The Question That Replaces Complaining: What More Can I Do?

Whenever I was struggling, my father told me the same thing: keep going.

He left Cuba in 1959 with a Cornell degree and no guarantees, and he spent the rest of his life starting over. By the time I was born, he was 50 years old and had rebuilt his life more times than most people will ever have to. When he said keep going, it wasn't a slogan. It was how he lived.

My father passed away 15 years ago. And it was only last year that I finally understood what he was teaching me.

Keep Going Is a Question, Not a Command

For most of my life I heard those two words as endurance. Push through. Don't quit. Grit your teeth until the hard season ends.

That isn't what he meant. What I came to understand is that keeping going begins with a question you ask yourself: What more can I do?

That question changes everything about how you face uncertainty. When something isn't working, most of us reach for a different question first. Whose fault is this? Why is this happening to me? When will someone fix it? Those questions feel natural, but they hand your agency to someone else. They make you a spectator in your own career.

What more can I do puts the agency back where it belongs. It doesn't deny that the situation is hard. It simply refuses to let the difficulty make the decision for you.

We live in a moment where people have a choice. They can be part of the problem or part of the solution. And I say this respectfully: when you have been told what to do for most of your career, making your own decisions is difficult. It is even more difficult when you have never asked yourself what more you can do.

Why I Was Asking It Myself

I didn't arrive at this insight in theory. I was asking the question about my own work.

For years I have taught leadership strategies to organizations. Last year, I asked myself what more I could do, and the honest answer was uncomfortable. I had not done enough to help people understand a simple truth: change is hard.

It is hard for a specific reason. Change is hardest when you don't know who you are, what you are meant to be, and what you bring that is unmistakably yours. Without that grounding, every change feels like a threat, because there is nothing steady underneath you while everything around you moves.

When you do know those things, something shifts. You have the conviction, the belief, to keep going. That is what my father had. He wasn't fearless. He knew who he was, and that knowledge carried him through reinvention after reinvention.

The Data Says Most People Are Waiting

Organizations are feeling the cost of change without that grounding. Gartner research released in 2025 found that only 32% of business leaders report achieving healthy change adoption by employees, and that roughly 79% of employees have low trust in their organization's ability to execute change.

Read those numbers carefully. Most people are waiting for the organization to get change right before they commit to it. That is understandable. But waiting is a decision too, and it quietly surrenders your career to someone else's execution. It's one reason your people are tired of change. They are carrying it without a sense of who they are inside it.

What more can I do doesn't require the organization to be perfect. It requires you to know what you bring and to put it to work while others wait.

How to Put the Question to Work

This question is simple to ask and demanding to answer honestly. Here is how I practice it.

Ask it before you complain. The next time you feel frustration rising, pause and ask what more you can do before you ask who is to blame. You may still decide the problem belongs to someone else. But you will decide it with clarity instead of reaction.

Anchor it in who you are. The answer should come from your strengths and your story, not from a generic list of productivity tips. What more can you do that only you can do?

Make the answer small and specific. The question loses its power when the answer is vague. One conversation. One decision. One contribution you have been holding back.

Ask it again tomorrow. Keeping going is not a single act. It is a practice. That is why being stuck is rarely permanent. As I've written before, stuck is a choice you can unmake, one honest question at a time.

What My Father Knew

My father never told me that life would be easy or that uncertainty would pass. He told me to keep going. It took me years to hear the question inside those words.

That question is available to you on Monday. It doesn't wait for a better manager, a clearer strategy or a calmer market. It only asks that you know who you are and act on what you believe. That is conviction. And it is how you keep going.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.