One of the most common questions we ask is "Why?" "Why" is the language of seeking to understand. When we were young children, we used this question to figure out how the world works: "Why is the sky blue?," "Why did Sparky run away?" As we get older, we still use "why" to bring our circumstances into alignment with our ability to understand our world.
Unfortunately, "why" eventually loses its power to move us forward; instead, we get "stuck" by obsessing over questions like "Why did that happen?," "Why am I this way?," and "Why aren't I better-thinner-smarter?"
Even if you're not in the throes of despair, you might still be stuck using despair's questions. When you use "why" to ask a question, you are struggling to come up with information to help you understand a situation or circumstance. I call this asking an information question. Information questions will give you answers that explain the past. They yield answers that fill the coffers of your mind with details, as well as emotion, blame, and perhaps even more problems. While we assume that more information will enable us to be released from our problems, an information question does little to move you forward in life. In fact, sometimes they can't even be answered. In working with clients for almost a decade, I've seen them endure more frustration than necessary because they asked too many information questions. Asking bad questions is a bad habit.
But don't get me wrong: asking "Why?" has been the key to many a brilliant discovery. When it comes to making changes in our lives, however, "why" is not an effective short-term tool. The way to your life blueprint requires asking deeper, more useful questions in order to get better answers and more effective action. The questions that will help you do that are access questions, which I like to call Wisdom Access Questions. These questions access your innate wisdom to create positive, forward motion.
WISDOM ACCESS QUESTIONS
Imagine your brain as one big Yahoo.com. It is a search engine tapping into a data bank of information that you already have available to you and that is made up of acquired experience, knowledge, and intuition. When you need answers in life, you form questions that serve as your keywords. Your brain then searches its resources and gives out possible answers. The more specific your keyword entry, the more specific your answer -- that's the wisdom of the computer. How did it know you needed exactly that? You told it your question and it found the answer for you. This is what Wisdom Access Questions (WAQs) will do -- help you be specific in your information gathering so you can come up with answers that have the power to move you forward.
Nearly all the questions we ask begin with one of five words: "who,' "what," "why," "when," or "how." Although these words help us gather facts and understand each other in conversation, not all of them yield wisdom. We've already eliminated "why" as a viable Wisdom Access Question. " Who," "when," and "how" fall into the information question category. However, using "what" helps the brain behave as an efficient search engine. "What" questions force you to be specific in your query and being specific leads to solution and awareness; on the other hand, asking "Why?" leaves you with only the question.
For example, if I asked you, "Why are you reading this book?," you might tell me a story about some things you are wondering about. Maybe you'd go on to provide a few details about what brought you to this moment of information seeking. Your responses would probably have something to do with your past. But if I asked, "What outcome do you want to reach by reading this book?," the answer you give would be future-oriented. It would also be much more specific, since you would be forced to look forward, rather than backward. This releases energy and moves you from feeling stuck to living in possibility -- you can see opportunities just over the horizon.
So let me ask you again: What outcome do you want to reach by reading this book? Answers like "To get a new life," "To be happier in what I do," or "To find the guts to take a huge risk" have a momentum of their own -- regardless of what the final result ends up being, these responses get you moving toward a goal.
The search engine in our brains is highly sophisticated, but it requires a well-phrased question to take advantage of it. WAQs are designed to do that. Using "what" questions provides the opportunity to start you along the road to accessing your own wisdom.
Take a look at the list of questions below and see how you can make any question a Wisdom Access Question by using "what."
CONVERTING INFORMATION QUESTIONS INTO WISDOM ACCESS QUESTIONS
Instead of Asking Yourself / Ask
Why is this happening to me? / What do I need to get through this?
Why am I such a failure? / What will get me what I want?
Why aren't I better at this? / What can I do to improve?
Why can't I get it? / What do I need to know to understand?
Why can't I have a charmed life like ____? / What can I learn from _____ ?
Instead of Asking Others / Ask
Why did she say that? / What could have made her say that?
Whose fault was it? / What is the solution?
Who did what? / What would have made a difference?
What happened [seeking details] / What happened? [seeking outcome]
Why would they do that? / What could be learned from this?
How will you do that? / What will you do?
CASE STUDY: USING "WHAT" AS A WAQ
Peggy is a corporate executive who participated in one of my wisdom seminars. She told me about an employee who always saw the glass as half empty, never half full. He found the fault in anything and the negative side of everything. Peggy felt he didn't want to take responsibility for his actions. He justified everything he did by saying it was someone else's fault or someone gave him the wrong information. Peggy struggled with how to get him to see that he was indeed involved and accountable for his own words and actions.
On a recent conference call, Peggy had to deliver some difficult news to her team about significant changes in the company. This employee was on the call and was disruptive and very self-involved. It made her realize she had to address his behavior sooner rather than later. .
"What I really wanted to say to him," Peggy told me, "was 'Who do you think you are? Why do you expect me or the company to help you? Why do you always see things in the most negative light? If you spent less time on the phone gossiping, you'd have the time and positive energy to devote to planning and executing for success. And the way to get any positive reinforcement from me, or to get me to embrace the issue as you see it, is not by being passive-aggressive on a conference call, asking me the same question four times, or pushing my hot buttons in an attempt to corner me into a response. Whether you like it or not, I am the manager. You are the representative. This is not a democracy. I will lead and you will follow.'"
Instead, Peggy addressed the issue with her employee in a casual conversation over dinner. She had her notes from my seminar with her, along with a list of WAQs. Here's what she said:
"On our conference call, I picked up on the tension in your voice. Tell me what you found upsetting about the new incentive plan. Let me ask that another way. What emotion was triggered in you as we discussed the plan? What do you want now? What is your goal for this year? What will get you what you want? What can I do to help? What can we do together to make it work?"
The employee was bowled over, but also stymied. He'd been expecting Peggy to go for the jugular, but she didn't buy into his crisis. She consciously decided to pull back and once he realized there would be no fight, he was forced to respond in the same way. The Wisdom Access Questions Peggy asked left no room for excuses, self-justification, or any defensive behaviors. He was left with no one to look at but himself. After this frank, open discussion, he and Peggy were aware of his insecurities, his fears, and his goals.
She was able to learn what he wanted from her as his boss because she used WAQs. They diffused a very difficult situation. You saw the raw emotional reaction in her words to me, which anyone could understand and relate to. However, Peggy made a deliberate choice to seek a solution instead of fishing for more information, and getting mired in emotion, blame, and details. In so doing, she was able to improve a working relationship she long ago decided was beyond repair. This was a challenge for Peggy, but in committing to elevating the exchange, she challenged her employee too, and together they got new, unexpected results. Wisdom Access Questions were essential in making this possible.
A CAVEAT
As you begin to realize the benefit of using WAQs in your home and work life, I need to warn you of an exception to the "It's good to ask 'What?'" rule. There is in fact one "what" question that is not a WAQ, but an "information" question. You've probably used it countless times on yourself and on others. Ready?
"What should I do?"
Oh, yes, that's a very big "what" question but definitely not a WAQ. How many times have you asked friends, "What should I do?," or told yourself you "really should" do x, y or z? The answers to "What should I do?" prevent you from asking the most powerful WAQ you can use. It's very simple and it's the exact opposite: "What do I want?"
That's it. I know it sounds very simple. And very easy. But most people have a really hard time answering this question, because most of us don't know what we want. I see this up close every day. Most smart, sophisticated people, with goals and plans, *think* they know what they want. However, truly having a sense of what would make them happy is a different story. We tend to be much more certain of what we should do, say, wear, or look like than of what will guide us to inner happiness.
It is my experience that seven out of ten people don't really know what they want. They think they do, but they come to discover that much of what drives them is unmet needs or the expectations of others. We will work on making sure you do know what you want in Part Two, but for now just avoid asking the information question "What should I do?" 
From ideas expressed by Laura Fortgang |
