NEW QUESTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR

High Quality Living— that’s the bottom line of Neuro-Semantics. Call it running your own brain, unleashing your best self, actualizing your highest potentials, inside-out wealth, etc., it is all in service of one thing— high quality living. It is away from low quality living— angry, depressed, fearful, stressed, living merely to survive, living only for material goods, living to consume, living to accumulate money, etc. Therefore I thought I’d kick off the new year with a series of articles on High Quality Living.

To do that, let’s start with questions. What are the questions that you are currently living? That’s right, you and I live questions. Questions are not just inquiries, they comprise the heart of thinking and from thinking, living.

Now because questions elicit answers, or at least puts us on a search for answers, questions are a wonderful stimulus for activating thinking. And some questions are especially powerful in triggering us to think deeply and profoundly. In NLP we have a question that we call a core question. It is a question that invites you to your core— your center. It goes like this:

“If your life is the answer to a question, what is the question?”

In other words, what is the question in the background of your mind that is eliciting you to live the way you are living? What question are you trying to answer with your actions? “Do they like me?” “Am I okay?” “Will I ever amount to anything?” If these are the questions you’re trying to answer, you are probably living a low-quality life. There are several problems with those questions, first of all, they are yes/no questions. That makes the answers black-and-white, either-or answers and as such causes you to get over-generalized answers. Those questions also accept the hidden assumptions rather than question them.

We use the core question in Trainers Training (NSTT). “If your training is the answer to a question, what is the question?” Questions that focus on oneself like, “Am I impressing people?” “What do they think of me?” makes the training, as an answer, focused on the speaker not the content of the training and not on the participants. Not good. Far better would be other questions:

“How much are people learning?”

“How much fun are people having as they learn?”

“What transformative insights are people experiencing?”

“How much more can I enable people to translate into their everyday lives?”

Imagine now that as you face the new year, you face it with a life question for 2021. If there were a question, a single question, that could set you on your best path and evoke from your whole being your very best resources, what would that question be? What question would you like to ask yourself such that you would love to live the answer and the consequences of that question?

What insights will I learn and integrate into my life in 2021?

How much more appreciative will I become in this new year?

What new skills that will enhance everything I do will I develop in the coming year?

How much more will I be in the “here and now” moment in 2021?

What things will I learn to cherish about my loved ones in the new year?

The possibility of creating one or more great life questions is unlimited. It is as wide open as your imagination and your willingness to experiment until you find some truly fantastic questions. In The Structure of Delight, Nelson Zink wrote, “A well-formed life question becomes a self-correcting life map, a valuable something to possess.” Why? Because the very structure of the life question creates its own power to transform life.

2020 has been a really tough year for most people. Some of that has arisen from the questions people have asked themselves during the lock-down. “Will I die from covid?” “Will I be able to survive the economic downturn and this lockdown?” “When will this ever be over?”

In place of those dis-empowering questions, isn’t it time for some empowering questions? I think so. How about —

“What liabilities in myself, or this covid situation, can I turn into an asset?”

“How can I survive and be resilient with an optimistic attitude?”

“What can I contribute to others to make their lives a bit easier?”

The questions you ask create the reality that you live. And the quality of your questions, whether to yourself or to others, determines the quality of your life. And, when you change your questions – you change your life. Here’s to new questions for the new year!