Over the past decade I've started to notice that people don't know how to ask questions. Well, they don't know how to ask GOOD questions, the RIGHT questions.

It's not surprising really. We've been taught from a very young age to NOT question anything.

"Do as your told." is the prominant message from parents, teachers, employers, advertisements and the goverment.

How many times your toddler or young child asks why is a running joke for exhausted parents.

"Because." was an answer I know I heard several times as a kid. For some kids, being dismissed like this or told to be quiet led to them conforming to the masses that stop asking questions. But I never stopped.

I started studying mindset coaching, neuroplasticity, trauma response, and kinesiology in 2015. I realized that when you start asking the right questions you get answers that are so much more fulfilling and accurate. I realized that being able to ask questions is easy, but being able to ask the right questions is a skill.

How can you start asking the right questions?

How can you learn to ask better questions so you stop wasting so much time with 20 questions when you just want to ask one or two?

1 - Practice. I know, the boring answer. But truly, it's the practice of paying attention to what you're asking and WHY you're asking it. Just like the majority of people simply reguritate information and opinions they've heard from other people and sources, the same is true for the questions people ask.

Get past the normal and expected questions and start to ask your own, new ones. This happens when you take the time to get clear on WHY you are asking questions in the first place. What is the outcome you're trying to achieve? Get specific. What are you trying to know, specifically. When you think you know what you're looking for ask again, "How can I make this more specific?"

And then practice. Conscious questioning is a skill that requires the repetition of practice.

2 - Pay attention and listen to the words.

When you hear someone's response to your questions you hear it through your own filter. You need to break your filter down so that you can actually hear what someone is saying to you, not what you think they're saying.

Ever experience the coworker that attends the exact same staff meeting as you or received the exact same memo or email as you and yet when he relays the message to someone else it comes out completely different? Notice how it sounds like s/he didn't "get it" or missed the point or just flat out heard what they wanted to hear and interpretted it in their own way so it benefits them the way they want?

Because they heard it through their own filter.

Let me give you a personal example.

My husband and I went for a walk one day and he asked me a question.

I answered.

There was a pause and I felt his bodylanguage change.

I asked, "what did you hear me say?"

He responded with an interpretation of what he heard.

"No, babe. Can you repeat to me what I said? The words I said to you."

He replied with another interpretation of what he heard.

"No. Can you tell me the exact, specific words that came out of my mouth?"

It took two more tries but he finally got there.

He was hearing me through his own filter instead of what I actually said.

We hear an interpretation of what was said to us. We give meaning to what we hear. It's what we do as humans. It's our default programming. We are meaning making machines - which forms how we see the world, what we think about ourselves, how we believe we are meant to be and how we believe the world works.

Very, very rarely do we hear the actual, specific words that are said to us without our own meaning & interpretation added to them.

Start to pay attention and listen to the WORDS people are saying to you.

Do you know what they said? Not what the words mean or what the person meant by what they said. Can you repeat what they said word for word?

3 - Ask, "What does that mean?"

Like I explained in number 2, we are meaning making machines and every single individual has different meanings and beliefs for things based upon the belief system they formed when they were developing as children.

It is your job to ask, "What does that mean?" so you can start to understand what someone else is actually communicating to you.

Ask them to get specific about things. Humans LOVE to be vague because it's how our subconscious programming (ie our primal instincts, fears and life drivers) stays in control.

Whether it's a suspect, victim, coworker or your wife:

The goal is to understsand what they mean, not what you think they mean.

Comments? Thoughts? Questions? Experiences?

Email Kelly@Rebelrose.life