A question can reconnect you to your body, to your breath, to a friend. A question can set you free.
Lately I’ve come across some questions that made me sit up and think. The kind of questions that can send ripples through you. Questions you’ve longed to be asked and didn’t even know it. Questions that you want to answer with either a whisper or a shout. They wake something up that is longing to reconnect with you. Be forewarned.
A question can ignite an idea, a dream, an action, or a shift in energy and perspective. Even in our self-talk, we can open new pathways by asking instead of telling. Questions can promote discovery.
Journaling with a good question can bring unexpected answers to the surface. You might even want to try video journaling with a good question on your smart phone as practiced by Grace and Frankie on the new Netflix program of the same name.
If you were ever shamed for a question you asked or told not to ask questions, you may need to work with your Inner Question Asker to revive its function. Experiment.
Here are some questions that have been showing up in my world …
Who is the “I” who is suffering? (Fernand Poulin of White Winds Institute of Integrative Energetic Medicine) Feel the answer to this one in your body, without words. Substitute other words for suffering that describe your state (resisting, in pain, frightened, frustrated).
How would you structure your schedule “to suit the wildest part of yourself, instead of the most docile and broken”? (Martha Beck from Get Out of Jail)
What if who we are and what we do become one and the same? What if our work is so thoroughly autobiographical that we can’t parse the product from the person? What if our jobs are our careers and our callings? (Elle Luna from The Crossroads of Should and Must)
What creative ideas of yours are you running over “before they even have a chance to breathe?” What “lights you up?” (Sarah Bray, from Gather the People)
“What’s making you smile today?” (Beth Beulow of The Introvert Entrepreneur)
“What if the opposite was also true?” or “Under what conditions would the opposite be true?”
(Will Marre from Wednesdays With Will)
What happens when you change, “I believe in …” to “I give my heart to …” ? (Mark Nepo, from Seven Thousand Ways to Listen)
Your Most Powerful Question
The most powerful question I’ve ever heard asked was this: “What change could you make in your life, after which you could say to the people who love you, I have never been happier?” I have been in the process of answering this question for several years. What might your answer be?
“Whether we recognize it or not, each one of us has a central sacred question around which our lives circle… whatever the question, how passionately we pursue and live it in large part determines how fully and wholeheartedly we live and how peacefully and contentedly we die.” -Roger Walsh
