21 – Answering Your Own Questions

This post will focus on a powerful practice you can start using today to understand yourself and your why’s better so that you can begin to unite your thoughts, emotions and actions to produce more of what you really want in life.  This practice will allow you to uncover your hidden inauthenticities, motivations or even figure out what to do in challenging situations.  The applications are endless as you will see if you are ready to see it.

We begin with a simple premise.  

Consider that you have all the answers you need to the most important questions in your life already inside of you.  You have simply neglected to ask.  Or, even if you are asking, you are neglecting to answer your own questions.  

Think about it for a moment. Who do you think has all the answers?  Who would know what your false motivations are better than you?  Who would know what your true motivations are if not you? Who would know if you are lying to yourself about something better than you?

People tend to look outside of themselves for answers when the answers have been inside of them all along.  You are no exception. However, if you don’t believe you have the answers within you, you won’t even think to ask and you most certainly won’t attempt to answer your own questions either.  Instead, you may look for answers outside of yourself by asking others, but they don’t have the information that is inside of you.  Only you do.  You must learn to ask yourself questions and then you must go one step further.  You must answer your own questions.  

When people take this on for the first time, many are amazed to discover how much they actually know and how many answers they already have.  Imagine, you have a direct line to a higher power that could answer any of your questions whenever you ask.  Well… you do have this direct line available to you but the higher power is in you.  You must access it by looking within, instead of looking without.  

People have been tricked into believing that it is always someone else that has all the answers, but this is a lie that will keep you relying far too much on external authorities (Media, Governments, Religions, Parents, Teachers, Science etc…) and neglecting to develop your own critical thinking skills and intuition. 

When I went to catholic school as a child, I routinely had to go to confession.  I was instructed to confess my sins to the priest so that he could communicate with God to find out what I had to do as a penance.  This process, whether intentionally or unintentionally damaging, had the effect of disconnecting me from my own innate ability to speak directly to God (Source, higher Self, etc….)  

Why was this priest special?  Why is it he was able to talk to God and I couldn’t?  What gave him this authority? He was just some guy. He was not above me or anyone else. Why should he be able to declare himself an intermediary between me and God?  This is a deception and pure nonsense at that. 

Whatever interrupted your natural ability to look within must be resolved.  Every single one of the happiest and most successful people on the planet apply the principle I am describing in one way or another and now… you can too.  You just have to be willing to consider that you have this power.  You simply haven’t been aware of it and because you haven’t been aware of it, you haven’t been using it.  

You can ask yourself any question and then answer it.  It may take some practice until the conversation with yourself becomes more fluid and natural.  This is a self-discovery process that pays enormous dividends over time.  It will help you to increase trust in yourself that you can figure anything out.  It will help you to see your barriers and give you a way of understanding better what is going on in your mind, who you are, what you want, what is important to you, how life really works and much more.  

If you are not getting the answers you need, try asking a different question.  Be more specific or be more general.  Experiment.  Perhaps you will ask a question and the answer you get will be another question.  To use this process is to give coaching and guidance to yourself.  You can become your own mentor.  You will find, with regular practice, that you always get exactly what you need out of this process.  You’ll just need to stick with it until you re-establish the flow of this communication.   

Given the previous post about false why’s, we can now demonstrate this Asking & Answering process while also demonstrating how to start clarifying your true motivations.  The following is merely a sample conversation that demonstrates how you might have a conversation with yourself to get to your true why’s.  There is no one right way to do this.  This example is here just to get you thinking.  

The unbolded portion of the following example is the Questioning (Q) part of the person and the bolded portion is the Answering (A) part of the person.  Notice that in this instance, the Answerer is asking a lot of questions as a good coach or mentor would. There is generous use of the question “Why?” which allows the Questioner to keep looking more deeply within himself.  In other conversations the Answerer may simply answer the questions or even explain in elaborate detail.  This does not happen in this example.  Even though the Answerer is mainly asking questions of the Questioner in this example, he is still the Answerer.   

 

Q: I want to get clearer about my why’s.  Can you please help me to do this?

A: Of course.  What is it that you want?

Q: I want to make $200,000 this year

A: Ok, why do you want that?

Q: Because I’m broke and I don’t have enough money to pay my bills.

A: Why do you want to have enough money to pay your bills?

Q: Because I’m tired of feeling financial pressure all the time.

A: Why are you tired of feeling financial pressure all the time?

Q: Because it is stressful and I always have anxiety

A: Why do you have anxiety?

Q: Because I’m always one step away from being homeless and I’m tired of asking my family to borrow money.

A: Why does this bother you?

Q: Because I hate it.  

A: Why do you hate it?

Q: Because I never get to do what I want with my life.  

A: Why is it that you never get to do what you want in your life?

Q: I already told you.

A: Yes but why is it the way that it is?

Q: I don’t know.  Life is really unfair.

A: Why is it unfair?

Q: Because other people have money and I don’t.

A: Why do other people have money and you don’t?

Q: Because my parents were broke too and no one taught me how to make money.

A: Why were your parents broke?

Q: I guess because no one taught them how to make money either.

A: Why not?  

Q: Because life is unfair.

A: Why is life unfair?

Q: I don’t know.

A: Why don’t you know?

Q: Because I’m alone.

A: Why are you alone?

Q: Because my parents weren’t there for me

A: Why?

Q: Because they had to work all the time

A: Why did they have to work all the time?

Q: To make money.

A: How do you feel about this?

Q: I’m sad that they weren’t around more.

A: Why?

Q: Because I always felt better when they were around and I hated being home alone with my siblings so much.  We always fought with each other.  

A: So why do you really want to make more money?

Q: So I don’t have to put my kids through the same thing I went through.  

A: Why not?

Q: Because I love them.  

A: So you are working to make sure that your kids get what they need?

Q: Yes

A: Isn’t that what your parents were doing?

Q: …oh.  I suppose it is. 

A: Do you now understand why your parents worked so much?  

Q: Yeah… I guess I do.

A: In seeing this, are you able to have more compassion for them?

Q: Yes.  They were just doing their best.

A: Do you love your parents?

Q: Yes. 

A: Do you love your children?

Q: Of course.

A: So why do you really want to make $200,000 this year?

Q: I want to have enough money so that I can ultimately have more time to spend with my kids. 

A: Why?

Q: Because I love them and want to be there for them.  I want them to be happy.

A: Do you want to be there for them or do you want to make $200,000 this year?

Q: I want both but my kids matter most to me.  I don’t need $200,000 to be there for them. I can do that now no matter how much money I have. 

…

 

It doesn’t all get done in one conversation.  You can see in this example, the power of self-inquiry and asking yourself “why?”  By asking ourselves why over and over again, we can unconceal the forces driving our thoughts, words and actions.  This person has more work to do on this subject but has gained some ground in understanding why he has chosen the goals he has chosen and why he is frustrated financially.  He is one step closer to his truest why’s and he can continue to go deeper in a future conversation with himself.

“Why” is one of the most powerful questions we can ask because it helps us get to the source of who we are.  It is not enough to ask ourselves, “What do I want?”  We must also ask ourselves why we want it.  Then, whatever the answer may be, we must ask why again and again until we have really connected with the deeper layers of ourselves. The person in this example realized that his desire for money was more about fixing the problems with his childhood. He saw that what he really cares about is that his kids feel loved and safe.  These seemingly small cognitions are not really small.  They add up over time and can lead to breakthrough realizations as each layer of our thoughts are deconstructed, revealing what is really underneath.

Again, there is no right or wrong way to do this.  The key is to allow yourself to ask questions and trust yourself enough to answer them.  Try it out.  Don’t think that your conversation has to resemble the one you just read.  Instead, just let the words flow on the page and don’t judge what comes out.  You’ll need to get the dialogue flowing and to do this you must simply begin.  If you want to picture that someone you respect or admire is the one answering the questions, then do that.  If you want to imagine that it is your higher Self, or God answering your questions, this will work as well.  Whatever works for you is completely fine.  The most important thing you can do is to begin.