It is so easy to get stuck.
A disappointment knocks the wind out of you. A door closes. Someone leaves. A plan fails. Something changes that you did not choose and cannot undo.
In those moments, the questions often arrive before we have time to examine them:
Why me?
Why this?
Why now?
These are deeply human questions. They can be part of how we begin to understand what happened. But when “Why me?” becomes a loop rather than a doorway, it can keep us trapped in the very experience we are trying to move through.
Questions are powerful. That is not coaching jargon. It is how attention works.
The questions we ask influence what our minds search for, what we notice and what possibilities we can see.
The problem is not “why.” It is where the question takes you.
“Why?” is not inherently a bad question.
Asked with curiosity and perspective, it can help us understand patterns, make meaning and learn from experience. But asked from inside the pain—Why did I let this happen? Why am I always the one? Why can’t I get anything right?—it can become rumination.
Rumination feels like problem-solving because we are thinking intensely about what happened. But we are often circling the problem rather than moving through it.
We search the past for an explanation. Then we defend, blame, justify or replay. Regret enters. Then guilt. Sometimes shame.
Our attention becomes consumed by a time and a series of events that have already come and gone.
The past may hold information, but it does not hold our power. Research has associated rumination with difficulty generating effective solutions and with repeatedly directing attention toward mistakes and negative experiences. In other words, more thinking does not produce more clarity. More quality thinking does. Questions can deepen the groove we are already stuck in or they can release us.
Our greatest capacity to influence what happens next exists in the present.
A question directs attention
Imagine your attention as a spotlight.
If you ask, “Why am I such a failure?” the spotlight begins searching for evidence of failure. It finds the missed opportunity, the mistake, the conversation you wish you could redo and the moments that appear to prove the question right.
But change the question and the spotlight moves:
- What can I learn from this?
- What is still within my control?
- What do I need right now?
- What is one step I can take next?
- What could become possible because of this?
The circumstances have not changed. The loss may still hurt. The disappointment is still real.
But your relationship to it begins to change.
This is called reframing: looking at an experience through a different lens so that we can understand or respond to it differently. Reframing is not pretending something painful is positive. It is not denying anger, grief or fear. It is not putting a motivational quote over a wound.
It is choosing a perspective that helps you respond more constructively.
Research on cognitive reappraisal (the process of changing how we interpret an experience) has linked it with greater psychological resilience. The important point is not that we should force every difficult experience into a positive story. It is that our interpretation is not fixed. We have some influence over the meaning we give an event and, therefore, over what we do next.
The research behind a powerful coaching question
In a 2022 experimental study, researchers assigned 183 medical residents and PhD students to answer either solution-focused or problem-focused questions in a self-coaching exercise.
The participants who received solution-focused questions reported more positive emotion, less negative emotion and a stronger orientation toward approaching their goals than those who received problem-focused questions.
The questions did not make the problem disappear. They changed where participants directed their mental energy.
That distinction matters.
A powerful coaching question does not hand you an answer. It creates the conditions for you to find one. It interrupts the story that says nothing can change and makes room for choice, possibility and movement.
This is why coaching questions can build momentum. They turn attention toward agency:
- What can I influence?
- What resources do I already have?
- What have I survived before?
- Who can support me?
- What would progress look like today?
These questions do not ask us to ignore reality. They help us meet reality with more of our capacity available.
Sometimes you need distance before you need an answer
When we are emotionally overwhelmed, even a good question can be difficult to answer. We may be too close to the experience to see it clearly.
Research by psychologist Ethan Kross and his colleagues found that small changes in self-talk can create helpful psychological distance. In a series of studies, people who addressed themselves by name or used non-first-person language while reflecting on stressful situations experienced less distress and, in some circumstances, performed better under pressure.
Instead of asking:
Why can’t I handle this?
Try asking:
Nathalie, what do you need in this moment?
What would you tell someone you love if they were facing this?
How will this look six months from now?
This is not about disconnecting from your emotions. It is about stepping back far enough to work with them.
Distance can turn self-judgment into self-compassion. It can help us become the observer of our thoughts instead of treating every thought as the truth.
From “Why me?” to “Watch me.”
A different question can create a different posture.
It can take us from:
Why me?
To:
What now?
And eventually:
Watch me.
Watch me overcome this.
Watch me ask for help.
Watch me begin again.
Watch me become more creative, more capable and stronger.
Watch me create something meaningful from what I did not choose.
I know this shift because I have lived it.
It is not magic. It does not happen all at once. And it does not mean that every painful experience must immediately become a lesson.
Sometimes the first honest question is simply:
What do I need to feel safe enough to take the next step?
But there comes a moment when we can decide whether the experience will be the end of the story or part of the wisdom we carry forward.
That is a choice.
That is mindset.
And yes, that is coaching.
Put on your own oxygen mask first
Coaching skills are like the oxygen mask on an airplane: use them on yourself before trying to use them with someone else.
Before asking another person to challenge their thinking, notice your own.
Before asking someone else what is possible, explore the possibilities you have stopped seeing.
Before helping someone move from intention to action, listen to the questions shaping your own choices.
Coaching is not simply something we do to help other people. It is a way of thinking, listening and relating that we can practise in our own lives.
Try it now. Run your own experiment.
Think of one situation in which you feel stuck. Write down the question you have been asking yourself about it.
Then examine it:
- Does this question lead to understanding or self-punishment?
- Does it expand my perspective or narrow it?
- Does it return me to the past or help me engage with the present?
- Does it leave room for action?
Now write a better question.
Not an artificially positive one. Not a question that dismisses what happened. A question that is compassionate, honest and useful.
You might ask:
- What is this experience asking me to notice?
- What can I learn without blaming myself?
- What part of this belongs to me, and what does not?
- What choice is available to me now?
- What is the smallest meaningful step I can take today?
- Who am I becoming through the way I respond?
Then listen carefully to the answer.
Choose the question that helps you move
Hidden inside defeat, failure, loss, fear and suffering can be an invitation to rediscover what matters most.
That meaning is not always obvious, and it cannot be forced. It is often revealed slowly—in what we choose to protect, what we refuse to abandon and the questions we become willing to ask.
Everything that happened before this moment is history.
Learn from it. Grieve what needs to be grieved. Cherish what it taught you as hard-earned wisdom.
Then ask yourself a question powerful enough to turn your attention toward the road you have not travelled yet.
Choose your question.
Choose your focus.
Choose what happens next.
You may not have chosen what happened to you.
But you can choose what you make of it.
Watch me.
Research referenced
- Solms, L., et al. (2022). Simply effective? The differential effects of solution-focused and problem-focused coaching questions in a self-coaching writing exercise. Frontiers in Psychology, 13.
- Kross, E., et al. (2014). Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304–324.
- Kross, E., Ayduk, O., & Mischel, W. (2005). When asking “why” does not hurt: Distinguishing rumination from reflective processing of negative emotions. Psychological Science, 16(9), 709–715.
- Liu, J. J. W., et al. (2024). A meta-analysis of cognitive reappraisal and personal resilience. Journal of Affective Disorders.
- Marx, E. M., et al. (2015). Is trait rumination associated with the ability to generate effective problem-solving strategies? Cognitive Therapy and Research, 39, 805–817.