How Can I?

There are so many people with the words, "I can't" as a major part of their vocabulary. It's an easy answer and an easy excuse to fail. Those two words come from a society trained to be followers versus critical thinkers. I've been saying this to myself and my kids for over a decade. If we can change those 2 words to 3 words, everything changes. Do you know what the 3 words should be? You guessed it (it's in the title). "How can I?"

Why should you do this? The answer lies in the questions we ask our brains. Do you realize that most people make more statements than questions. This puts our brains on filing duty versus solving duty. It's a shame too because our brains are a nearly unlimited resource for solving difficult problems. Read the book, "Think and Grow Rich", and you'll see this more clearly. Let me explain what this change does in your brain. When you change the period of "I can't" to a question mark of "how can I" and your brain receives the words as a challenge to solve versus a statement of conclusion. To be successful entrepreneur, you need to learn how to think critically and to solve interesting problems. 

Let's make this clear with an example that happened last month with my daughter on the way to cleaning the first of 5 offices Saturday. Christianna currently shares a bedroom with her 3-year-old brother Kasey. She desires to get up earlier than him, but realizes an alarm clock won't work as it will wake him up too. She said this to her dad in the car. "I CAN'T get up on my own because of Kasey". I said this to her. "That's true. Let's change the statement to a question. HOW CAN I get up on my own without waking Kasey? 

This intrigued Christianna, but also let her know that she was about to undertake a long process of learning! My son Kenny was with us and he was smirking as he's already been through this many times with dad. I charged her with a thinking assignment while we cleaned. She had to come up with 10 possibilities of how she could wake up without waking Kasey. It was so much fun. We had a dinner picnic in between the 3rd and 4th offices in a park. Christianna came up with 6 ideas. Kenny and I added 4 others. We talked them over. Here they are!

1. Move my brother out of my room
2. Sleep downstairs on nights that I need to get myself up at a certain time.
3. Will myself to get up through neurolinguistic programming (NLP) the night before.
4. Sleep with earbuds and an alarm.
5. Wake up to just light alarm, facing away from baby.
6. Go to bed early enough to naturally awake at your time. 
7. Buy (or invent) a vibrating alarm. Be woken by feel vs sound or light.  
8. Setup contraption to dump cold water on your head at the wake up time. 
9. Put earmuffs or noise reduction earphones on baby or ear plugs.
10. Buy sleep number bed and setup program for head to rise at wake up time. 

As a team, we put our brains to work to narrow down the list of 10 to the best viable option for her. She decided. Some of the ideas were super funny and we laughed them out of contention. Others were unrealistic. Ultimately, we settled on our Top 3. They were the vibrating alarm, moving Kasey out of the room, and going to bed early. Christianna asked her brain more questions and she decided that the best solution to waking up before Kasey without waking him was to buy a watch with a vibrating alarm. She was amazed at how simple the solution was. You see, she had lived with "I can't" so long that she never tried to solve it. Once I changed her statement to a question, everything changed!

Read the rest of this article at the Solo Cleaning School website