Questions, Not Answers, Determine Success

There are no dumb questions. Surprised? Your life and your future will be determined by the quality of your questions, both the questions you asked and the questions you did not ask but should have asked.

Analysis of questions reveals different styles of questions depending on the results desired. In order to receive quality answers, you must utilize a quality process.

If you want to know all the specific details about a product or service, you will ask a descriptive question. Comparisons between similar items require relational questions. Normal questions provide information but are "ho hum" in the excitement category. Clinical factual questions are fine for accountants and lawyers but seldom light anyone on fire with enthusiasm.

When you meet someone new, lots of opportunities at holiday parties for chance encounters of the intriguing kind, you will choose open ended questions. When your eyes light up and your heart starts to flutter a bit upon meeting someone, you want to know more about them. Ask an open ended question to encourage them to talk; people love to talk about themselves so give them a chance. Yes or no questions close off a conversation far too quickly. Open up the opportunity to learn more about this interesting new person. When you ask open ended questions, you also need to be prepared to answer some similar queries.

Particularly in a sales setting, the one who asks the questions how the power. Make no mistake about it, even in a social setting, you are constantly selling. Whether you are selling a product, a service or a potential social relationship, you are selling. The quality and intrigue of your questions determines the impression you project.

Growing as a person requires deep philosophical questions. So many of us have old programming holding us back from the success we desire and deserve. Holiday seasons and New Years resolutions inspire many people to determine exactly what they passionately desire in life. Even more than the determination of desire is the question of "what are you willing to do about those desires?"

Far too many people respond to the question of New Years resolutions with what they think they should want or what they believe others expect them to want. You are the only one who can live your life. My profound question to you is "What do YOU passionately want for your present and your future?"

At different points in life, spend intense hours of soul searching questioning passionate desires, deservability for success and roadblocks to that success. Intense quality questions asked and questions not addressed determine the future. Are those questions easy to determine? No. Even more so, they are not surface questions or comfortable questions. Does that diminish their viability or urgency? No.

Both the questions you ask yourself and the questions you propose to others have significance. Just as the questions to someone who causes your heart to do a "chug chug and a double back flip" must be open ended to encourage them to elaborate, so must the questions to yourself be open ended. Every probing question to yourself should cause you to write paragraphs and even pages in order to complete the answer.

Soul searching questions must evoke intense emotion in order to reach deep into your psychic core. Only through intense self examination will you break through the barrier of old programming, limiting beliefs and self imposed roadblocks.

What quality are the questions you are asking yourself and others? What questions should you be asking but are not asking? Why not? Are you afraid of the answer? Allowing yourself to slide away from a tough question does not change the importance of the question or change the answer. It simply prolongs the agony of not knowing the answer.

Questions you ask others must be open ended and respectful but not fluffy and insignificant. Questions you ask yourself still need to be open ended and significant but also probing. Veins of gold do not rush up to the surface to make it easy for you; you have to dig for them. Important questions about your goals, past present and future also require probing.

The rewards are so very sweet on the other side. Just like hitting a large vein of gold feels giddy wonderful, so do the aftermath of discovering you true desires and seeing them fulfilled. The New Year is a time of new hope. Make it your best year ever.