What is available to you?

"What is available to you?" is such a powerful question that shines the light on the things most of us ignore or take for granted.  When we're focused on achieving something, asking ourselves and others, what is readily available or easily accessible around us is really worth our time. It can help us make progress with our goals (or accelerate it). 
This question can further stretch your "muscle of noticing" and your abundance mindset.    Furthermore, this question can be used for self-reflection, group coaching or even larger scale change. Enjoy!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the seventh episode of the Powerful Questions podcast. My name is David Shaked. In this episode, we’re going to take a look at yet another powerful question. This time, the question I chose for you is: “What is available?”

I am actually very excited about this question!

I think it is one of the most powerful and liberating questions I know of. 

Using it with yourself and with others can create a sense of optimism and open up so many previously unseen possibilities.   

I hope you will realise that too, once you’ve listened to what I tell you about it and start using this question in your own personal or professional contexts.

So, let’s start with simple versions of this question… 

“What is available to you?”, or 

“What is available around you here & now?” 

It sounds simple, right? 

Yet so many of us don’t pay attention to what is available to us. We can surely name everything we do not have or that we are lacking much more easily. We take what is present and available for granted and either ignore or downplay the potential contribution they may have to what we are trying to do or achieve. 

Let me give you an example.  Name something that you have been wanting to do, to experience, or to develop in yourself, 

with your team at work, or with another group you are a member of; 

something that you haven’t yet found a way to start or complete.  

If I had to guess, you either didn’t start it or stopped making progress because you’ve identified something – or many things – you needed in order to achieve progress, but that you didn’t have. The more you thought about it, the more things you identified that were missing. 

Creating long lists of the things you needed but didn’t have has taken the wind from your sails. 

I used to be just like you. When I wanted to improve my level of fitness, I immediately realised I did not have time or extra cash to pay for an expensive gym membership, or the right outfit or shoes, or so many other things. 

If I wanted to learn a new skill, it was always a struggle to find the free time or the energy to pursue the learning, to acquire the materials I needed or research an easy-to-access training programme. 

If I started a project at work, progress often slowed down or stopped when I hit a few road blocks – whether it was the funds I needed to purchase something, support from others, pressing priorities or what not. I can name many such examples!

What has helped me develop a specific attention to what is actually available around me – let’s call it the availability mindset – was actually my passion and interest in cooking. I love cooking meals and, quite often, I find that my starting point in the cooking process is perhaps unusual.  

I don’t necessarily start by thinking about what dish I’d like to prepare or what cuisine I am going to explore. 

Rather, I start with a good rummage through my kitchen cupboards and fridge shelves. I let myself reconnect with what ingredients I actually HAVE at home. 

Suddenly, ideas for possible dishes emerge. I don’t know how that happens and it doesn’t matter what I actually find that I have that day. It can be a half-eaten pot of yoghurt, a tired-looking vegetable that perhaps was forgotten on a shelf, or even a random tin in the cupboard. 

There is always something available and as I notice it and ideas pop into my mind, I feel excited about the cooking ahead. 

Sure, often I don’t have everything I need. I might still need to pop out and get an extra ingredient or two. But I feel energised to do that and it’s not nearly as complicated or as exhausting as starting from scratch by creating a long shopping list, and then running around the supermarket, wasting time and energy. It is certainly more fulfilling than giving up on cooking altogether and ordering a take-away. 

Going back to the question of “what is already here” ... asking yourself and others around you what is available is another way to exercise the “muscle of noticing” that I mentioned earlier – think about it as an expansion of what shows up on your “radar” – suddenly the things that are available appear on your radar screen. 

Asking this question is also a great way to get unstuck if you are stuck with something you’d like to achieve or you want to get inspired by new possibilities.  In fact, the act of asking “What is available to me, around me or within easy reach” actually places value on those things that are indeed available. When you notice things that you may have not seen before, or that you perhaps took for granted, you validate their existence and acknowledge their value. 

Let me emphasise here the importance of focusing on what is easily available… within reach…close to us…here and now, or otherwise easily obtainable. Prioritising these things over others that might still be available but not easy to get to makes it easier to make progress. 

Now let’s extend it further and look at intangible things that might be available to you too. Your strengths for example – what are you particularly good at? 

What do you already know about X? 

Who do you know that knows something about Y? 

Who do you know that has figured out how to do what you are trying to do? 

What metaphorical doors around you are wide open? 

What doors can you easily knock on in order to make progress?  

What technology already exists and is easily available to help you advance? 

And these are just some basic examples of the many intangible things you probably have available!

Imagine doing this with your team at work, or a project team or community group you belong to and that is trying to achieve something together. What could happen if each time you meet, and as part of working on a shared goal, you include the question “what is already available to us?” – So many meetings focus on what has not been achieved, what is not possible, or what is lacking. How about asking the participants in your next meeting to write down a list of everything that is available to them – do that for just three minutes and then compare everyone’s notes. If anyone stops writing before the three minutes are over, simply ask them “what else is available?” and you’ll see how they suddenly remember more! 

And this exercise can be applied at an even larger scale, with bigger problems. 

Even those problems that are often referred to as “wicked problems” – for example, climate change. Of course, we still need to invent new ways to produce clean energy and to reduce our emissions but I wonder, what do we already have or know that can help us make progress? What do we already know about effective ways to reduce emissions?  

If you get into the habit of asking yourself and others what is available, not only will you find you can make more progress, get inspired, feel better and gain new ideas where only problems existed before, you will also be developing an abundance mindset which will support your well-being and might attract new opportunities to come your way.  

In addition, if you become aware of and use something you had but didn’t consider before, it stretches your creativity. It means that you can start working with what you have instead of getting stuck worrying about what you don’t have. Perhaps you can even find a new way to achieve what you want to achieve – or something that is even better.  Once you are aware of what is available to you, you can always follow up on the first question of “what is available to me?” with “how can I use what I have to make progress? To create something?” 

And as I close this episode, I invite you to experiment with me… please sit somewhere comfortable, and close your eyes for a moment or shift your gaze away from your phone or computer screens to one specific static point in the room. 

Take one deep breath, inhaling slowly and exhaling even slower…. 

Take another deep breath like that, breathing slowly in and then out… 

notice the air coming into your lungs

and your exhalation and then take another breath…. 

Hopefully you are starting to feel a little more relaxed now. 

In your mind’s eye take a few moments to scan your environment – the physical location you’re in, the social, community and professional networks you are a part of. Then ask yourself: “What is available to me here, now? 

What else is available to me? 

What can I easily get access to, that would be useful right now?  

How might it be useful to me?”

And when you are ready, gently open your eyes and take a moment or two to capture what you have seen or what you have become aware of.

I hope that by listening to this episode, you were able to expand your view of everything that is available to you, and its usefulness.  I hope that inspires you to use all that is available around you in ever creative ways.