The One-Page Practice That Answers Questions Stuck in Your Head for Years

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🎧 In This Episode

Most of us carry questions in our heads for months or years - questions about career moves, relationships, health, purpose - and they swirl endlessly without resolution.

This week, we sit down with Mark England from Lifted to explore Kidlin’s Law: any question sufficiently worded and written down is half answered.

Mark walks us through a practical three-step process (draft, craft, supercharge) that transforms mental fog into clarity, and Ben and Patrick demonstrate the method live on the show.

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Quick Preview

• The power of externalization - Questions kept in the head swirl and are rarely answered well; writing creates distance, clarity, and sensitivity to feedback

• Questions pull, answers push - The difference between coaching by asking versus telling, and why most coaches (and people) exhaust themselves thinking they need all the right answers

• The victim mentality trap - By definition, victim mentality is characterized by having no options - often because those options haven’t been identified or written down

• One thing per question - How to avoid the kaleidoscope effect by separating compound questions into clear, specific, neutral, outcome-focused statements

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❤️‍🔥 A Deeper Dive

Big Ideas

1. Writing Is Thinking Made Visible

Alan Watts said that when we learn to think about our thinking, we become alive in a new way. The fastest way to think about our thinking is to write things down.

When questions stay in our heads, they move too fast. They swirl. They take up enormous mental real estate. Five questions can feel like 555 questions when they’re spinning in your mind. But when you externalize them - when you pick up that “heavy ass pen” as Mark calls it - something shifts.

You slow the story down. You create distance. You can look at the words, let them breathe, and make them better. This isn’t just a productivity hack. It’s the difference between being trapped in mental fog and having a fixed point you can build a strategy around.

2. The Coaching Philosophy: Questions Over Answers

One of Mark’s most powerful distinctions: Answers push. Questions pull.

When we tell people answers, we’re pushing information at them. When we ask questions, we’re pulling insights from them. And here’s the liberation: coaching hell on Earth is thinking you have to have all the right answers for your clients. Heaven is when you realize you don’t have to. Wisdom is when you don’t want them.

This applies far beyond professional coaching. How often do we exhaust ourselves trying to know exactly what to do in every situation? How much stress comes from believing we should have all the answers for our own lives?

The alternative: get good at asking better questions. Then write them down.

3. The Three Qualities of a Good Question

Through the episode, we learn that powerful questions share three characteristics:

1. Specific - Not “I need to be healthier” but “How do I increase lead flow at the gym in Q4 2025?” Vague questions yield vague answers.

2. Neutral - Not “Why do I always screw this up?” but “What’s preventing me from following through?” Blame creates defensiveness. Neutrality creates openness.

3. Outcome-focused - Not “How do I stop losing gym members?” but “How do we retain our gym membership through November?” State what you want, not what you don’t want.

4. The Kaleidoscope Effect

Ben brings up a useful image: when questions stay in your head, they act like a kaleidoscope. Fragments, shapes, emotions, past experiences, future fears - all swirling together with no clear picture.

The head is a soup. Everything lives there together: your big existential questions, the grocery list, whether you like your sneakers, your son’s game schedule, the leaderboard update. When your most important questions live in that soup, they never get the focused attention they deserve.

Writing separates the signal from the noise.

5. From Victim to Warrior

Mark makes an important connection to our mindset continuum. By definition, victim mentality is characterized by having no options. And most of the time, that’s not because options don’t exist - it’s because they haven’t been identified.

The PhD psychologist with the botched eyebrow tattoo had been living with the problem for two years. It dominated her life. She couldn’t go out in the rain, couldn’t stay over at friends’ houses, spent 12-15 minutes on makeup every morning. She felt trapped.

Until Mark asked: “Have you written down your options?”

She hadn’t. Within minutes, they had three clear paths forward. She chose one, acted on it, and solved a two-year problem with two phone calls. That’s the power of moving from “I can’t” to “I can” - and it started with writing down what she could actually do.

6. Draft, Craft, Supercharge

Mark’s three-step process:

Draft - Get the questions out of your head and onto paper. Don’t edit yet. Just externalize. Make sure each question is one thing (not three things crammed together), stated in full sentences, and phrased in the affirmative (what you want, not what you don’t want).

Craft - Play with the words. This is where you test variations. Take out soft talk (maybe, kind of, sort of, almost, could). Add specificity. Add timeframes. Make it specific, neutral, and outcome-focused. You’ll feel when you’ve hit it.

Supercharge - Read the questions out loud with breath. This creates space. It brings the question into your body, not just your mind. It activates something deeper. The breath component is not optional - words and breath are inseparable, especially when dealing with important questions.

Key Distinctions

Questions kept in the head vs. questions written down

• In the head: swirl, move fast, feel like 555 questions when there are really 5, create overwhelm, trap your breath in your chest, decrease clarity

• Written down: slow down, become manageable, reveal themselves as fewer than you thought, create space and relief, allow for editing and improvement, pull answers

Telling vs. asking

• Telling: pushes information, requires you to know more than the other person, creates pressure to have all the right answers, leads to imposter syndrome

• Asking: pulls insight, leverages the other person’s knowledge, creates collaboration, feels playful and creative, sustainable for decades

Compound questions vs. single questions

• Compound: “Should I change locations AND hire two new coaches AND switch up my marketing?” (creates kaleidoscope, impossible to answer cleanly)

• Single: “Should I change locations?” “Should I hire two new coaches?” “Should I switch up my marketing?” (each can be addressed clearly)

Stated in negation vs. stated in affirmation

• Negation: “How do I stop being so hard on myself?” (forces you to focus on what you don’t want)

• Affirmation: “How do I start being more supportive of myself?” (directs attention toward what you do want)

New Year’s resolutions vs. New Year’s questions

• Resolutions: statements, push, guilt-driven, most people quit by week three of January

• Questions: inquiries, pull, curiosity-driven, continue working on you throughout the year

Reflection Questions

1. What questions have been circulating in your head for months (or years) that you’ve never written down?

2. Where in your life are you exhausting yourself trying to have all the right answers instead of asking better questions?

3. If you wrote down your options for a problem you’re currently facing, what would they be? (Remember: include the options you don’t want - “I can continue as is” counts as an option.)

4. What’s the difference between having that question in your head versus having it written in front of you?

5. Looking at your current challenges, are your questions specific, neutral, and outcome-focused? Or are they vague, blame-oriented, and focused on what you don’t want?

Practice Opportunities

1. The 10 Questions Exercise

Write down the 10 most important questions for your life right now (or for 2025 if you’re doing this as a New Year’s practice).

Don’t filter. Don’t judge. Just get them out of your head.

Then apply the three qualities:

• Is each question specific?

• Is it neutral?

• Is it outcome-focused?

Revise as needed.

2. The Options Exercise

Pick one problem you’re currently facing. Write at the top of a page: “What are my options?”

Then list every option you can think of - including the ones you don’t want. Write each in a full sentence.

Include:

• The option to continue as you are (even if you don’t like it)

• The option you’re afraid of

• The option that seems too expensive/hard/risky

• The option you’ve already dismissed

Just get them all visible.

3. Draft, Craft, Supercharge

For your most pressing question right now:

1. Draft - Write it in a full sentence. Make sure it’s one thing, not three things crammed together.

2. Craft - Play with the words:

   • Remove soft talk (maybe, could, sort of, kind of)

   • Add specificity

   • Add a timeframe if relevant

   • Ensure it’s stated in the affirmative

   • Make sure it’s neutral (no blame)

3. Supercharge - Read it out loud. Take a breath between each word if you need to. Let it sink in. Notice what happens in your body. Notice if any answers begin to emerge.

4. The Switzerland Practice

Next time someone comes to you with a problem (or you’re coaching yourself), practice being Switzerland.

Don’t try to have the right answer. Instead:

• Ask what options they see

• Offer creative possibilities without attachment

• Use the phrase “What do you prefer?” instead of “Here’s what you should do”

• If they don’t like your suggestion, respond with “Wonderful” and move on

Key Takeaways

Most people are overwhelmed not by their problems, but by their lack of clarity about their problems. You can’t solve what you can’t define. Writing questions down is the first step toward definition.

Questions pull, answers push. Stop exhausting yourself trying to have all the right answers. Get better at asking powerful questions instead.

Action dispels overwhelm. Even the simple act of picking up a pen and writing is action. It’s doing something different. It’s the beginning of movement.

Good questions are specific, neutral, and outcome-focused. Vague questions yield vague answers. Blame creates defensiveness. Focusing on what you don’t want keeps you stuck in what you don’t want.

Victim mentality is defined by having no options - usually because options haven’t been identified. Writing down your options (even the ones you don’t like) immediately shifts you out of victim and into choice.

The quality of your questions determines the quality of your answers. Half-baked questions in your head will never yield great answers. Sufficiently worded questions written down are already halfway answered.

This isn’t just a productivity tool - it’s a practice for intentional living. Peace of mind requires knowing what you’re actually dealing with. You can’t chase what truly matters if you don’t know what’s in your way.

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