# 51 - The Power of Asking Yes Questions

Episode 51

[00:00:00] : Hey, everybody, it's Rick Lewis with the follow through formula Podcast. This is Episode 51. What I have for you today is a little quick tip on following through on a practice or commitment when you don't feel like it. And I thought this would be a good topic, a good subject to address here right after Thanksgiving Day and with the rest of the holidays coming up, because it's easy when you have some time off to just kind of, you know, have the huge holiday meal. Maybe have a little extra alcohol and get yourself to the point where you just fall off of the practices that are important to you, the commitments that are important. And so here's a quick, simple way to keep yourself in motion through the holidays and then year round. If you have ah, commitment or habit or practice, you want to make sure you follow through with, and it's actually one of my games for confidence. It comes out of my games for confidence platform, and it's a game that's called Ask yes questions, and this will help you overcome the belief that you have to feel like it before you can take useful action, and the way it helps you is to identify questions you can ask yourself that will allow you to follow through with useful and positive action, even when you don't feel like it. Now you may have noticed that often when you get stuck with following through on something, you are either overtly, maybe even out loud. But mawr likely in your own mind, you're asking yourself the question. Am I ready? Or do I feel like it prior to following through on something that requires effort or courage? So here's the thing to keep in mind. If you were low on confidence in any given moment, you are existing in a state that's full of underlying emotional resistance, so you can make lots of inspired plans. Yet when the moment arrives, toe act. If you were in this state of feeling doubtful or low energy or unsure or unclear, the tendencies to do this funny, unwise thing, which is we give that hidden emotional resistance of vote and a voice on whether or not we move forward in our lives. And we do this by asking ourselves the question, Am I ready or do I feel like it when in fact, that emotional resistance should not be consulted. So the solution to this in the process off planning to take a useful or positive action in your life is to prepare a Siris of questions you can answer yes to when the moment of action finally arrives and I'll give you an example from my own life. So I exercise every single day. And by the way, I made that decision after reading a book called Younger Next Year, which, especially if you are in the older age bracket, I highly highly recommend because the book is all about how you don't have to age the way you think you dio. It's a wonderful book, Um, but in any case, that's an aside I exercise. Since reading that book, I exercise every single day. I haven't exercise bike. It's a spin bike that I actually removed. The handle bars on and it's underneath my desk. So it's kind of cheating because I'm multitasking and I ride my bike for 45 minutes every day, get my cardio in and I'm working at the same time, so I like to do this early in the morning, because if I get up early, I have to. Practice is I follow through on each and every day while three. Now, if you include the podcast. But the two practices that are early morning when I first get up our meditation. So 50 minutes of meditation and then 45 minutes of cardio on my exercise bike. Some days, as you can imagine, since I do this every single day, the feeling is I don't feel like it. And I'm if I ask myself, do you feel like it? Uh, it gets game over. I'm dead because the answer will be no. And right there, I'm at I'm at a stop. So what I do to follow through is the day before I set everything up so that there's nothing I have to do practically but fall out of bed. And my meditation spot is set up. That doesn't require a lot of set up, but I actually have a candle that I like there. So I make sure I've got the candle and the lighter right next to it. I make sure I have warm clothing because at least this part of the year when it's cooler, if I don't have my warm clothing laid out and literally, if I just have to make that extra effort to go find my warmer clothing that could derail me. So at the foot of my bed, I have my warm clothing ready, literally to just practically fall into. So I put that on. I go, I set. My meditation cushion is where it needs to be. I don't need to do anything except throw in my clothes, sit down, light the candle and do my meditation practice. And then right next to my meditation area, I have all of my workout clothing. I have my workout shoes, my runners. I have my shorts and a T shirt and the socks that I mean literally everything I need. After I meditate to change out of those clothes, I put on my exercise clothes, and this is all inside my office, so I have my meditation spot in there, and then I have my exercise bike. The exercise bike is already rolled out from the corner. It's underneath the desk, so it's a desk with a um, it's ah, what do you call it? A. It's a what's the word for it a raise. Herbal ITT's It's, Ah, movable desktop so I can raise it or lower it. That's hilarious. I can't think of what you call that, but anyway, it's a it's a desk that I can control the height of. So the night before I raise the desk, I slide the bike underneath the desk. I've got my shoes right there, my clothes right there. And I also prefix the water bottles that I need. It's all sitting right there. So in the morning, this is what it looks like. I get out of bed, I fall into that warm the sweats and warm clothing I've got. I go sit and I meditate. I get up from meditation and within feet of me are all the clothes I need to change into for my workout, which I dio I get on the exercise bike which is already in place, and set up my waters there. My towel is there. So the first two hours of every day is a no brainer, because when I wake up and this is going all the way back now to the initial the little game and hack I've got when I wake up instead of asking, Do you feel like meditating? I can ask myself. Are your warm clothes laid out? Yes. Is the meditation space set up and ready to go? Yes. Psychologically. Being able to answer yes to those questions puts me in the mo mentum of taking action and moving forward. And the same is true when I'm done with my meditation. Did you put your clothes out? Yes. Is your water ready? Yes. Is the bike all set up? Yes. Are your shoes available? Yes. Will you feel really good once you're done? Yes. So I can ask myself questions that I can immediately answer yes to. And it's super helpful. It might seem kind of simplistic, but if you arrange things in such a way that when it the time comes that you're supposed to do the thing, you can ask yourself questions that you can answer yes to and set that up in advance. I guarantee that you will find it helpful. And then that gets you going, especially in the early stages off a new practice. And for me now, I actually don't even ask the questions because it's all visual is soon as I get up and I'm in this routine. My body is used to this routine, so I know even if I don't feel like it, if I don't feel like meditating or exercising, all I have to do is sit up and look at my sweats at the bottom of the bed and it's a queue now. I just fall into that rhythm. I get into the clothes, I walk into the office and just seeing the meditation cushion, seeing everything there in place. Once my body is just a little bit in motion, it just falls right into this pattern, which I've done day after day after day. And any habit like that that you want to establish will just get easier and easier the more you honor the routine. But especially at the beginning, you can use this little this game, which is to prepare beforehand, and then you could even put it by the side of your bed. If it's a morning practice, just write down the questions, do all the prep work and then write down your questions. What? The questions I need to ask myself. Do I have my to do list? Ready to go? Do I know what I need to dio. Yes, is my computer laptop charged? So I can take it and sit in the living room and work there? Yes, it is. Whatever. Whatever it is, you need to line up for yourself. What? You need to dio just prepare it so that you can then write out questions that correspond to what you've already put in place and prepared. And then ask yourself those questions. And then, as you say, yes. Yep. I've got the ingredients for making dinner. Yep. I've have all the cleaning supplies, all sitting in the bathroom, ready to go to clean the bathroom. Whatever it is that you're needing to dio prepare ahead of time. And part of the preparation is to write out your questions You can answer yes to. So and you can modify any of that. You just play around with it, try it out. But it's been super helpful to me, and I haven't ever seen that anywhere else. It's something I came up with on my own years ago and have used successfully. So let me know if you give it a shot and if that turns out to be useful for you as well. But I wanted to share that little idea with you today in case it's useful. Especially here. Now, around holiday time when you might be actually making some new commitments You wanna put in place? Or you might have some old health commitments that, um you want to keep up with and not have fall, by the way, as holiday season comes into the forefront at this time of year. All right, so there you go. That's it for today. My name is Rick Lewis. This is Episode 51 off the follow through formula podcast, and I'll be back tomorrow.