Six Key Questions to Ask Yourself

One of the critical skills of a life coach is knowing the right questions to ask and when to ask them.

A common request I get from our trainee life coaches is to share what I believe are the most powerful questions to ask of clients.

The New Insights Life Coach Training Programme incorporates a lot of material on this subject and the fact is that there is no set group of questions that work well for every client. Also, questions that may be appropriate during the more advanced stages of the coaching programme can be completely inappropriate during the early rapport building stage – and vice versa.

Nevertheless I do have a few favourite questions that I believe go to the heart of the principles we espouse in life coaching.

I’ve chosen six here that are intended to make you think deeply about who you are, what drives you and how you relate to the world around you and to your authentic inner being.

[box type=\”shadow\”]\”The key to wisdom is knowing all the right questions.\”

– John A. Simone Sr.[/box]

Six Key Questions to Ask Yourself (continued)

 

If the consideration of the questions that follow causes you confusion, consternation, or just plain curiosity, I would strongly advocate that you seek out the services of a life coach who can help provide the necessary context and process that will help you to appreciate the life changing power of these questions.

When it comes to the way your life is, what percentage of it are you responsible for?

It’s often surprising how many adults believe they have only limited responsibility for the life they lead. This can be a huge source of frustration and anxiety for some. For others it can be a convenient and comfortable excuse for living a life of mediocrity!

Taking responsibility is fundamental for those who want to get the most out of life. If you re not prepared to take responsibility for your life and everything about it then you will struggle to grow and develop to your full potential. Accepting responsibility for everything in your life, hard though it may be for some to come to terms with, is the key that will unlock the gateway to a life of freedom.

The alternatives to accepting responsibility for your life are:

– To accept the consequences of taking a passive role, sitting back and allowing life to imprint itself on you; or
– To spend your life justifying and blaming others and circumstances for why you are not who, what and where you really want to be.

Who, ultimately, controls you?

Many people live believing that they have only limited control over their lives with domineering partners, parents, employers, communities, governments and secret organisations being amongst those individuals and groups most blamed for usurping their control.

When your life is not what you want it to be, the easy option is to convince yourself that you are not in full control of your life. Mentally handing over the control of your life to someone else or some outside force is similar to abrogating responsibility for your life.

The fact is that in order to be controlled by someone, something or some emotion you must choose to allow that to happen. Even in the most extreme cases, where others forcibly try to control you through threatening or even perpetrating violence or otherwise constraining your freedom, they cannot control your mind and your thoughts unless you allow that to happen!

Ultimately it is you and you alone who controls you.

Have you ever questioned your beliefs?

Beliefs play a vital role in our lives. Together with our values they dictate how we will act and behave in certain situations. We align with people who hold similar beliefs and feel uncomfortable with people who hold conflicting beliefs.

And yet, beliefs are often imposed on us by the outside world, our parents, our teachers or our peers. And they sometimes develop from the experiences we have and the outcomes that we associate with specific events. Our minds have a habit of latching on to certain ideas and then finding ‘proof’ (no matter how poorly substantiated) to reinforce those ideas which then gradually become ingrained convictions.

Beliefs, by definition, are not truths. Empowering and supportive of us though many of our beliefs may be, there will be many others that don’t serve us particularly well or that can be downright disempowering.

Unfortunately, thanks to our egos, we are inclined to convince ourselves that our beliefs (both empowering and disempowering) are sacrosanct truths rather than theories that we should be open to challenging. And this inflexibility that results from a closing of the mind is the primary cause of intolerance and conflict that people display towards others.

You have been granted the precious gift of free will. Relish your freedom to believe in what you will but keep your mind open enough to respect that other people may believe different things, that they are fully entitled to and that they may just have a perspective worth considering.

Stop questioning your beliefs and you stop growing.

What’s most missing in your life right now?

Most of us are driven by imbalances in the two sets of basic human needs. Such imbalances manifest in a feeling that something is \’missing\’ from our life.

We all experience the need for certainty and stability in our lives to some or other degree. But this is balanced by the need for variety or excitement. Somewhere between the discomfort of a life that is totally predictable and the scariness of a life of constant change there is a sweet spot or point of beautiful balance where we feel comfortable and at peace with life. For many of us life involves constant over-correction between the extremes – the pendulum swings from living a life of too much certainty (and too little variety) to too much variety (with the corresponding uncertainty that brings).

The other set of needs that we seek to bring into balance comprises significance (standing out from the crowd) at one end of the scale and love & connection (or a feeling of ‘merged identity’) at the other end. Experience too much of one and we will desperately seek out the other. Once again, if we are not consciously aware of the existence of a point of harmonious balance we may oscillate between the two extremes.

Because these basic needs are of such fundamental importance to us we will, if necessary, engage in destructive behaviours to get them met even if that means violating our values in the process.

But until we bring our basic needs (certainty-variety and significance-love&connection) into balance we are distracted from focusing on the higher order needs of growth and contribution and experiencing the joy and happiness that this can bring.

How will you know when you are successful?

It’s a sad fact that few of us have ever bothered to consider and set our own definition for personal success. We have been conditioned to believe the lie that our success can only be judged by others or the external world. As a result, we pay attention to way we present ourselves to the outside world and neglect how we feel within. How we look, how we dress, the car we drive, the house and suburb we live in, how we splash our cash and so on becomes more important than how we feel on the inside.

However, the true measure of success is how we feel within ourselves, relative to how we would deep down love to feel. Money and material possessions can be nice to have but they don’t count for a row of beans if we are not genuinely happy and fulfilled.

Do yourself a huge favour. Take some time out from this competitive, ego-driven world and think carefully and introspectively about what true success means to you and what you will need to change to achieve it.

What is the purpose of your life here on Earth?

The so-called ‘sixty-four thousand dollar question’ is this: What are you here to do?

If you’re like most people out there, you probably haven’t given much, if any, thought to what I believe is the most important question anyone can possibly ask themselves!

Collectively we are here to partake in and further the evolution of our planet and our universe. Individually, each of us has an important and unique role to play in this and the prize to be gained from playing that role actively is to live a life of joy, meaning and fulfilment.

Many of us, so distracted by achieving the false definition of success that society has come up with, spend our time on the planet trying desperately to accumulate wealth and possessions that will allow us to live what we perceive to be a better life, only to experience disappointment, disillusionment and hollowness as we veer further and further away from the purpose that our inner beings knows we came here intent to deliver on.

For most of us, it is time to wake up and smell the roses 🙂

 

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