Asking the Right Question

We humans are restless creatures. Much of that restlessness seems to be a byproduct of our imaginations and the question of "what if?" that nags at our minds. That ingrained question pushes us into adventures great and small. But "What if?" is a double-edged sword. It eats away our patience and courage."What if?" makes it hard for us to sit still.

"What if the doctor actually saw me at the time I came in for my appointment instead of making me wait for an hour?"

"What if I just kept walking west? What's out there?"

"What if I quit my job to start a business or follow my dream?"

"What if I strapped a monkey to this rocket?"

I fight with "What if?" all the time. As much as it lets me dream big dreams and make plans for the future it also makes me fidgety and clouds my mind with doubt and impatience. And I've found that when I give myself over to doubt and impatience I start making bad, sometimes desperate decisions.

When starting a new project too much "What if?" without anything to counter it begins to feed fear and angst. It's really rare that we ask ourselves "What if this goes amazingly well?" Instead, we tend to focus on "What if this goes horribly wrong?" Too much contingency planning and not enough play tends to make Jack a dull, immobile boy.

"What if?" seems to be most challenging to me when I feel like whatever I'm working on isn't moving as swiftly or in the direction I would like it to go. By definition, the question is detached from reality. Asking "What if?" is in essence asking "What if this thing is not what it is?" which can quickly become non-sensical. So reality doesn't matter when I start worrying. I am struck with the same anxiety whether I am playing guitar, writing, running, or trying to build my business. If the task hasn't gone from zero to awesome in under six seconds I begin to get frustrated.

When I first picked up a guitar, I had to force myself to keep practicing. Not because the practice itself was difficult (although sometimes it is), but because I didn't want to wait to get good at playing. I wanted to be as good as the guitarists I was listening to, folks that had been playing for years, as their full-time job.

It took a long time for me to calm down and figure out that I wasn't horrible or naturally disinclined to play guitar, I was just new to it. It took time to get better. I wanted to go go go now, but I had to keep practicing and overcome all the doubt in my mind that kept creeping up and asking me "What if you suck at this forever?"

I think the real problem with "What if?" is that we rarely pair it with "What is?", a much more practical question. Asking "What is the reality of this situation?" usually provides more immediately useful answers than "What if?". If I had asked myself "What is?" when I first started playing guitar, I might have been a little more patient. I might have reminded myself that I had just started playing, there was no way I could reasonably expect to be immediately proficient.

I suffer from the same impatience with my business as I did with guitar, only amplified 100 times. "What if I don't get more customers?" "What if they don't pay me quickly enough?" "What if I fail and have to go back to work for someone else?" Coping with the doubt inherent in building a business is harder for me than making the decision to start in the first place.

I know that I'm doomed if I let those fearful questions consume my thoughts, so I've had to start addressing them by replacing "What if?" with "What is?" and by doing so, grounding myself in reality. The biggest difference between the two is that I can actually do something about what is. Focusing on "if" works for inspiring the direction of my actions, but it won't put food on my plate.

Asking "What is?" is one of the most powerful fear-killers I know of. I use it as an emotional safety net. Bob Parsons (via Merlin Mann), the founder of GoDaddy, wrote something in one of his blog posts a few years ago that really rings true to me. He wrote:

With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of "undefined consequences." My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to get Parsons Technology going, "Well, Robert, if it doesn't work, they can't eat you."

I do my best to remind myself of that when I start getting fearful. "What is the worst thing than can happen if I fail?" - "Well, nobody is going to eat me, so I guess I'll probably be OK." It sounds silly, but I find it an immensely useful tidbit of wisdom. Somehow that answer makes it easier to get up in the morning and start charging down the tasks I've set in front of me. Even though there might be horrible screw-ups and mistakes during the day, at the end of it, no one is going to carve me up and eat me. That makes me feel better.