How to Ask Empowering Questions

Posted by Harmony Rousseau on May 23, 2007 in Psychology, Success | 4 comments

I was listening recently to a Tony Robbins lecture the other day. In it, he was talking about how the process of thinking is a series of asking and answering questions. If you ask the right questions, you get the right answers and therefore the right results.

Unfortunately, most of us are pretty bad at asking empowering questions. Instead, we ask ourselves things like:

• Why can’t I ever do this right?
• Why didn’t I leave earlier so I wouldn’t be late?
• Why did I sleep in rather than going to the gym this morning?
• Why did I eat that?

All these questions are accusing in nature. They immediately make us feel defensive – we need to justify why we ate that luscious dessert or didn’t exercise today (we will tomorrow!) These types of questions also focus on the problem rather than the solution and lead to more cyclical thinking. We never break out of the negative thinking – we just think more negative thoughts and downward spiral.

Instead, we should focus on empowering questions like:

• What’s most important?
• What am I really proud of today?
• What action can I take right now to move forward?
• What foods would I like to eat more of?
• How can I make my exercise sessions more fun/interesting/challenging?
• How can I fit this last thing into my schedule?

Empowering questions usually start with “what” or “how” while disempowering questions start with “why”. That’s not an all encompassing rule – you can always ask something like “what the heck is wrong with you?” – but it holds true in many cases.

To ask empowering questions, we must focus on what we can control. There are many things in life that are out of our control such as traffic, weather, budgets, competitors, natural disasters, or what people think about us.

There are also many things we can influence, but we don’t have control over. For instance, we can influence what others think of us. If we are negative, defensive, or hostile, people will tend to think badly about us. If we are upbeat, enthusiastic, and positive, people will think well of us. But, there may be that one person who just does not like us no matter what we do.

What we can control are our own actions and attitudes. We can choose to complete a project on time, set aside time to spend with family, spend money on certain things, take action, not take action, think positively, think negatively, etc.

If something bad happens to us – like we miss our train, our car won’t start, or even something as mundane as we spill our morning coffee – it’s up to us to choose how we will respond to it and how that one event will affect the rest of our day.

Today, spend some time reflecting on the questions you ask yourself – are they holding you back or empowering you to live a fulfilling life? If you are asking negative questions, how can you reframe them so they are more positive and empowering?

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