Change your questions

“A world of questions is a world of possibility. Questions open our minds, connect us to each other, and shake outmoded paradigms. Our orientation should shift from one of answers and opinions to one of questions and curiosity. We would see quick judgments, fixed perspectives, and old opinions give way to exploration, discovery, innovation, and cooperation.”
Marilee Adams: Change Your Questions Change Your Life

As with the 5 whys in the previous section, a good question will always lead to another good question. Questions can challenge assumptions. You assume you can’t do something but the right questions ask “Why not?” and “What if?” Core Action Value #1 in the course on The Twelve Core Action Values is Authenticity. We ask course participants a question that can be life-changing: What would you do if every job paid the same and had the same social status?

If your answer is something different than what you are doing now, that opens up a whole range of new questions. What is keeping you from doing work you love? How can you create a path from what you do now to doing that work you would do for the joy of that work itself? Alternatively, what might you do to bring some of that ideal work into your current day job? Answering this question led one nurse who loved to write poetry to a practice of writing poems to share with her patients. Paradoxically, in the eyes of many of her patients that one thing – something that was not part of her nurse training and not part of her job description – did more to create the perception that she was a great nurse than did all of the clinical skills she had learned and upon which her performance was evaluated.

If you don’t have a question
  - you don’t have a clue

If you aren’t searching
  - you must really be lost

- McZen ( www.McZenpoems.com )