There’s a wonderful question that I often use when coaching clients and it’s called the miracle question.
Here’s how it goes:
“Suppose tonight, while you slept, a miracle occurred. When you wake up tomorrow, what would be some things you’d notice that would tell you life had suddenly gotten better?”
What would you notice straight away, as you opened your eyes? What would you notice throughout the day?
Imagine this has happened to you and think about your answer in as much detail as you can.
You can use this as an exercise to know how you feel about your life right now and what are some changes that you want to make.
Sometimes answering this question gives you an unexpected insight that feels easy to implement, just like a miracle!
An HR Director I worked with, was overwhelmed with her workload and felt that she never got around to the strategic stuff (that she really enjoyed) because she kept getting sucked into the day-to-day operations.
I used the miracle question with her.
Her miracle was that her team would be pro-active and skilled enough to take the load off a project she was working on that was draining all her energy at that time.
Realising this was her miracle, we spoke about how she could make it happen. She came up with a simple way to redistribute the work among her team that would really help her hand over and gets on with other work. It was almost so obvious and simple when it came up that she started laughing about how she didn’t think of it before.
The miracle question gave her the benefit of perspective and seemed to enable the pieces to fall into place in her mind.
Why don’t you try it?
What’s your miracle? I’d love it if you share yours in the comments
And while we’re talking about the miracle question, listen to Episode 45 on Leadership Live Podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Here I share more examples of how I’ve used the miracle question with clients and show you how to take it a level deeper and interpret your answer if you really do need a miracle to happen for you.