Asking Better Questions – The Most Overlooked Tool in Personal Development
You're back! Thanks for returning to my blog. If you haven't already, subscribe to my free weekly online training series.
We all ask ourselves questions every day. The problem is that we usually overlook the quality of those questions and most people rarely consciously ask themselves empowering questions with the intent of moving toward a goal.
I believe that asking better questions consciously is probably the most overlooked tool in the area of Personal Development. It’s probably due to questions being everywhere that we take for granted how powerful they can be when used correctly.
One of the most basic functions of an open ended question is that it expands our perception. If we are in a stressful situation and think to ask “What is the best way to deal with this situation?” or even “How can I improve this situation and enjoy the process?”, it immediately gives us the ability to step outside of the situation and observe what is going on in a way that we couldn’t when we were caught up in it.
I have studied Neuro Linguistic Programming
Another important use of questions is to help us get more out of ourselves. If we are about to start a new project and ask a question like “What would be the best way to start this project to get the greatest response?” we can just allow the question to remain open and write down any answers that come up. In this scenario, it’s important to not just give the first answer that comes to our conscious mind, but instead allow our subconscious to work on it and see what it can come up with.
Types of Questions
The most important way to look at types of questions is are they empowering or dis-empowering. The key difference between the two is that dis-empowering questions are contractive and focus on lack or negative aspects whereas empowering questions are focused on possiblity and expansion.
Another important way of looking at questions is if they open ended or closed. Closed ended questions take a range of possibilities and focus on one result. Questions like “What is the most important thing to get set this morning?” is closed ended because it will cause you to end up focusing on one item.
Open ended questions are usually the most powerful because if left open, because then they can be answered from a deeper place like the subconscious. The subconscious mind can process 20,000,000 bits of information per second. The conscious mind can only process 40 bits of information per second. By just leaving a question open for longer, we gain the ability to tap into this powerful resource.
Another kind of question is what I will just call “Meta Questions” because they are questions that generate more questions. The more you use questions consciously to maintain a positive and resourceful state, the more varieties of questions you will need. You can get these by asking Meta Questions like “What would be the best questions to ask myself first thing in the morning to start the day feeling inspired?” and take note of all the ones that come up and start using the best ones.
I would recommend using Meta Questions to find the best questions to ask yourself in each of the key areas of your life.
To Your Unquestionable Success!
Paul Reimers
P.S. If you enjoyed this post, I would love it if you could share it on Facebook and Twitter!
Related posts:
Tagged with: Asking Better Questions • Neuro Linguistic Programming • Personal Development
Filed under: Personal Development
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
I like how you present this. So practically. I walk this talk. You know how it is, when you are engaged daily in a self-developed conversation you just cannot NOT practice this.
Today for example, i needed to make a decision about something. I didn’t want to meet with a certain person and I couldn’t really figured out why. Maybe it’s because I didn’t really have a good reason to meet with them (he offered for us to meet).
So I asked myself: How can I be stay in good standing with this person, without lying or being out of integrity and having the inner peace that I enjoy?
And obviously the answer showed up and from there it was so easier to take the right action. i felt good!
No extra stress, no beating myself up, no negativity peculating from within.
It’s nice.
Thanks Paul.
Much love, light and joy,
Sigal Zoldan
Clinical Hypnotherapist & Master Results Coach
http://blog.sigalzoldan.com
http://AttractYourTrueLove.com
Sigal Zoldan @Want More Balance? Here Is My Winning Formula recently posted..Your Values Can Be Really Valuable – How to Create Your List Of Values
Thanks Sigal,
Thanks for sharing your experience. I think the most important part is so simple but tricky – allowing the answer to come. By asking yourself a better question, you allowed a great answer to surface on it’s own without being force.
Hi Paul,
What you are saying here is so important for all of us to learn. I have been amazed, every once in awhile, when someone asks me lots of probing questions about my business, how I work, what I want to accomplish, how I help people – or anything else. The reason I am amazed is that, when I am asked questions, I realize how rare it is that anyone has asked me these questions. So few people take the time to ask me about me. Instead, more often, they tell me about them self. And people also do not spend time to ask them self the important questions. My book, Love Me, Touch Me, Heal Me is filled with personal questions, self-reflection questions, to help you re-discover who you are and what you want in a relationship before jumping in to try to find the perfect partner.
Warmly,
Erica
Dr. Erica Goodstone recently posted..What Are YOU Thinking Now?
Thanks for your comment Erica,
It’s true, so often we can fall into the habit of telling rather than asking and when someone really asks us certain questions it can surprise us.
It reminds me of the saying about us having two ears and only one mouth
Great post Paul and I really agree with you about giving some thought to the questions we ask – ourselves as well as others. This is one reason I’m a big fan of journals. When I’m having a problem getting to heart of a matter, or just feeling stressed in general, I find that spending some quality time writing in my journal really helps me to focus on the heart of the issue. Thanks for the insight!
marquita herald recently posted..Continuing the Tradition – A Voyage of Awareness
I think that writing in journals can be really powerful. One of the best thing about them, other than having a record of what we’ve learned and how we have grown is allowing us to become more conscious of our thought and the questions we ask ourselves.
Hi Paul!
Love this subjects when we start interacting with the subconcious mind and start recognising the power it and it holds for everyone… As well here in the process of typing a comment… the questions come up to reflect back on the content and your own experience. And what I learned here is awesome too. Even starting to type the first sentence the subconcious mind is throwing me past experience(s) into my concious mind I wasn’t thinking off when engaging into the comment… And just the process of commenting on blogs can bring up a endless streams of questions I love to look into…
Great post (and video) Paul, and look forward to read soon more!
All the best,
Alex
Thanks Alex,
Another cool technique to help tap into the subconscious mind is handy in taking a test or looking for an answer we don’t know at first. That is lightly touching on anything we don’t understand at first while we keep going and then go back to them after a little time has passed. Any time I have done this, the answers seem to flow after my subconscious mind has had a chance to chew on it a bit.
I can agree with you Alex, I keep experiencing exactly the same as you mention when writing posts or commenting on blogs, as soon as I get started my subconscious mind keeps pushing my own experiences forward and makes me reflect on them, and at the very end something totally different comes out of it than I thought from the beginning.
Paul, I enjoyed your video a lot! Thanks!
Nella@Zahnarzt Ungarn recently posted..Zahnklinik Ungarn
Hi Paul,
I think we tend to ignore the fact that we can offer ourselves a wealth of information, if we just pay attention to our thoughts, and not suppress them.
Thank you,
Kathy
Kathy Barber recently posted..HealthCompare Coupon Code
Very true Kathy,
It’s like Plato said, all learning is remembering. We are connected with all of those answers and possibilities, we just need to ask the right question and allow it to be remembered by us.
Hi Paul,
I am only just learning about the power of the subconscious mind.
It is such an amazing asset we have …. it is a shame more people do not realise how to effectivly tap into it.
When I have a few challenges that I can’t seem to find answers to …I now think about it and leave it…get on to something else….and as you mentioned in the comment above… more often than not the solution is presented the next time I go back to it.
Great post Paul.
Cheers
Bryan
It’s amazing. When you look at it, we are always allowing our conscious mind to run things when the subconscious is so much more powerful. It has amazing capacity but it’s also pretty elusive which is where I think the problem lies.
Hey Paul,
Very good read my friend on the power of using questions in your daily life, both in business and also in personal matters.
The point in your article which stands out the most for me is that by asking yourself a question, preferably an Open or a Meta question you are in a sense removing yourself from the situation. By doing this you should get a more objective view and therefore your answers should reflect a positive, detailed, and unbiased analysis of your situation if your question is worded properly.
Thanks for sharing this Paul.
Kevin
Kevin DeRoo@kevinderoo.com recently posted..iwowwe Video Email and Conferencing – Seeing the Future of Business Communication!
Thanks for your comment Kevin,
You nailed it! It’s mostly about getting out of our own way. We all have the capacity for great things, it’s the allowing of that capacity that makes the biggest difference.
Hi Paul,
It is a very nice and informative post on the most overlooked tool in personal development.It is good to ask better questions to others rather then telling our useless stories and you have given great advice here.
waterpearls recently posted..KASPERSKY COUPONS
Hi Paul,You really bring out the power of our minds. I think we have not really tapped in to the depth of our thinking. You ask great questions to provoke us to think deeper and get to the real issues at the core of our being.
Thank you so much for the stimulation!
Have a mind boggling day!
Lynn
Lynn Jones recently posted..Seven Simple Secrets to Help You Eat That Frog!
Good insights! Empowering questions are really coaching questions, only here they are questions one asks to oneself. If someone asks me these questions, it makes me think. But I also usually “think with my mouth,” so it’s when I’m talking something out with someone that I gain insights! And . . . the brain is marvelous, isn’t it? It really can “sit” on something, process it, and generate ideas. But I also believe that God gives us answers as well, answers that our own brains have no access to. And He uses the minds He created to reach us with those answers. Now THAT is even MORE power!
Pastor Sherry recently posted..Reframing Painful Memories/Situations, Part 6-B
This topic has been of interest to me for many years. Recently I discovered and attended a workshop called “Asking Better Questions”, it was excellent!
I learned some great new techniques and one real eye opener for me personally.
I always used to use “why?” and at the workshop discovered what a turn off it is for so many people. I have had to change that habit.
It has not always been easy but it certainly has been fruitful!
Just this alone: “The subconscious mind can process 20,000,000 bits of information per second. The conscious mind can only process 40 bits of information per second. By just leaving a question open for longer, we gain the ability to tap into this powerful resource.” is so powerful. What a fact!!
This is such an interesting and powerful post Paul. I’ve learned from Tony Robbins about the importance of HOW we ask questions and how it can change our physiology, but the way you described it here in detail makes me see even more about why it makes sense to ask questions the right way.
Open and closed I’ve learned but first time I’m being introduced to meta.
I really enjoyed reading this and I’m gonna bookmark it to read again!
-Jaclyn Castro
Jaclyn Castro recently posted..Command Your Inbox Down to Zero
I must say a concept that although we should have learned it in school we didn’t!! We got regurgitate questions.. so Now as we grow ourselves we get the fun of actually learning those open ended and subconscious option of asking questions and allowing the responses to come. Love the idea and will keep developing my questioning techniques!! I do ask lots of questions, but perhaps some smoother “meta” techniques will be more useful, for me and my clients!
Holly recently posted..We Are Becoming Balloon Bodies!
Paul,
This past weekend I attended the Womens Prosperity Network annual conference, highlighting Jack Canfield as a keynote along with many other rock star presenters. One major takeaway was “To get better results, ask better questions.” In fact, it is important to just start asking questions rather than reacting automatically and defensively.
Dr. Erica
Dr. Erica Goodstone recently posted..How Vulnerable Are YOU Willing to Be – In Love, In Business, In Your Life?
Hey Paul,
I training on the Coaching Cognition platform, I’ve learned that listening is far more informative than talking, at all levels. I’ve also learned that asking open-ended, powerful questions is a key to really understanding someone. When you ask questions, you get to truly understand that nature of the person you’re speaking with, and what’s good and bad in their life.
This can be invaluable as a coach and a marketer.
Dr. Bob Clarke@Network Marketing Part Time recently posted..perfectionism sucks! — my very first totally imperfect blog post
Paul,
I am gradually learning the art of asking better questions, questions that make the other person stop and rethink something. Your suggestions that questions can be empowering, open ended, and meta questions that generate more questions, that is what creates interest and desire for a potential customer to become an actual customer with you.
Dr. Erica
Dr. Erica Goodstone recently posted..How Vulnerable Are YOU Willing to Be – In Love, In Business, In Your Life?
Hi Paul,
It is a very informative post on personal development.I agreed with your point of asking better questions rather than telling our useless stories because asking good questions give you knowledge and telling our useless stories give nothing.
Pete Goumas recently posted..Cleopatra’s Coupon
Hi Paul,
Thanks for nice article. I think that asking better questions is very important for each business project and it can be the key to success. Unfortunately many poeple don’t do it.
Edyta@stress relief activities recently posted..Drink Chamomile Stress Tea To Get Relief From Stress
Hi Paul,
I will definitely apply this in my life. I hope this would become a habit eventually. We are all aware that asking questions could help us plan on how to achieve our goals however people are not knowledgeable about open ended questions. I do hope a lot of people will read this post so that they can benefit on this as well.
Awesome Insights Paul and Yeah i have to heard from my Teacher that a good listener is always a good Student and a good Student always learn a lot and those who learn got success in every field of life! =)
Rafay @ SEO Pakistan recently posted..5 ways to reduce bounce rate of your blog
Questions for yourself, from your peers, and from your readers make you a well rounded individual… whether as a business owner, or even a blog owner. It also shows your openness to learn more in case that you cannot answer a question…. or even your peers or readers cannot either.
For me, I like to answer questions and solve them. The best are those meta questions. For blogging, it makes writing about them fill your site with content as your tackle each.
Nile recently posted..Display First WordPress Full Entry and then Following as Excerpts
Paul,
you are so right. The questions we ask ourselves is so important because it determines what we focus on. Closed ended questions may not sound very creative but can still be very important. An important closed ended question I like to ask myself every day is “What are the three most important things that MUST be done today?” That keeps me focused on what’s important and makes sure that, at the very least, what needed to get done today, got done today. And that’s a great way to stay in business!
Jupiter Jim@Thesis Tutorial, Thesis Theme, WordPress Tutorial recently posted..The Proper Way to Paste MS Word Text into your WordPress Blog Post or Page