Look for a better question instead of stressing over having a definitive answer.
When I was working as a realtor, I took up yoga to relieve the stress of my job. I was most certainly a yoga beginner, which was good since while I concentrated on improving my downward dog, I couldn’t obsess over my clients and their needs. During one difficult position where all I could manage was to fold my legs just enough to effectively turtle on my mat with nowhere to literally turn, the instructor loomed over me and abruptly asked again what I earned my Master’s in. “Creative Writing”, I panted, trying to keep my legs from flailing around.
“So, what the hell,” she asked. “Are you doing in real estate?”
That I was twisted like a pretzel when she asked the question was not a lost metaphor.
Plus, it was a very good question.
A good question can help you focus and consider problems from a different angle. A good question can help rearrange confirmation bias and old thinking.
A good question, considered overnight, can lead you to different fictional characters and plots.
A good question can wipe away confusion and bring existential angst into focus. Suddenly your energy unsticks, and out bursts new ideas and solutions.
Just from a question.
We have been raised with a pathological need for answers. The person with all the answers is lauded, even worshiped. It’s comforting to hear answers. We attend religious meetings for the answer. We pour over magazines for the answer, we are thrilled with AI programs and the all-knowing Google, the ultimate answer machines.
But the more frequently I work with clients and the longer I write, the more certain I am that a good question trumps a quick answer. (Admittedly, What the hell are you doing? is a rather more direct question than a gentle intuitive nudge, but it was effective.) Expertise and its partner, wisdom, often manifests through very good questions, and very good questions are the result of quickly analyzing the variables, meanings, and nuance of the recipient and asking the right question, not for an answer, but so the person, the client, the adult child, can make up their own minds.
Your subconscious, that handy, hidden, difficult-to-access part of your brain that some would argue is the soul, is excellent at answering questions. It LOVES a well-considered question. The better, higher-quality question, the more specific the solution. What the subconscious is not good at is teasing out answers to adolescent questions:
- “Why am I so stupid?”
- “Why don’t I do this well?”
- “Why doesn’t he/she love me?”
- “Why was I born with this face?”
- “Why doesn’t my hair look like the girls on TV?” (Seriously, I’m still asking that question.)
With questions like this, there is nowhere for your subconscious to go but down. Don’t ask those questions.
Instead, ask more positive and generative questions:
- “What can I give to the world?”
- “What is my mission?”
- “What do my readers need from me?”
- “If he doesn’t love me, what steps can I take to change his mind?”
- “What hairdresser can help me style my hair to be Instagram-perfect?”
- “If I can’t do this thing well, how can I learn to improve? Or better, do I even want to do this thing in the first place?”
Go big. Expand your questions to bigger ideas so in return you get broader solutions.
The true expert recognizes the gaps in a typical solution and shies away from delivering a quick pat answer. The expert asks questions – good questions so her audience can discover the answers for themselves. And they will think you’re brilliant for it.
Mastering questions is a superpower. In any book genre from business to fantasy novel, a good author anticipates the reader’s questions and answers them as the plot or instructions move through the pages. You will blow your readers away by answering the questions that they knew they needed to ask all along but didn’t have the vocabulary to form the query. We naturally ask questions, your goal as a writer is to refine and discover ways and approaches to master the art of better questions that surprise and reveal.
My three years in Real Estate were not in vain or lost. I learned a great deal and wrote a five-book series, the Real Estate Diva Mysteries based on my experiences. Happy outcome. But that outcome is telling and reflects my real calling – writing, not my sales skills, learned. I finally paid attention to the question, what am I doing in real estate? And asked a better question, what can I do with the skills and education I have? These questions led to the answer: Writing Coach. I found my niche and have been thrilled to work with that part of my expertise for the last ten years. All from a very good, very abrupt question.
What questions do you need to ask? What kind of questions do you love to answer? Asking insightful questions can lead to a good book.
Asking great questions can lead to a great life.
