that one thing a part of your life from this day forward. Some days, it's simple, other days it's much harder - but the key is to do it and make it small, subtle and sustainable.

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If you are interested in learning more about the 3Ds and / or the Daily Accountability that is the basis of our coaching process, or want to test drive it for one week (just to see), please contact me at coach.jj@impossiblefutures.com.

Learn the Three Questions That Will Change Your Life - Every Day (Part 2)

Although, I believe that mine is the only Coaching model built around these three questions asked on a daily basis, the truth is the origin is not even within the coaching world. You see, in my past life I was a pilot in the US Navy. And I believe I have brought to the coaching industry, the most powerful learning tool that Naval Aviation uses - the Brief / Debrief process. And I've developed them into a tool that any one can use to make a real difference in their life, their job or their business.

Over the course of the past nearly 100 years, Naval Aviators have had to learn skills faster than most are use to and have had to learn their skills where even the smallest inattention to detail can cost lives.

Standardization, systems and consistency aren't just buzz words, but mantras that define flight operations around an aircraft carrier.

So as I began looking at how to best help individuals and small business grow and achieve their vision, I turned to my roots - my roots as a pilot, and brought forward the concepts that I lived every day for 20 years.

The "Three Daily Questions" are in fact built on the questions that Naval Aviators face daily. And applying these three questions every day to your life can have a dramatic effect on how you live your life every day, and help you achieve your dreams in ways you never thought possible.

Yesterday, in Part One of this three part article, I focused on the first question, "What three things worked for you today?", but today the focus is on the second question.

What three things didn't work for you today?

Before going too far, let me remind you that I define "working" as those actions or thoughts that helped you achieve or get closer to your goals or desired outcomes.

Truth is, as beneficial as it is, most people don't want to face the things that happened during their day that "didn't work" for them. First, they want to just put the things they perceive as "bad" out of their head and move on. And second, because we all tend to personalize the issue, we really don't want to feel like a failure at the end of the day.

We would all rather just go to bed and forget the day than have to face it.

Putting them out of your head doesn't make them go away.

Just because you don't want to face the things that didn't go well for you that day or that you "feel" bad about, they don't go away. In fact what it does is almost guarantee that you will face those same struggles again . . . some day in the future.

So the essence of question two is to help you face what happened and figure out exactly what you can learn from those struggles.

You have to forgive yourself before you can learn from your past

Unfortunately though, as much as you may want to, there is nothing you can do to change the past - I'm sorry. It's over and done with. So before you can learn from our past, you must work on forgiving yourself - letting go of regret and anger / frustration with the current outcome.

If you don't forgive yourself, you will not only have the burden of your mistake, but you will find a way to punish yourself this time, but also many times over in the future - causing 100x more damage than the original misgiving created.

You can wish your past was different, but it ain't gonna happen.

Everyday, we look at our past, see things we could have or should have done differently and we dwell on it. We blame ourselves for those errors and live in pain and regret in the present because of it. But, to be honest, you might as well live in pain and regret today over the holocaust or slavery as well, because, there is as much you can do to undo the tragedies as you can your own mistakes.

Get over it RIGHT NOW, so that we can move on. The good news is that "all growth actually takes place in the future, the only realm of living you actually have control over.

Learn from the past, live the present and define the future.

So instead of punishing yourself for your past - accept it as it was and figure out what you can learn from it. How can I change my circumstance today, so that you never see that situation again. How can you influence the way I think so that when the same events unfold in the future (and they most likely will), you won't make the mistake again - you will instead see the handwriting on the wall and do something (whatever you decide) differently.

This isn't easy to do, but that's where our process kicks in, looking at each day, each week, each "any time frame / event" and deciding facing what worked first, what didn't work, and then what you can do better next time. It gives you a systematic way to look at everything in your life a little bit differently - giving you tools to make today better than yesterday and tomorrow better than today.

Join us tomorrow when we go further into the final question of the Three Questions That Will Change Your Life - Every Day. The third question is build on the premise that incremental daily growth is the only truly successful way to make permanent dramatic change in any environment.

Make Sure Tomorrow is Better Than Today

Yesterday, I talked about Briefing and the power it has to shape your day. But Briefs are only half the story. Briefs make what ever you are getting ready to do better. However, if you want to make everything you do even better tomorrow than it was today, then you must first reflect on what happened. And you must, as much as possible, do it as objectively as you can. In the world of Aviation, we gave that reflection a name - the Debrief.

If the Blue Angels are the masters (in my mind) of the Brief, then Top Gun is the gurus of the Debrief.

In Naval Aviation, our budgets are cut more each and every year - forcing us to figure out how to do more with less - something I wish more people in the Government should be trying to do. As flight hours and training time gets the biggest slash every year, our entire community has focused on making sure that we get every bit of training we can from every flight. To do this, Naval Aviation, led by Top Gun, has perfected the Debrief.

What is a Debrief? It's little more than systematically reviewing an event (or an entire day) and finding "Goods" and "Others" that you can take away as lessons learned.

What's a "Good" and what's an "Other"?

A "Good" should be obvious - it's something that you did well that day - something that worked for you in the course of doing what you briefed you were going to do. While an "Other" (in the true politically correct sense) is those things that didn't go quite as well as you had planned they would go - literally things that didn't work for you in the course of the event or day.

Now, in any given event (or day), you could probably find 100 things that were good, and 100 that didn't go so well. But, since most of us (especially Pilots) have short attention spans, let's keep the list of each to 3. Yep, I don't care how well your day went or how poorly it went, the key to a Debrief is finding 3 of each - every time.

So, after your event / day is done, sit down and take 10-15 minutes to reflect on your "Goods" and "Others". Write them down and if you are really bold, review them as part of you next Brief. This will help you keep your "Goods" happening and increase the likelihood that the "Others" won't happen again. Or you will at least make an effort to correct them.

If you have any questions or comments on Briefing and Debriefing, please leave a comment. I look forward to what everyone thinks.