The day your world changed with one question

Personal development means absolutely nothing unless we are ready to change. We
can read a hundred books, attend a hundred seminars, read a million blogs but
it still won’t change us unless we are ready to change. A lot
of us are looking for answers but we still haven’t formulated a question. Questions
are key to solving anything whether it be a mathemtical problem or your own
life.

James Dyson asked the question; How could I get rid of the bag in the hoover
without losing suction?

Richard Branson asked the question: How can I compete with the big airlines?

Robert scoble asked the question: How can I change Microsoft’s public
image?

Darren Rowse asked the question: How can I make money blogging

Once you’ve formulated your question how do you know it’s the
right question? The answer to that is: when it moves you toward a positive
outcome for the good of yourself and harms no other.

I have a friend who has been been trying to get out of his current job for
2 years. The benefits and salary are the key things that hold him there. I
have asked him several times ‘If you left your job just now, what would
you want to do?’, to this day he still doesn’t know what he wants
to do. He knows if he seriously asks himself this question it will be
a step closer to making a decision and leaving the company. So if he
doesn’t ask the question he can go on with his life and complain about
his job.

It takes balls to ask the right question

There are many people in the situation I described above and many people who
have still not asked the right questions and deep down don’t want to. Questions
drive us forward, right questions change our lives.

Think about this scenario and the questions we could ask:

You’re fat and you want to lose weight. You’ve lost a few
pounds and are quite pleased with yourself and your progress. You are
looking in the cupboards one day and see that packet of biscuits that the kids
have not seen (rarely ever happens, but it could). What questions do
you ask?

Will one biscuit really do any harm?
It’s only got 100 calories, surely that’s not going to harm me?
I’ve done so well I should have some reward?

Are these the right questions to ask. Any overweught person knows, deep
down, they are not. The right questions to ask in this situation could
be:

If I have this biscuit will it disrupt my program?
Will this one biscuit throw out all the good work I’ve done?
Will this one biscuit lead to another one?
I’ve done so well, it’s crazy to stop now isn’t it?

Asking the right questions takes guts.

Changing your questions

If you are stuck in a situation and you have been asking yourself questions
which are not driving you forward in some way try asking a different set of
questions.

As an example I have written about ‘paying
off my mortgage to become a professional blogger’. I have an agreement with my wife that
if I can pay off our mortage I can give up my full time job as a homeless support
worker and become a professional blogger. I like working as a support
worker however I want to work for myself but not have to worry about money
whilst I am doing it. So I came up with paying off the mortage.

Now my first questions were:
How can I make money to pay off the mortgage?
How can I get £75,000?
What can I do to make that much money?

When these questions are asked I felt doomed to fail, I felt this is an unreachable
target. Then I realised I was asking the wrong questions. I started
asking

What can I do to earn £1000 (If I can do £1000, I can replicate
it 75 times)
What service could I offer to help people who would pay me?
What skills do I have that I could convert into money?
What would be a win win situation whereby people are getting something for
paying me to do something?

So I came up with the eBook ,
not the best way to make £75,000 but it offers readers an easy way to
read the articles on my blog whilst helping me toward my goal.

I have also been pushing my services as a blog
consultant over at my other blog.

I also have a few ideas to help people lose weight and charge £499 for
a 3 month program and limit it to 50 people, I am still working on this.

There are also a few other things I have in mind.

All this from changing my questions. I feel energised to really go for
this goal and get to the target.

How to change your questions to change your life

If you have big goals, break them down. For example if your goal is
to lose 30 pounds, start asking how you could lose 2 pounds. Do this
15 times and you have reached your goal. Sound too simple, that’s
because it is, its our thinking that makes it hard.

We often ask ourselves the same question over and over again. Ask 5
different questions to a problem you might be stuck with and start answering
them all. This was you might have 5 different solutions.

Ask yourself questions in every area of your life. How can I make my
kids happier? How can I free up more time for myself? How can a work smarter?
How could this process be improved? How can I become more organised? why have
I not bought this guys eBook yet?

When you ask questions in all areas of your life, you will gradually learn
to ask good questions and filter out the bad questions. Practice is the key
to changing your life and asking questions is a great skill to have.

Ask yourself this question often as we often get stuck in our life and stop
thinking about what would make it better.

I hope this article has helped you in asking some questions about yourself. What
questions would you ask yourself to change. Let me know by leaving a
comment.

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