5 Questions That Can Change Your Life
Here are my answers to five questions that can change your life.
1. What’s my tennis ball?
What is the thing that drives my passion?
At first I thought it was to work with children, I love watching a child light up when they get rewarded for reaching their goals- it wouldn't matter how tired I am, as soon as I can connect to a child in whatever they are doing and be there as they grow, all the fatigue just goes away. Then I thought it was to be a youth leader at church and lead young people to grow in Christ- kids to desire Gods word. Then I thought it was teaching at university- the sheer joy of roaming around the room and watching, almost hearing the clogs tick in the minds of my students, when concepts gel together. Then I thought it was to be a great lover, to support my partner in everything that he does. But I don't think any one of those things are my tennis ball. It's all of those things, and the communality in those things is my desire to help others to move towards growth and reach their potential.
2. What am I grateful for?
I am grateful for many things. For the simple things like time, family, friends, for the challenging things and for a future that I am unsure of.
3. What would I attempt to do if I knew I could not fail?
This question blew my mind- if I knew I could not fail, it wouldn't be anything academic or innovative that I would attempt. But if I knew I could not fail, I would be open to being in love again.
4. What if I made one small change?
One small change I'm making this year, no, this month, no this week, is not making any excuses for being late. And working towards a larger change of not making excuses and not being late.
5. What will make a better story?
In five years, where do I see myself. Hopefully, I will have a PhD, a fully registered clinical psychologist... all those academic things. But wouldn't it be lovely to have met someone who I can travel with and have explored some pretty amazing places. That, is something I wouldn't regret.
Original post:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brainstorm/201407/5-questions-can-change-your-life
5 Questions That Can Change Your Life
The right question makes all the difference. What's your tennis ball?
by Warren Berger
What can a question do? If it’s the right question, it can change your life. In my research on the power of inquiry for my book
A More Beautiful Question,
I learned that asking challenging questions—of others, and
particularly, of yourself—can do everything from helping you overcome
fears to enabling you to make better decisions and life choices.
Why are questions so powerful?
When we formulate questions, we begin to “organize our thinking around what we
don’t know,”
according to the Right Question Institute, a nonprofit educational
group that studies questioning. Indeed, often just by asking a question,
we are taking the first step toward learning something new or solving a
problem. Questioning is also associated with
divergent thinking, which taps into our
creativity.
And there’s evidence to suggest that questions are highly motivating:
Ask yourself a question and your mind almost can’t help going to work on
finding an answer.
Of course, some questions are better than others. While researching
my book, I asked many successful people—innovators, business leaders,
great creative thinkers—to share questions they found to be particularly
powerful.
Here are 5 of those questions—each designed to help
with a different aspect of living a better life. Try asking yourself
these questions, but don’t be in a rush to find a quick or easy answer.
These aren’t the kinds of queries Google can answer; a more personal
“search” may be required.
1. What’s my tennis ball?
This question is derived from a
commencement speech given
at MIT last year by Drew Houston, founder of the successful information
storage service Dropbox. It's a more interesting way of asking
yourself,
What do I really care about? or,
What am I meant to do? As
Houston explained in his speech, “The most successful people are
obsessed with solving an important problem, something that matters to
them. They remind me of a dog chasing a tennis ball.” To increase your
own chances of
happinessand success, Houston said, you must “find your tennis ball—
the thing that pulls you.”
Where
should you look for that thing that pulls you? Pay attention to your
own behavior and to the things you find yourself doing without thinking.
“When you’re in a bookstore,” says author Carol Adrienne, “what section
are you drawn to?” Another suggestion is to think about what you loved
doing in younger days. “The things we loved as a child are probably
still the things we love,” says
Eric Maisel, a psychotherapist and author. He suggests drawing up a list of favorite activities and interests from
childhoodto “see what still resonates with you today.” Once you’ve figured out what pulls you, it’s time for another question:
How might I find a way to incorporate this interest or activity—this tennis ball—into my everyday life?
2. What am I grateful for?
Self-questioning can easily drift toward a focus on what’s missing in one’s life:
Why don’t I have more money, a better job, a bigger house?Meanwhile,
we tend to take for granted what we actually have going for us. But
happiness experts say that if you want to find a quick and easy way to
bring more positive energy into your life, start by asking yourself the
question above—and keep asking it, every day.
“Gratitude is a shortcut to happiness,” says the filmmaker Roko Belic, whose 2011 documentary
Happy was a study in what makes some people happier than others. The
same conclusion was reached by Tal Ben-Shahar, a professor at Harvard University and author of
Happier and
Being Happy. He believes it’s important to “cultivate the habit of gratitude” by asking, at the end of each day,
What am I grateful for? and
writing the answers in a “gratitude journal.” He maintains that people
who do this tend to be not only happier but also more successful and
more likely to achieve their
goals.
3. What would I attempt to do if I knew I could not fail?
This question, quite popular among
risk-taking entrepreneurs
in Silicon Valley today, can be traced back more than three decades to
American pastor Robert Schuller, who used it in inspirational sermons
and books. More recently, it was featured in a popular
TED talk by technologist Regina Dugan, who hailed the question’s power to help people get past
fear of failure—so that “impossible things suddenly become possible.”
How
can a mere question help conquer fear? It has to do with the power of
the hypothetical “what if” to enable us temporarily to shift reality and
look at the world through a different lens. By asking
What if I could not fail?,
we create a mental landscape in which the constraint of failure is
removed. This frees up the imagination to think of the most ambitious
possibilities. Of course, at some point one must return to real-world
thinking, where failure is a very real possibility—and ambitions may
have to be scaled back. But the point of this question is to allow you
to at least start out thinking big and bold.
4. What if I made one small change?
As you set out to make actual changes in your life, start small. Wall Street executive Caroline Arnold, author of
Small Move, Big Change,
advises that if you focus on “microresolutions”—small, targeted,
behavioral changes—you’re much more likely to succeed in improving your
life.
For example, when Arnold set out to “get in shape,” she
focused on one small behavioral change—walking to work instead of taking
the train. And she only committed to doing this once a week, on
Mondays. Eventually it became a habit, and now she walks to work every
day. So why not just resolve to walk to work every day to begin with? By
holding yourself to that higher standard, your chances of failure are
greatly increased, Arnold says. Bottom line: Resist the urge to try to
change too much, too quickly. Begin, instead, by asking,
What if I made one small change?
5. What will make a better story?
Life
is about choices: Do I take this path or that one? When you come to
forks in the road, ask yourself this wonderful question, shared by
author and consultant
John Hagel:
When I look back in five years, which of these options will make the better story?
Why
use this question to guide you? Because, as Hagel explains, “No one
ever regrets taking the path that leads to a better story.”
Warren Berger (@GlimmerGuy) is the author of A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas.
