Are You Asking the Right Questions?

by Paula Dezzutti Hewlette

Sometimes I just wonder why? Sometimes I just don’t want to think about why. Sometimes I wonder why I have to. Sometimes I know why and I wonder why I would have picked such a thing to occupy my time and space on the planet. Sometimes I know why I would have picked and I still wonder why? Sometimes it is just so very overwhelming and I can’t stop asking why? Why? Why?

There’s no way “out” once you get to the place of asking why. And you would always want to be “in” anyway, or you would not have gotten yourself to that space in the first place. There are lots of different paths yet intuitively you understand there truly is only ONE path.  Your experience is such an illusion, yet it’s the only truth you know! And the deeper your experience feels like you’ve finally uncovered the “truth”, the more you absolutely become aware it’s all just an illusion.

There’s no going back…… and going forward doesn’t really exist.  The future seems unimaginable, and yet the memories of the past have already faded away. Maybe asking the right questions are more important than having the right answers. In a recent seminar I did for the Confidence Factor for Women (http://www.prlog.org/12395565-finding-their-confidence-with-local-choice.html) I asked the all-important question, “What Next?” And it sent up an uproar of debate and contemplation.

Suppose you had all the answers. What would you do next? It’s easy to react to answers that are right in front of you, but what if we took a step back to create deeper questions about everything---about our life choices, about our reasons for loving people, about our responsibilities as accountable leaders. Maybe those answers could really change our lives, or even the world. So maybe it’s more important to ask the right questions than to have the right answers. And if you are heavily engaged in asking the right questions, perhaps you will be much more invested in discovering the right answer. Socrates wandered around Athens asking a lot of questions to discover the deeper meaning of life. The quest seems to be for the question, not the answer. The Socratic path presents a higher order thinking that almost forces our connection to higher intelligence to deliver illuminating answers to the most reticent student.

I challenge you to turn your unconscious operations of making judgments and statements about any given situation into a thinking question. Perhaps that shift in consciousness will direct your inquisitive mind into a place of being able to receive all the right answers, and henceforth deliver you the truth you were after in the first place.

For more questions and answers connect with [email protected] or visit www.localchoice.us