There’s a quote I’ve had stuck in my head for years.
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.“
I don’t remember where I first heard it. It’s been around long enough that nobody really owns it. But I think about it almost every day, specifically before I get on a coaching call.
Most people think good coaching is about having the right answers ready. I used to think that too. The longer I’ve done this, the more convinced I am that it’s actually about knowing which questions matter and having enough restraint to stop asking once you’ve found them.
Before I get on a call, I’m always asking myself the same thing: what are the three questions that are going to get to the heart of this conversation?
Not ten. Three. I’ve sat with enough people over the years to know that most of them are closer to their own answer than they think. They just need someone to ask the right questions in the right order to find it. Usually takes about three.
A few weeks ago I was on a call with Jake (not his real name, changed to protect his privacy). I’ve been coaching Jake for close to a decade. He’s a real estate agent who moved to another country, built his business from scratch, and by almost any measure he’s doing really well. Loving relationship. Good finances. Strong business. The whole thing.
But when I asked him how he was, what he described was a guy who’d been running flat out since October without stopping. Renovating a house, closing deals, working out four times a week, and somewhere in all of it, slowly losing his edge. He said it felt like swimming against the tide. Not like he was sinking. Just like every stroke was costing more than it used to.
So I asked him the first question.
“Did you catch this feeling or did you produce it?“
He thought about it for a second and said, “I have to be producing it. I create my own chaos.”
That answer right there is worth paying attention to, because most people, when they’re exhausted and overwhelmed, treat it like something that happened to them. Like a cold they caught. Jake was willing to own it. He built the chaos. And then he said something that surprised even him. That he kind of likes it. That being busy keeps him from sitting with things he doesn’t really want to feel.
That opened the second question.
“What are the feelings you’re trying to avoid by staying this busy?“
He didn’t hesitate. Sadness. Anger. Some confusion about where he’s headed. Things that have been there a long time, that he’s just been able to outrun by keeping the calendar full and the projects going.
Here’s what I’ve learned about that. When someone is running from something they don’t want to feel, they don’t need you to tell them to slow down. They know. What they need is someone to help them understand what exactly they’re running from. Because until you can name it, you can’t turn around and face it.
So then I asked him the third one.
I said, “Jake, if I offered you a hundred million dollars for your business right now, but the catch is the wire hits tonight and you don’t wake up tomorrow. Do you take it?“
He said no.
I said, “So waking up tomorrow is worth more than a hundred million dollars to you. Do you treat it that way?“
He went quiet.
Then I walked him through a few more versions of that same question. What if you had the money and the long life, but you had a mild fever and a headache every single day and never felt good again? Would you take it then? No. What if you could have all of it but you could never talk to anyone you love ever again? Still no.
By the end of it, Jake was sitting with the realization that he is, by his own math, one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Not because of his bank account. Because of what he refuses to sell.
He just hadn’t been counting it that way.
I think about that exchange a lot when I’m prepping for a call. The goal was never to say something brilliant. It was to find the three questions that would let Jake hear himself clearly enough to shift something.
That’s the discipline. Not more questions. Not more insight. Not more reframing.
Subtraction.
What are the three questions that get to the center of this? What can I leave out? What am I adding because I’m nervous or trying to prove something, and what actually serves the person in front of me?
The calls that change people aren’t the ones where I said the most. They’re the ones where I said just enough.
Most people are three good questions away from what they need. I just have to care enough to find the right three and trust them enough to stop there.
live freed,
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