Transform your Life by Asking the Right Questions. “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” – Voltaire. When I first was introduced to personal development, I was absolutely floored with how powerful asking the right questions was.
When I started incorporating the right questions into my life, the impact was dramatic and I wondered why this wasn’t taught in grade school. It’s now an integral part of my life and large part of my work with my clients. I can’t wait to share some of my favorite ones below.
Asking the right questions (especially the first thing in the morning) brings you focus and awareness as well as the opportunity to expand as a human being on a daily basis. Like any living thing, when we are growing, we are thriving! We are all vulnerable in this day and age to falling into autopilot, limiting ourselves with our blind spots and not taking the action we need to take in order to get where we want to go. How many times have we found ourselves not nearly as close to what we wanted as we know we should be. What happened? Days, months and years fly by and we think “oh, that’s life”. Asking the right questions can put you into the drivers seat, not so you can try to control every element of life, but so you can grow, expand and be a conscious co-creator of what you want to be experiencing. This is the case if you are struggling in life or with your health and want to just feel like yourself or if you are feeling well and want to claim your potential.
Starting your day with the right questions brings you into rapport with what you want, what might be stopping you and gives you an opportunity to gain perspective for empowered movement ahead. Before you can find what you want, you simply have to have an idea of what you are looking for. Seek and you shall find.
Here are some of my favorite powerful questions I use myself and with my clients.
- What would you like to acknowledge yourself for yesterday? Did you learn anything?
- What would you like to do differently today?
- What are the main 3 things I want to happen today?
- Am I willing for today being totally amazing no matter what happens?(Sometimes you may find, you aren’t)
- What’s the best thing that could happen today? What’s the first/next step towards this?
- What am I committed to today where I’m willing to do whatever it takes?
- What’s important about this commitment?
- What is my deliberately vulnerable action item? I know it will be uncomfortable but I’m willing to do it anyway because I know this is a large part of fulfilling my potential.
- What’s my main obstacle? How can I work through it?
- What’s something still lingering I could let go of that I know doesn’t fit into my vision?
- What’s a way I like to sabotage myself that I need to be aware of? (i.e. Allowing something “more important” to come up or falling into old patterns.)
- Who needs my help today and how can I help them?”
- If my body was making a statement, what would it say? Tired? Stuck? Proud? energized? Embarrassed? What’s the statement I want it to make? What does it need?
- What are the three things I am doing regularly that don’t serve or support me?
Do I have the right kind of support I need to accomplish my goals?
How do I want to feel at the end of the day?
At the end of today, how will I know I took the right action?
These are quite a few questions and some may feel redundant however I encourage you to work through all of them. They can be very powerful if used daily in a journal. The more time you spend with them, the more valuable the answers will be. I’d love to hear in the comments which questions created the most impact for you!