If you never listen to your thoughts, start now. It is one of the best things you can do for yourself to improve your life. When you hear what's going on inside that head of yours, you won't believe your ears!
What kind of things do you hear when you listen to yourself think? You'll hear all kinds of questions and answers. You observe something, you ask a question and your mind answers. On a bad day, the dialogue might go something like this: "What's that?", "It's a wobbly chair.", "What do I do?", "Just sit in it and stay still.", "Why does this always happen to me?", "Because you have bad luck.", "What's the use?", "There isn't any."
Pretty basic, eh? Well you've heard the phrase, "Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer", right? This often goes on inside your head. And what is the impact of these questions and answers on your well-being? It's huge! It can make the difference between you being in a powerful, constructive state or an unresourceful, defeated state.
In a more resourceful state, the dialogue above may sound like this: "Why is this chair wobbling?", "One of the legs is too short.", "How can I take care of this?", "Fold up the paper you're holding and stick it under the leg.", "How did I get so smart?", "I know. I amaze myself!"
Different questions have different energies. On a most basic level, some are positive and some are negative. For example, if you just did something really stupid, you could ask yourself, "How could I be so stupid?" The answer will likely be negative. Or you could ask, "What purpose did my just doing that serve?" The answer will likely be more positive.
This is what you want to consider in the questions you ask yourself. You want to make sure you ask a question where the answer will at least give you an option to learn something or ask an even better question. If the answer to your question is, "I'm stupid," or, "I'll never be good enough," you'll stay right where you are. Instead, if your answer is, "No, that wasn't smart, but now I will take a different course," you have learned something -- and you will make a change.
So how do you ask a better question? The first thing you need to do is find out what kind of questions you currently ask yourself. Most often when we start observing these thoughts, we find out that we ask ourselves harsh and brutal questions that disempower us. Basically, in a situation where something went wrong and you are potentially feeling bad, ask yourself, "What question did I just ask myself?" (I mean the one prior to this last question!)
You'll be surprised to see the answers. Things like, "Where did I go wrong?", “Why can't I get this right?", "Will I ever be any good?" and "Why do I bother?" may come up. How can you answer these questions with anything constructive? You can't.
Once you know what you asked yourself that made you feel badly about the situation, you can go back and ask a more constructive question. Try asking questions like, "What did I do that I will not do again?", "What will I do differently next time?", "How will I make myself better at this?" and, "Why must I get better at this?" The answers you get from these questions will drive you to improve on the situation, whereas the previous set of questions will leave you wallowing in your failure.
When you get good at this you will be able to recognize the particular energy of a question. There are questions that energetically resonate with the seasons of Discover, Transform and Awaken in Network Spinal Analysis (NSA). With practice, you will be able to integrate your questions to move between the seasons and get yourself where you need to be in relation to any give situation or circumstance.
So listen to your thoughts. Observe your questions and craft better ones that empower and motivate you. It will bring more joy and fulfillment into your life!
