What happens when we ask the right questions?
The right questions illuminate. They precipitate a shift.
We might experience this as a physical sensation—maybe a flutter in the belly or the subtle sensation of energy moving around the body—that tells us something needs to be acted upon.
The right questions provoke; they agitate. They can be uncomfortable or scary because while they create possibility, they also take us into unfamiliar territory. These questions construct new neural pathways, allowing our thinking (and so our behaviour) to change.
Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash
When we ask ourselves the right questions, we develop a whole new perception—ways of seeing ourselves and the world. It’s like putting on a pair of spectacles: the edges of things become clearer and sharper, the colours more vibrant. The right questions shine a light on our thinking, our patterns and behaviours.
This better vision can lead to more expansiveness, more aliveness; more wholeness.
The best way I know to achieve this shift is by using writing as inquiry. Writing is a way to think on the page, a private process in which we translate our understanding or experience into tangible form. Then we have the choice to keep it to ourselves or send it, like a message in a bottle that floats on the waves, out to the universe.
It can be challenging to find the right questions but when we hit on the right ones to shape our exploration, it creates space for alternative narratives and ways of being; for new stories about ourselves or our world to emerge. The right questions dissolve old stories that over the years have become calcified, the ones we believe simply because we always have.
Following a trail of questions through writing, we can consciously reshape our stories; we increase our capacity for empathy. We are more able to connect with ourselves and others. In short, we are more in touch with the full spectrum of human experience.
The right questions open new routes; they become way-markers, keeping us on track with our sense of purpose, the internal compass of the vision and values that direct us. They prevent us from getting lost on the trail, and from blundering into long grass or boggy ground.
As Keith Cunningham says in (the wonderfully named) The Road Less Stupid: ‘having the right answer is smart. Having the right question is genius.’
How do we access this genius?
By taking time to reflect and generate the questions, and by making space to answer them.
By listening intently to the intuitive prompts that surface, sometimes so quietly we can hardly hear them.
And by finding trusted partners to ask the right questions of us – curious thinkers who reflect what they see and hear and who have a passion for the rich rewards of inquiry.
