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The answer my friend...


If I've learned one thing as a strategy consultant, it's that asking the right questions is a skill -- and a hard one at that.  It's one that I'm still working on (though have an amazing teacher... my husband is likely the best question asker I know).

I've always been intrigued by the idea of daily questions.  I first heard of this when Marshall Goldsmith spoke at one of my business school classes.  He talked about making a list of 5 yes/no questions to ask yourself daily (or ideally, have a buddy) -- giving an example of how this literally can change your life (one of his friend's yes/no questions was around making an appointment to see his doctor... he got so sick of answering this "no" that he finally made an appointment -- only to discover he had early stage cancer, but was early enough to address it).  My list of 5 questions kept changing, though the one I remember to this day is: "was I kind to those I love most?" - making me cringe at how much nicer I can be to strangers than my own parents sometimes (let's not even get to how brutal I can be on myself...)

Then a couple years ago, I read about three questions that someone like Tony Robbins asks his children each night, and became intrigued about this idea of how meaningful questions can shape a life.  Going through a spree of Brene Brown books on a recent work trip, this idea came back to me -- particularly around normalizing failure to build resilience: "If you are brave enough, often enough, you are going to fail."

As I'm learning, all of my ideas seem to happen when I'm jetlagged on a worktrip... maybe it's because my inner critic is so tired that she slacks off... so here's my latest incarnation of questions to improve my life.  I have visions of tucking my children in bed and asking each of them the first set of three questions... and then discussing the second set of three as a family over dinner.  But first, here's to testing them on myself first:

1. What am I grateful for?
2. What do I desire?
3. What do I celebrate?

4. Where was I courageous?
5. Where did I fail?
6. What did I learn?

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