Isn’t the cooler weather wonderful?! After such a hot summer, it’s like diving into a cool, refreshing, clear pool of water.
How’s everyone doing? This was a tough weekend. I’m feeling that universal, low-lying, but seeping in kind of stress in the air, like we had when the pandemic first started. And when you have that kind of permeance of uneasiness, swirling all around you, it sort of punctuates your own individual stresses, doesn’t it? Whatever helps you with stress and concern in your mind and in your body and in your spirit, is your own “toolbox.” Don’t forget to open your toolbox, and to use and to utilize your own helpful “tools.” (exercise, prayer, meditation, music, friendships, nature, healthy, wholesome meals, crying, release, easy chores, funny shows etc.) Also, use this as a time to find and to test new, healthy tools to help ease your stress during eventful times.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” – Carl Sagan
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” – Mother Teresa
“For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”– bell hooks
“Humanity is good. Some people are terrible and broken, but humanity is good. I believe that.” – Hank Green
“We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.” – Albert Einstein
“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” – Mahatma Ghandi
“During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.” – Maya Angelou
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
The quote above doesn’t fully apply to what I am writing about today, but I heard it in a TED Talk while researching more about the subject that I am writing about today, and since I use my blog as a thought catalog for me, and also for anyone else who wants to use it that way, Reba’s quote is clearly “a keeper.” I understand that it is one of those wonderful Irish wisdoms that has been passed down for many generations.
What do I want to write about today? Asking the right questions. I was listening to a podcast the other day in which a life coach said that the biggest problem in her business is that rarely do people come to her, for help in their lives, asking the right questions. So that perked my ears, but then as podcasts do, the conversation meandered away and I never heard “the right answer” to asking the right questions. Obviously it is an important skill. If you look up “asking the right questions” on the internet you get a gazillion quotes from highly respected, successful people about why asking the right questions is so important:
“The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions.” – Claude Levi-Strauss
“One of the many qualities that separate self-made billionaires from the rest of us is their ability to ask the right questions.” – Justine Musk
“Ask the right questions, and the answers will always reveal themselves.” – Oprah Winfrey
“To ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem.” – Carl Jung
“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would spend the first 55 minutes, determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than 5 minutes.” – Albert Einstein
There are many, many more quotes emphasizing the importance of asking “the right questions” which I could list here, but if you’re like me, these quotes just create undue stress. As I’m reading them, I’m thinking, “I get it. I get it. I totally agree! But how do you know how to ask the right questions??” The answer to that question (which I would put into the category of a “right question”), proved to be a lot more elusive than the emphasis of just how important it is to ask the right questions in life.
Stephen Graves, who also has a life coaching business, and writes a blog on LinkedIn recommends learning how to ask the right questions by starting with asking yourself these five main questions about your own life, and answering them in a journal:
Where did I come from?
Who am I?
Why am I here?
How should I live?
Where am I going?
Interestingly, the key to answering these questions shown above, is also the key to learning how to ask the right questions about anything. When answering these questions, get really, really curious about your answers. We adults are sadly not nearly as curious as we were when we were children. We think that we already know all of the answers, or we dread appearing stupid or naive for not knowing something that we deem that we should know. When answering the questions above, let your natural curiosity and the open mind of your inner child, take over with more questions. Why did I answer the question that way? Are there other ways this question could be answered? In her TED Talk, Caroline Reidy says that the best philosophers/inventors/innovators in the history of recorded time, are always looking at problems and situations in their own lives, and in the world around them, with these questions in mind: What could be better? How can things be improved? Why is this particular problem not solved?
Pretend that your own answers to the questions listed above, about yourself, are magical. They don’t have to be “realistic”. Let your imagination take over completely. You are writing the answers just to yourself, in your journal. What have you got to lose? Keep your questions about your answers open to potential and possibilities and wonderment. Stay with your child-like mind. Don’t go straight to the negatives. Einstein also said this, “Stay away from negative people. They have a problem for every solution.”
When answering the questions about yourself from above, it’s best to ask yourself open-ended questions that start with “Who? What? How?” which encourage you to add more to your answers. Don’t limit yourself. Be free and flourishing with your answers. Keep asking yourself, “And what else? And? And?” Write more and more and more . . . (Let your wrist get sore. This is in investment in YOU and your one and only life!)
In doing this exercise, you will see that asking yourself the questions, with curiosity, non-judgment and imagination, will get you to answers that are deep within yourself – sometimes surprising, interesting answers that maybe you didn’t even think were possible or worth considering. If you don’t like some of your answers, start asking yourself the questions of the greatest innovators: What could be better? How can things be improved? Why is this particular problem not solved?
A great mentor I had in my past would say that in order to help people, don’t give advice or commands. Ask them “the right” questions, in order to help them to get to their own answers and conclusions. It’s a really difficult skill to master. I’m so much better at spouting off-the-cuff advice and bossy commands (as others close their eyes, shut me out and doze off – rightfully so), but asking the right questions is one of the worthiest skills to aim for, because as so many smart people reiterate throughout the generations, asking the right questions is always the best way to get to the right answers.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Albert Einstein
My daughter and I were just in the elevator with an adorable little girl and her father, at the hotel where we are all staying. She had on a fancy, frilly little violet bathing suit, the kind that I loved to buy for my daughter when she, herself, was a little girl. I asked the little girl if she had gone swimming. “Yes!” she proclaimed with a big smile on her face. “Did you have fun?” I asked her. “Yes!!” she exclaimed even louder and with an even bigger smile on her face.
“Honey,” her father said quizzically. “We haven’t even gone to the pool yet.”
We all giggled a little as the father explained that he and his wife were “mean parents” making their daughter eat her breakfast first.
I said to him, “In her mind, she has already had a wonderful time swimming.”
I’ve seen it again and again in my own life, in the lives of my family members and in the lives of my friends. If you can imagine it, it can, and it often will come into fruition. Even Einstein, it seems, believed in the law of attraction.
I was recently reminded of the old adage that worry is like praying for what you don’t want. For every worry that you let slip into your mind, force yourself to imagine a possibility. Imagine the delight of swimming and playing and laughing and jumping around in a big, luxurious, fancy hotel pool filled with clean, pure, clear, refreshing water of just the perfect temperature, before you have even enjoyed a delicious, delightful breakfast. And then, smile really big. Because with your amazing, beautiful, imaginative mind, you will have the delight of enjoying this pleasure as many times as you want, before you actually even do it.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Right now, I would say that 2020 is asking us a lot of questions. What are our priorities? Is how we go about our way of life really working? Do we have the right systems in place? What/who do we really miss during quarantine? What do we need to feel safe and secure? Are we really tolerant? Do we really have any control? What needs to be changed? What needs to be valued? Can we work together on a global basis? Are we good at taking care of ourselves and others? Do we have faith? What sustains us? Are we stronger than we once thought? Have our stances on political issues changed or gotten stronger? . . . . . . . the list goes on and on.
When you start thinking about the questions, it gets overwhelming doesn’t it? In my almost 50 years of life, the previous years that brought me to my knees with questions, were good. They forced me to reevaluate a lot of things. The questioning years compelled me to stop my frenetic energy enough, to make sure that I was headed in the right direction for me. The questioning years forced me to do some serious contemplation. What I found in previous questioning years, (and so, I suspect that it will the same for 2020) is that the answers are more likely to come, when one gets comfortable with just sitting with the questions. When I was most relaxed about just letting the questions “float” out there, the answers tended to come organically, in the most interesting and surprising of ways. Sometimes, I would realize that I was now living “the answer” to my questions, without even being able to pinpoint when the answer actually came. Retrospectively, when I relaxed into living the unknown, the answers kind of just “free floated” in.
There will always be questions in life and the answers can change over time and even more so, a lot of mystery will always remain, but some years do seem to bring about a bigger storm of questions than usual. To make peace with the questioning years, I like Einstein’s take on questioning:
And I think that Tennessee Williams helps us to make peace with mystery, by reminding us of the virtue of the mystery of Life:
