A few years ago it was pointed out to me that I needed to ask better questions. I was working with a personal coach and I was well aware of the questions he was asking me; however, I was not implementing them into my life. When one of my children misbehaved or did poorly on an assignment, I would ask the question of “what happened?” or “what were you thinking?” Of course the question would be asked with tone in my voice and my child already knew he/she was in trouble. Normally this would result in he/she shrugging his/her shoulders and not answering me. Then my reaction would be to get even more upset. This continued to happen over and over again. Until I implemented asking better questions. I am not saying that my children still don’t annoy me with their answers and actions sometimes; but we definitely communicate better. When I was also asking the question of “what happened?” or “what were you thinking?” most of the time I was not even waiting for their reply. I was already telling them what they were thinking or what they did not do. No wonder my children didn’t want to answer the question.
Whether you are asking your children, coworkers, employees, boss, friends, family, or significant other; ask questions such as “how did that make you feel?”, “what would that look like?”, “what do you think you could do differently next time?”, or “how could it be better next time?” These kinds of questions allow some thought and not just a “yes” or “no”. Often times my children will still answer with an “I don’t know” and now my response is, “what if you did know?”. The key is to ask the question and then wait for the response. Yes, this is the hard part sometimes. I already have an answer formulated in my head and I want to tell them how to think or how to respond. If I tell them though I am not allowing them to think on their own, own their answer, and also not allowing them to be see and heard. So friends please learn from me and learn to ask better questions.
Just as it is important to ask others better questions, it is important to ask ourselves better questions. Like I have said before, I am part of a zoom book club and in the book we are currently reading we had an exercise to do. We had the following questions to answer.
- What brings you joy? Identify at least three activities that you intrinsically enjoy.
- What three activities put you in a state of flow?
- What is whispering to you? Identify at least three things you are curious about.
- What would you regret? Identify three things you would regret not doing if you died in five years.
I would challenge you to think through these questions and actually write your answers down in a journal. When we complete exercises like the one above we can allow ourselves to have an abundant mindset instead of a scarcity mindset. I think we would all agree that we are here to give and get the most out of life that we can. Let’s all commit to asking better questions and see what difference it makes in others and also our own lives.