One Question to Successfully Navigate Sticky Situations

In a conversation I had with Rock Thomas, who is an author, speaker, and owner of four Keller Williams franchises, he laid out a sticky situation he found himself in early on in his career, and he explained the one question that he asked himself, which allowed him to begin seeking out solutions instead of wallowing in his own fear: What is great about this situation?

The sticky situation Rock faced occurred when he had a high profile listing appointment, but he had no means of transportation to get there! He was supposed to have a meeting with a client that was not only selling their current residence, but they were also going to upgrade to a much larger home, so there was $35,000 in commissions on the table.

Rock remembers something that one of his mentor’s told him about how to handle sticky situations: “always direct your focus to resources instead of non-resources.” It is really easy to say, “(insert your go to expletive), why is this bad situation happening to me?” and play the victim role. However, Rock believes that this is fine to do for maybe a few seconds, but then you’ve got to go into resourcefulness mode. A nice analogy Rock used was the following:

Imagine that you are a top star in the NBA and you’ve just had something go against you, like you missed a fairly easy shot. What is your best next move? Are you going to go to the bench and sulk? Or are you going to ask yourself “what is great about this?” and how will I come back full force?”

Hopefully you would choose the later. In Rock’s situation, when he initially asked himself “what is great about this situation?” he responded with “absolutely nothing! I am going to lose the sale!” However, after a few minutes of pouting, he then asked himself, “what could be great about this?” which he responded by saying, “well, there could be a way to figure this out!”

Therefore, Rock ran over to his neighbors and convinced them to keep an eye on his daughter. Then, in his three-piece suit, Rock hopped on his bike, pedaled furiously to the property, hid his bike in the bush, wiped the sweat off of his brow, and walked up to the door as if everything was completely normal. Since he was so highly motivated and jacked up, he knew that there was no way that he was going to go through all of this and not get the listing. As a result, he got the listing, sold the house, and sold them another property! And all it took was six words: what is great about this situation?

At the end of the day, when we face any sticky situation, we can chose to either focus on the resources that will make things happen for us or we can play the victim. If you want to make things happen, add these two questions to your repertoire when the going gets tough:

1. How can I make this happen?

2. Who else has faced a similar situation in the past and what would they have done?

If you can successfully answer these questions, you will end up getting the result that you need. If you continue to use these questions to get you out of sticky situations, you will begin to become a master of them, and your life will change dramatically!