We all have that one whiny friend whose life is never really the way they wanted. You keep on procrastinating on asking them how they are doing because you know they have a whole speech ready to convince you why his or her life is a debacle. What if I told you they could do something about their misery if they could just whine on paper, instead of whining about it to you,

Its all about asking yourself the right questions.

“One of the fastest ways to find the solution to an issue or challenge you are facing is to ask the right questions.” Robin S. Sharma

And ask yourself these four essential questions.

What is my problem?

What are the causes of my problem?

What do I think will solve my problem?

What solution do I suggest?

This is a four-step method guided by my all-time favorite writer Dale Carnegie in his book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.

Now you might be thinking “Oh what the hell! This is so obvious.”

But my reason is not to preach this idea in the camoflauge of an “exclusive idea.” This is to remind you that your deep inside already knows how to get there, you just didn’t sit and ask yourselves these right questions yet.

Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, “The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known.”

The fictional manager in the story of The One Minute Manager doesn’t allow his employees to come to his office with a problem unless they have their facts
thought through. He would scold an employee who came with a problem without thinking the facts through. According to him, the employee was actually complaining, not seeking the solution. His exact words were:

“If you can’t tell me what you’d like to be happening, you don’t have a problem yet. You’re just complaining. A problem only exists if there is a difference between what is actually happening and what you desire to be happening.“

Doing this, you get the facts straight.

Munshi Ashiq was struggling with his career as a salesman for Perfetti Group. The man used to sell candies to retailers, as a wholesaler for the candy company he works for. One day, I saw him with dejected shoulder and asked how it was going. He didn’t look good. He mentioned that he is angry at a client who he talked with on the phone for about an hour but in the end, the man placed an order of products worth of only 3000 bucks. My friend wouldn’t even break even for the cost of the phone call with this deal!

I knew just the one story and an idea that he could benefit from. I told him a story of a young man in the 1940s. He was an insurance salesman. His job was to talk people into buying insurance. I am talking about a time when the idea of having an insurance was not so prevalent. His job was to convince people why they need an insurance and how it will pay off in later life. He was closing satisfactory number
of sales. But even so, day by day, he became really frustrated from his work. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to quit. One morning he thought of an idea to list all of his supposed problems and their causes. He took a paper and he wrote down these questions for him to answer.

What is my problem?

What are the causes of my problem?

What do I think will solve my problem?

What solution do I suggest?

Thinking on paper, he found out that he despised his job because of the fatigue that apparently came from a percentage of people from his potential customers’ list. By answering the second question, he noticed the causes that why (and how) this particular people would burn him out. It later turned out that of all the people from his list, only 7% would ask for repeated meetings, visits, a large portion of his time. The time and attention this type of people took were even more than the collective time and attention the rest seeked. So what does he do to solve his problem? He cuts loose of this type of people. He makes a new rule that any potential customer only gets two visits, 30 minutes each, on two different days. If they are not convinced to buy the insurance in this timeframe, they will simply and respectfully be asked to consider some other firm. He finds out that doing this, he spared much mass of resources (time and energy) to focus on the rest of the customers from the list. Not only did he manage to interact with his prospective customers better this way, he also managed to reach out to better number of potential customers. This way, his sales increased to almost double. He never quit and later became one of the top insurance salesmen in the US.

Ashiq went home that day and inspired from this idea, he thought of the answers to these four questions on paper.
And in three working days, he managed to close deals, selling candies worth of 86000 bucks, in total.
In my interview with him he mentioned that he mainly wrote and thought of his problems to be: he didn’t get enough sleep, he would treat the customers rudely
and he didn’t close enough amount of sales.
He reasoned the causes of his problems were : less sleep due to stressing over his low income, bad public relations due to the frustration from his household
problems, inadequate sales due to not reaching out to shopkeepers who would genuinely be interested to buy his products.
Pretty obvious huh?
But it is from this obvious questionnaire, he found out for himself that what he needed was a radically new strategy to build Better & More Dependable Public Relations.

He found out that he used to underestimate small shop-owners to have enough money to buy his products over the big departmental stores. So he would not reach out to the small shop-owners in the first place.
In the later days, he would now reach out to even small shops. He was wise and slick enough to know that the reason he bungled the previous sales pitch was because he would approach them with the straight-to-sale approach. This time, when he entered a shop, he would first ask for a tea from the machine for which
he would pay for himself. He would then ask the shopkeeper how his business and household are going and so on. He would genuinely be interested in them. He built better relations this way.

For better sleep, he started meditating and praying regularly. And about the household problems, he decided to put his phone on flight mode when making sales
so he doesn’t get distracted with household news.
Doing this, he managed to get a bonus, a reasonable promise of a promotion, and a tailored suit as a ‘token of gesture’ from the company. All this, in three
days!
Remember. It’s about asking yourself the right questions.

“I have an incredible confidence in the resilience of the human spirit and the creative ability of the Holy Spirit. So, if you can get people
asking the right questions, it really will start moving in the right direction.”

– Erwin McManus