Realizing that Questions are the Answer

I know you are hungry for new insights and techniques that can transform your life today. If not you wouldn't have clicked on this article. What if I told you that there was a strategy that you could use in your life and business to get a breakthrough and it will take you a little more than ten minutes to achieve it? What would you say? Would you be excited? Would you be thankful for the person who showed you such a secret that will end up saving you so much time and resources? If so, you are in the right place. In this article, I will take you through the Question Burst Strategy, a strategy used by the world's elite to radically transform their lives and business and it can do the same for you too.You will be surprised on how it can breakthrough your barriers and preconceptions and help you realize your destiny.

Step 1: Set the Stage

Pick a challenge, any challenge. Be sure you care deeply about it. Perhaps you have recently faced a setback, or you have a somewhat vague sense of an opportunity that you are excited about. How do you know whether this particular problem is ripe for a breakthrough if it’s given the right unlocking question? It is probably the proper candidate, if it makes your heart beat rapidly every time you think about it.

Next, seek out a small group of people to help you out in evaluating the challenge that you have picked out with a fresh pair of eyes. When you bring others into the equation, you get the opportunity to broaden the base of knowledge while at the same time, enabling an environment of constructive criticism and assessment of the situation at hand. It is such proximity that will allow them to generate compelling questions that you would not because they have no investment in the existing status quo.

With your individual partners assembled, ensure that you provide yourself with just 2 minutes to lay down the foundation of your conundrum. Be sure not to exceed this time limit as it would be a shame to have people helping you only for you to start polluting their minds with preconceptions before you have even gained any benefit from their insights.

Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.

—Michael Flynn Mentor

Before beginning the session of question generation, it is vital to the entire process to clearly lay out the rules of engagement. First and foremost, start by asking people to contribute only questions. Ensure that that it is well understood that those who try to suggest solutions will be redirected. Second, ensure that they understand that no preambles are allowed. Explanations, and details, whether short or long, end up guiding the people involved in seeing the problem in a certain light—which is the very thing that you’re trying to avoid.

The next step is to do a quick emotion check. Are your feelings about the challenge positive, negative or just neutral? Jot down how you’re feeling. You’ll do it afterwards after the session is over.

Step 2: Generate the Questions

Start by setting a timer and spending four minutes collecting supportive and provocative questions about the challenge. Do not allow pushback with regard to other people’s contributions. Capture every single question verbatim and ensure you ask your partners to keep you honest on this, otherwise you might unconsciously censor something you don’t want to hear. As you’re writing, add your own questions to the mix.

Once the timer goes off, proceed to do another quick emotion check. Do you feel that you are more positive than you were when you started out the challenge? If you are not, try, rerunning the exercise. Or try it the next day or with a different group of people. Remember that this exercise not only sparks valuable new questions to be asked but it also provides, an increased positive emotion 85% of the time, increasing the likelihood that you will make sufficient progress.

Step 3: Unpack the Questions.

On your own, study the questions that were asked during the session. Select few that intrigue you and strike you as different from how you’ve been going about things. A few criteria that can really help you is if you consider each question; Is it one you have not asked or been asked before? Is it one that you genuinely just don't have a good answer for? Is it one that evokes a strong emotional response either positive or negative? In other words, subject the different questions to a surprise test, an honesty test and a gut check test.

Finally, commit to the quest - the pursuit of at least one new pathway that you’ve glimpsed- and do so as a truth seeker. Set aside your previous preconceptions about whether you will be more comfortable to implement decision A rather than decision B and instead simply focus on getting the problem resolved. Devise a near term action plan: What concrete actions will you then personally take in the next several weeks in order to find the potential solutions suggested by these new questions?

That is how the Question Burst works. The exercise helps us gain energy, reframe different problems in different ways, and uncover new solutions to achieve powerful, positive results more than 80% of the time. This is simply due to the fact that this strategy consistently creates a space of special conditions where catalytic questions can thrive massively. This is what makes all the difference.

Are you asking yourself the Right Questions?

Always remember questions help to direct your focus and what you focus on has energy, it has power. This means that by simply asking different questions you can start getting different answers and this is the perfect first step that you can take to creating your own destiny. Do it now!