If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that I love, love, looove asking questions. It’s my jam and satisfies my natural curiosity. So, let me ask you this: When you woke up this morning, what were the first few questions you asked yourself?
“What are all the things I need to do today?”
“Why’s it so dull today?”
“What time is it? Am I late?”
“Urgh, I’m late again! What’s wrong with me?”
The Power of Questions
One thing you might not be entirely aware of is just how powerful your questions are, especially the ones you ask yourself at the start of the day. Every question you ask yourself in your head directs your focus; and your focus leads to how you feel; and how you feel leads to the actions that you take or don’t take. So just reading the questions above, what sort of answers do you think they’d lead to, and what end result might they produce?
“What are all the things I need to do today?”— You start counting off all the things and get overwhelmed because they’re a lot.
“Why’s it so dull today?“— Urgh, where’s the sun? You decide it’s gonna be a dull day.
“What time is it? Am I late?”— You become focused on being late and now needing to rush around because that’s what you’re focused on (even if you’re not!)
“Urgh, I’m late again! What’s wrong with me?”— This is the perfect way to spiral into a hole of negative self-talk because you’re directing your focus to weaknesses, faults, and flaws.
Let’s Flip It
Now, imagine you woke up in the morning and asked yourself:
“What could be great about today?”
“How can I make today a great day?”
“In what way would I love to show up for myself today?”
“How will I love to show up for my family today?”
You can see those questions direct your focus to looking for particular answers, and those answers ultimately impact and influence the actions you take throughout the day.
If you find yourself getting up in the morning or you find yourself going through your day with particular questions and those questions are leading you to feel a way that’s unresourceful and unuseful for you, pause, take a breath, and check the questions you’d been asking yourself and become aware of them, then flip those questions, and ask yourself something else.
In the words of Tony Robbins: ‘The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your questions.’ Ask yourself rubbish questions, you’ll get rubbish answers. Ask yourself useful questions, you’ll get answers that will help you to have a useful, thriving, fruitful life.
Get curious about the results that occur as a result of the questions that you commonly ask yourself, because when you can recognise the questions that you commonly ask yourself, you can start to undo them and press pause on them, so you can ask yourself more useful questions.
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