Kishore (July 2003)

I have experienced that sometimes asking completely different questions, we can overcome some of the inhibitions we have. I have seen this kind of method suggested in many books. I even remember browsing through a book in a book store about tough questions we should answer to change our life.

I have many such questions in my mind and I will share how such questions help me in shaping my thoughts.

Problem: I am unhappy because I don't have enough money.

We have unlimited number of desires. We always have less money than we want. We always wish we had more money.

Question: You won a lottery, what will you do with all the money you get? Assume that this is the amount you have never imagined.

Don't bother about whether it will happen or not. By a stroke of luck if it happens you will not know what to do. We think of so many things we can do as long as we don't have the money. But once it comes to us, we will be lost.

Examples: If you won 10 million dollars, what will you do?

Answers: I will Buy a house. What next?

I will buy a new car. What next?

I will donate some money to charities. What next?

I will quit my job, I will start a new business. As you keep continuing to ask yourself what next? At one point of time you will reach a dead end. You will realize that even after acquiring all the things we will still not be satisfied. We will come to things which are important in our life. 

Problem: I don't like my job/role. I want to change my job/role. I wish I had better opportunities or I wish I was in better place

Lot of times we start thinking we are in the wrong place. We want something different from what we want. We feel dissatisfied. This continue to bother us.

Question: If I had an opportunity to start all over what will I want to be?

By asking this question repeatedly we can find out what we we really to be.

Example response can be

I want to start my own business. What kind of business? where and when? Will I achieve my goals if I start my own business? what are the things I am really missing in my current role? Why can't I make something happen so that I can achieve things I want to in this current role?

And so on..

Some other questions you might want to try and answer

If I had a wish fulfilling tree/well what will I wish for?

What are the things I am not able to do as I feel I am busy?

What if I had all the time in the world one day?

Who are the people I care for most? Why do I think so? How do I show them that I care for them?

Who are the people that love me? Why do they love me?  How do I know that they love me?

If I had all the power in the world what will I do?

If I had a power to change anything what will you change?

What are the things that motivate me most?

Why am I doing what I am doing right now? What will happen if I don't do this now? What will happen if I don't do it any more? Does any one care about what I do?

What will happen if I gave up all the things I have? Will I miss them?

What will I ask if God appears before me?

If you had an opportunity to trade places with someone, who will it be? Why?

What is your idea of a perfect vacation? What is your idea of a perfect day? What is preventing you from having a perfect day everyday? How can you make it happen?

What are the things we have taken for granted?

Sometimes I also ask questions like:

What if I had no e-mail access for one week? given the fact that we have become so much addicted to e-mail, answering this question sobers me up. Imagine the time when there was no e-mail. We have taken for granted so many new things that come to us which never existed before.

How was life 100 years back? How was life 200 years back? How did people live at those times? What if the world still existed the same way? What will be I be doing in such situation?

This kind of radical thinking can be useful many times in our life. Once I read this kind of concept, I tried to attempt it. Even at work, sometimes we are stuck with a problem. To resolve the problem we start thinking about various work around solutions given the lack of resources or time. Sometimes I try to ask the question like, how will you solve this problem if you had everything and no constraints? That helped us lot of times arrive at a better solution.

These were some of the things I learned and thought about. If you have any suggestions, do let me know. Sometime I will be able to update this article. 

Related article: Views on 'Wearing mask of a victim'