QUALITY QUESTIONS = QUALITY LIFE
Tony Robbins, American author, coach, motivational speaker, and philanthropist, is quoted as saying that the quality of your life is a direct reflection of the quality of the questions you are asking yourself. That is, quality questions = quality life. Yet, many people do not ask questions, for several reasons.
For example, depending on one’s environment, asking questions may be regarded as a sign of ignorance. Some do not ask because they do not know what response they would receive. Have you received this response: “That is the most stupid question I have ever heard”? Others do not ask questions because they do not know if they would like the answers they would receive.
In some cultures, asking questions is actively discouraged or is seen as a sign of disrespect or insubordination.
“From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen.” ~ Father & Son by Cat Stevens
However, “Quality questions create a quality life”. John Demartini, considered one of the leading human behavior and personal development specialists, puts it this way,
“Quality life demands quality questions”.
Socrates is reported to have said,
“the unexamined life is not worth living.”
Are you continuously examining your life with high-quality, well-constructed, incisive questions that drills to the root of your situation?
Also, Sakichi Toyoda, Japanese inventor and industrialist, is credited with the development of The 5-Whys Questioning Technique – the iterative interrogative techniques for investigating the cause-and-effect relationship between a problem and its solution. It involves asking Why 5 successive times – each answer forms the basis for the subsequent question in order to arrive at the root of the problem and hence, its solution. As simple as it sounds, Taiichi Ohno, the architect of the Toyota Production System, describes it as the basis of the Toyota’s scientific approach. It was a critical component of problem-solving training, delivered as part of the induction process into the Toyota Production System. It has now spread beyond Toyota to include Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma process improvement technique, among others.
The foregoing demonstrates the importance of asking questions, and how asking questions has become part of the techniques of process improvement. Asking ourselves quality questions and providing honest answers is an immensely powerful technique for self-improvement. Quality questions = quality life.
Do you ask yourself questions regarding your present condition and what that holds for your future?
“The wise man questions himself; the fool, others.” -Henri Arnold
However, unless we ask the right questions, we are not likely to obtain the right answers. The questions we ask often determine the answers we get. As Michael Hyatt puts it, “If we ask bad questions for the situation, we’re likely to get bad answers. But if we ask better questions—empowering questions—we might get better answers.
That is what the four lepers of ancient Palestine did – they asked the right question. When Ben-Hadad 1, who ruled Syria from 885 – 865 BC, fought against ancient Israel and besieged Samaria, food shortage became so severe inside the city that women killed and ate their babies. It was a terrible time!
Meanwhile, there were four lepers quarantined outside the city gate because of their condition. The situation was hopeless. But one day they asked themselves questions, destiny defining questions – questions that would make the difference between life and death. You can imagine what questions people in such condition would ask themselves. The question was simple yet profound.
They asked: “Why do we sit here until we die?”
The answer to that question brought deliverance and succor to both themselves and the multitude that were trapped in the city.
And their answer? “If we sit here, we will die! If we say let us return to the city, we will die of famine there. Let us surrender to the Syrian army; if they let us live so much the better. If, however, they kill us, we would at least die trying.”
However, when they got to the camp of the Syrians, to their utter surprise, there was no one there as the Syrians had fled in panic at the false alarm that the king of Israel had hired ancient Egyptian and Hittite armies against them.
They left the tents and provisions behind. The provisions they left behind was enough to take care of the lepers and the population trapped in the city. In fact, food was surplus at the gate of the city that day. All because four hapless lepers asked themselves questions and were courageous enough to provide honest answer. You can find the full story in the Old Testament Book of 2 Kings 7.
But they had an alternative, the option that most people choose: they could have blamed the corrupt government and politicians for not equipping the national army to be able to defend the nation. They could have blamed the ‘good for nothing cowards who call themselves soldiers’ but could not defend the nation’. And what would have been the result? Slow and painful death.
How about you? Are you asking yourself questions? Are you asking the right questions? How are the questions you have been asking reflecting in the quality of your life?
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