The most important tool you have is the question. This is the third installment in an ongoing series called “Asking the Right Questions.”
A Day Full of Questions
In September of 2016 I took my girlfriend on a tour of Milwaukee. I was studying in south central Wisconsin at the time and she came up to visit me for the weekend. On Saturday, we spent the day exploring many of Milwaukee’s most iconic areas. We hammocked in Veteran’s Park along Lake Michigan, explored the area around the North Point Lighthouse, and made a few visits to Stone Creek Coffee and Collectivo Coffee.
As the day was coming to an end we drove back west to a quaint little town called Delafield. I dragged my poor, freezing Missouri girlfriend along a nature walk where I distracted her with all the plants and flowers. Questions were flying through my head.
“Is this the right time?”
“What is she going to say?”
“Am I ready?”
As she moved from plant to plant I slid a small grey box out of my pocket. After I distracted her one last time (by pointing to my friend who was coincidentally following us with a camera), I shakily dropped down to a knee, opened the box, and asked the question.
“Will you marry me?”
The Intention Behind the Question
Every question you ask has intention, meaning you have a specific type of information you would like to receive by asking it. Your intention may be overt or veiled, but it is always present. As you pay more attention to why you ask specific questions, you will find that your intentions usually fall into one of two broad categories: reflection and investigation.
Today’s article will deal specifically with reflection questions.
Reflection questions answer who you are
In the moments leading up to my proposal I asked myself many reflection questions. These are questions that make you look back to better understand yourself. This type of question allows you to assess your goals and motivations and understand the cause of your habits and actions.
One of the reflection questions that I asked myself before I proposed was, “Am I ready to be married?” This caused me assess who I am as a person, where I want to be in the future, my strengths, and my faults. After I assessed myself, I had to look at my motivations for being married. It was an arduous, but necessary task that made me confident I was making the right decision.
Not every decision is as important as marriage, but each one still requires the same self-assessment. Most of the time you will ask (and answer) these types of questions without actually realizing it–it is all part of your subconscious decision making process. However, if you take the time to consciously answer questions about your decisions you will better understand what motivates you to make them. By understanding your motivations you can use them to work toward your goals and well-being, not against them.
Reflection questions answer what you do
You can also use reflection questions to better understand how you respond to various stimuli. We all have little habits, reflexes and presuppositions that we do or think without considering why. Each time we do them without thinking, we reinforce their automation. However, if you understand what triggers them you will be equipped to either eliminate, change or use them appropriately.
Finding the cue for your habits
James Clear says habits are build in four steps: cue, craving, response, reward. Many of your habits are so ingrained that you don’t even recognize the cue. The cue is the “why” of your action, and you must learn to see it. In order to do this, ask yourself several “why” and “what” questions throughout your day. “Why did I respond that way?” and “What caused me to want that?” are great initial reflection questions to help you find your cues.
Once you identify the cue for your actions you can use them for your benefit. If you have a good habit that you want to reinforce you can make your cue more accessible in order to trigger that response more often. Or, if you have a bad habit, you can work to either avoid that cue or consciously resist the craving after you’ve encountered the cue. All this begins by knowing how to ask reflection questions in order to better understand yourself.
She said yes
Thankfully, she said yes and we married ten months later. In the time since I’ve had to ask myself countless reflection questions to figure out why I act or think in certain ways. “Why do I always push the shower curtain to the right?” or “Why do I always fold my towel, but never make the bed?” and “Why do I set my dirty dishes on the counter instead of in the dishwasher?” Each of these habits has its own origin and cue. Now I’m working on assessing and changing them.
Taking Action
If you are like me, you spend most of your day doing without asking. Each decision you make leads to more and more decisions. Eventually, these compounding decisions develop into a life trajectory. Your decisions determine your direction. It is important that you stop doing for a moment and start asking. Ask reflection questions to assess your direction.
Take a moment this week to write down three decisions you’ve made and think about the “why” behind them. They could be either interactions with a coworker, how you spent your time once you got home from work, what you ate for lunch, or where you buy your coffee. Once you find your “why,” decide if your decisions were good, bad or neutral and whether you should do something to change them.