Can The Questions You Ask Make You More Successful?
This entry was posted on October 11, 2012, in Daily Life. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments (Edit)
I’ve been doing loads of coaching sessions recently which is great for me because it’s one of my favourite things to do. I can openly and helpfully observe someone’s behaviour and language patterns and help find how they’re holding themselves back… I find it fascinating. It’s people watching at a whole new level.
One of the things I noticed a few years ago is that the difference between the questions I ask myself and the questions my clients ask themselves. Here are some examples:
Them: “Why aren’t I more beautiful/loveable/successful?”
Me: “What can I do to make myself more beautiful/loveable/successful?”
Them: “I really want to start my own business/meditate every morning… but the problem with this is… why are there always so many problems in my way?”
Me: “I really want to start my own business/meditate every morning … what do I need to deal with first?”
You see, the simple difference is I ask more empowering questions. We have the same problems to deal with but the way they ask the questions makes the problems seem bigger and worse which of course makes them more difficult to deal with.
We all have our weak areas and one of mine (I’m still working on) is cooking. I know it sounds silly because everyone can cook, but I was massively lacking in confidence when it came to cooking. Listen to they types of questions I used to ask myself about cooking:
“Why aren’t I good at cooking like my sister/partner/friends?”
“Why can they make such amazing dishes and I can only make salad or cereal?”
How terrible are those questions! What hope did I have? (none) It’s no surprise that it’s only this year that I’ve started actually cooking, I was putting huge negative blocks in my way. The questions I was asking suggested that I would fail because I was inadequate and that if I tried, it was going to be really, really difficult.
Now I’m trying (very deliberately) to ask questions like:
“If I wanted to make Lamb Curry, what ingredients might I use?”
“How would my sister approach this recipe?”
“I wonder what it’ll taste like?”
So simple and yet so incredibly powerful! Try it today, even just changing one question can make the world of difference to how you approach the challenge.
What area’s of life do you ask great questions? and what area of life could you ask better more empowering questions?