The Right Question by Jim Stovall

Whether we experience success or failure invariably comes down to making good decisions. The formula for failure is quite simple. It’s a matter of making bad decisions on a consistent basis. If you eat poorly, avoid exercise, and spend too much money over a three-day holiday weekend, it will likely have no effect on your long-term future success. However, if you continue to repeat these bad decisions over time, they will become habits that will spell future failure in both your personal and professional life. If we want to avoid failure, we must make good decisions and proper choices. Unfortunately, I see too many people struggling to answer the wrong questions. The solution to most problems is rather simple once you boil the issues down to the right question.

My late, great friend, mentor, and colleague Dr. Robert Schuler repeatedly told me, “Don’t get the question of how you are going to do it mixed up in the question of what you are going to do.” Too often, simply because we don’t know how to do something, we eliminate that option from our radar. Success comes when we make the right decision regarding what we should do, then once we have adjusted our mindset and eliminated the other options, we must sit down and figure out how to do this thing we decided to do.

If we continually debate how to do something before we decide whether or not we’re going to do it, we limit our possibilities to the abilities we currently have and those things we presently know. Overwhelming success and heroic outcomes occur when people don’t have a choice or consciously eliminate all other possibilities.

I’m reminded of the great scene from the movie Apollo 13, which accurately recounted events as they unfolded. When a tragic system failure occurred as the astronauts were returning from the moon, the greatest engineers in the world were forced to think outside of the box and consider options that otherwise would never have been on the table. As the problem was defined and left with no other choice but to face it head-on, the resolve was conveyed in the memorable line, “Failure is not an option.”

Once we have closed every door and burned every bridge, then and only then do we begin to understand the true possibilities and our real potential.

As you go through your day today, don’t seek answers until you’ve asked the right question.

Today’s the day!

Jim Stovall is the president of Narrative Television Network as well as a published author of many books including The Ultimate Gift. He is also a columnist and motivational speaker. He may be reached at 5840 South Memorial Drive, Suite 312, Tulsa, OK 74145-9082; by email at Jim@JimStovall.com; on Twitter at www.twitter.com/stovallauthor; or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jimstovallauthor.