The Importance of Questions
Posted: January 11, 2021
The key to change is asking the right questions. It's human nature to ask questions, our curiosity and intellect is what separates us, from the common duck. We ask ourselves questions all the time whether we realize it or not. "Does Jimmy like me?" "Should I eat that muffin?" "How long is this meeting going to take?" Our life is filled with questions like these. The problem arises from when the questions we ask have a negative connotation.
If we ask ourself a negative question, our brain will inevitably reach a negative answer. Our brain is an information collector, a giant supercomputer that needs direction. It can make connections and find evidence for anything that we are filling to believe. If you believe you are the smartest person on earth, your brain will start to record and gather instances of times when you were extremely intelligent. Does this mean your actually the smartest person in the world? Probably not, but if your brain is told that belief then it will find evidence to back it up.
It is here where the average person falls into a trap. If our brain is asked to to find evidence of a negative belief, it will find it. So when we constantly ask ourselves something like "How did I get so lazy?" Our brain will answer that question! And the more we ask it the more examples of being lazy we get! Which is something that might not even be true, but because we ask ourselves that question, our brain will slowly start to believe it.
Luckily we can correct this trap by making a conscious effort to rephrase negative questions. Here are a few examples:
Why am I so fat? ----------> What can I do to lose weight?
Why is my life so terrible? ---------------> What am I grateful for?
Why can't I understand this? --------------> What can I change about my approach?
Why don't people like me? -------------> What can I do to meet more people?
For every negative question, there is a positive alternative. So next time you find yourself asking the wrong questions, shift your thinking and ask positive ones!