Jack Canfield teaches a coaching exercise called "difficult and troubling situation" that uses structured questions to help people get unstuck. He walks through how to run it in pairs, emphasizing written commitments, eye contact, and accountability deadlines. His goal is to train a million people in these coaching skills.
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Hi, I'm Jack Canfield. Now whether you lead a team of people right now in any capacity, or you simply need to walk a co worker, a student or a friend through a rough patch in their life, having the ability to coach others to success is a tremendously useful skill and one that will help you become a powerful force for good in the world. Lately, my business partner Patty Aubrey and I have made it a goal to train a million people in to teach our life changing success principles to groups around the world. Whether they're a teacher or a manager, or a business owner or a minister, or a local baseball coach, or just someone who wants to hold a lunch and learn program at the office to help fulfill this goal, we've taken 40 years worth of the strategies and methodologies that I've studied and assembled and developed them into exercises anyone can use in training groups of people as I do all over the world, or use when coaching someone one to one. Now, one of the most powerful exercises included in that program is called the difficult and troubling situation exercise. And it's designed to get someone unstuck and into action, solving their problem and removing the roadblock that's keeping them from producing the results they want and moving them forward towards success. It's a series of questions that you can either use one on one with someone or in a workshop with a large group. Now in a workshop setting, you, you would just divide the group into pairs and have one person ask the questions of their partner and then they would reverse roles so that both people get a turn. The key is to ask the questions in the order they appear without engaging in any discussion or commenting on your part. If you're the one asking the questions or if you're the coach, your role is simply to ask the questions and let the questions do the work. Pretty simple, right? Sometimes if you're the one asking the questions, you, you may want to actually write down their answers, especially their commitments to where they're going to take action. Now here are the questions. The first question is what is a difficult or troubling situation in your life? So basically you're just asking them to think about what's some place in their life where they feel stuck, they're not getting what they want, they're irritated, they feel like they're, you know, not happy, maybe their child's not doing what they need to do, their marriage isn't working out really well, there's something going on in business. But whatever it is, just the first thing is what's the difficult or troubling situation in your life. Now, the second question is, how are you creating it or allowing it to happen? And for you to ask this question and hold the context, you need to know that we're coming from the position that everything that you're experiencing, you've either created it or you've allowed it to continue. And for a lot of people, they think they're the victim of other people. So this question is really kind of a mindset switch. And so you really have to hold and help, you know, just believe that they're going to come up with the answer. It's really valuable if you're going to do this with someone else, to have taken yourself through it first so you can see how you're stopping yourself. The third question is, what are you pretending not to know? And you know, in every situation where we're not taking action, there's something we actually know, but we're pretending not to see it. I'll give you an example. I. I had a person in a workshop recently who was complaining about the fact that their apartment keeps getting robbed. They live on the first floor of their apartment building in New York. And I asked them, do you have bars on the windows? They said, no. Do you have triple locks on the doors? No. I said, what are you pretending not to know? He said, I don't know. And I said, the answer is you're pretending not to know you live in New York, because if you live in a ground floor apartment in New York, you're likely to get broken into if you don't have that kind of safety. So there's usually something we're pretending not to know because it's inconvenient, it's uncomfortable to notice it because then we'd have to do something about it. You know, the lipstick on your husband's collar or the fact that they've been talking in the lunchroom about laying off people. And we don't want to actually hear it or see it because then we'd have to think about, oh, my God, what am I going to do? So we ignore it. So what are we pretending not to know? The fourth question is, what is the payoff for keeping it like it is? Nobody maintains a situation without some kind of payoff. You know, when you were going to school as a kid, if you got sick, there was a payoff. You know, you didn't have to go to school, you got to stay home. You got to maybe sit and watch TV all day. You got the attention of your parents. Maybe there were special foods in my house it was ginger ale when you were sick. You know, whatever it is, there's payoffs for keeping it like it is. So what's the payoff? It might be avoiding conflict, it might be comfort, it might be, you know, not having to confront somebody, whatever it might be. So the fifth question is, what is the cost for not changing it? You see, every situation has a benefit and a cost. And obviously the reason this is an uncomfortable, difficult and troubling situation is the cost is not something people want to pay. And often the cost can be a sense of aliveness, your freedom, income, happiness, joy, not being overwhelmed, you know, all these kind of things that you want. And then the last question, number six is, what would you rather be experiencing? Rather be experiencing freedom? I'd rather be experiencing having more free time. I'd rather experience more success. I'd rather experience feeling stress free at the office, whatever it might be. So the next question, number seven is what actions will you take and what requests will you make in order to get it? Because it requires action, either doing something or asking for something, or setting a boundary, whatever it might be, in order to get what you want. This is really the most important question because it requires a person to get out of their comfort zone and do the thing necessary to create what they actually would prefer. So when they answer that, make sure you write it down. And then the next. And the last question is, by when will you take that action? Again, very, very important. You want them to commit to a time by when and if possible, you can be their accountability partner. Say, you know, they say, well, I'll take it by 5 o' clock on Friday, you know, May 15th or whatever date's coming up. And you say, great, would you be willing to send me an email or call me and let me know you did that? So that now they know someone's waiting to make sure they took the action. So again, this is a very powerful tool. I've used this in all of my groups, all of my coaching programs, all of our mastermind groups, and so forth. And what happens is people will often say this exercise is one of the most powerful tools that they experience during that period of time. So again, make sure to ask the questions listed in the order they appear as best as possible. Don't engage in a lot of discussion. Your role is simply to ask the questions and make sure you maintain eye contact throughout the exercise with the person. So I want to leave you with a bit of homework and that is to identify a person who you think you could possibly help with the strategy and reach out to them and offer them to take them through the difficult and troubling experience exercise. You never know how impactful it could be for them, and if you want turn the tables, have them take you through it as well. You'll get a lot of value by doing it both ways, and it creates a feeling of equality, like you're not above them or below them. You're equal partners and do this with your family. Really powerful. So thank you for watching. And remember, nothing will change for the better until you do. Now, if you found this video helpful, make sure you like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one, and for some additional resources on how to use the Law of Attraction to get what you want, visit my website@jackcampfield.com.
