Have you noticed the questions your own kids or your mentees/students ask themselves out loud?
“Why can’t I ever get it right?”
“Why does this always happen to me?”
“Why am I so bad at this?”
They sound like throwaway lines and they can be questions we easily dismiss… “Don’t be dramatic. Don’t be silly. You’re not.” But this can be a really great opportunity for a simple switch.
The question a young person asks is quietly telling their brain what to go looking for. And their brain is very, very good at finding it.
There’s a simple way to explain this that I use in our schools program, and the students tend to respond well to it. It’s the Google idea.
Whatever you Google is what you get. Search “rabbits” and you’ll get pages of rabbits. You won’t see a single donkey. Your brain works in a similar way. Ask it “why am I so awkward?” and it dutifully trots off and collects every bit of evidence that you are, in fact, awkward. That’s just how the brain works. It answers the question it’s given.
So we teach young people to change the question.
It’s a small shift but it’s evidence-based – it comes from solution-focused therapy. It comes down to swapping “why” for “how.”
“Why can’t I make friends?” becomes “How could I be the kind of friend I’d love to have?”
“Why does this always happen to me?” becomes “How do I want to handle this?”
“Why am I so bad at maths?” becomes “How could I get better at maths?”
Same situation. Completely different search. A “why” question points the brain at the problem. A “how” question points it at possibilities. Psychologists call the underlying thing attentional bias, and it’s one of the reasons this reframe changes how a young person feels, not just what they say.
You don’t need to sit them down for a Big Talk. Just listen for the “why me” questions, because they’re usually running underneath even when they’re not said out loud. When you hear one, gently offer the “how” version alongside it. You’re not dismissing the feeling. You could think of it as pointing them towards a door instead of a wall.
Do it a few times and something lovely happens: they start doing it themselves. You’ve handed them a tool that travels with them long after you’ve left the room.
This is one of my favourite things to teach, partly because it’s so quick, and partly because it works just as well on us as it does on them. Notice your own “why” questions this week. Try flipping one.
If you’d like more where this came from, I’ve made a free masterclass, How to Build Confidence in Teens & Tweens. It’s the research and the practical tools in one short sitting, made for anyone who spends time with young people.
Watch the free masterclass here.
And if you work in a school, you can check out our school-based wellbeing curriculum (we have a whole lesson that covers this) here.
Keep shining,
Amanda
