6 Powerful questions to help you bloom

Sometimes I have moments when I think to myself, oh! If only I knew this when I was younger! We learn so many things through life but I find that some of the most important things that I have learned in my life are actually questions and the ability to question (things, myself, concepts,…etc).To question oneself is especially hard as we all have an image of ourselves and this image is just not accurate or objective enough. Sometimes our expectations are just enormous and we will never meet that standard while some other times the standard is so low that we risk to get bored with life and end up with a bitter personality as we simply gave up on ourselves.

So after reading a few posts on important questions to ask yourself I will add the ones that have had a significant impact in my life and why we should all ask ourselves these questions.

As a recovered people-pleaser I have gone through life without asking myself that question ONCE. I have been to gatherings, events, done favours to people, stretched myself to extremes just to get others what they wanted, many times at my own expense. That happens quite often if you have people pleasing tendencies. And it is usually followed by a lot of resentment as not everybody reciprocates. But this question, it’s a basic question for each one of us to differentiate our needs from the needs of somebody else. It is important to ask yourself if whatever you are doing is for the right reasons and to make peace with whatever decision you make. When you give your time, your help, your advice it is important to ask ourselves, what am I getting from this? Is it approval? Is it a good time? I am truly doing this altruistically?

I think it is important to be accountable for our decisions whatever they are and this simple question makes our expectations seem more realistic.

The real motivation behind what we do is extremely important. I used an iPad app called 52 reasons that makes you think about all the reasons why you would like to lose weight. The first question left me completely surprised: why you really want to lose weight? Answer has to be specific like to buy this boots or to run a marathon. For me it was very hard, as I never really had an answer to that, this is something that has been sort of like in the air since I have memory. But I never really got into it as I didn’t have strong reasons to do so. Once you have a specific goal in mind, one that is achievable .You’ll be surprised at the amount of people that lose weight ‘to be happy’ even though this goal is more like an inside job, so to speak. It has more to do with our attitude to life than to our weight.

This one is important as there are many situations in life where you find yourself in a bit of a pickle and not really knowing how to get out of it. It can be a difficult situation at work, an exam you have to take that is really hard to pass and so on. All those situations can be difficult and it could be easy to simply quit and tell ourselves: well, I can’t do it! But what really happens is that the second option scares us more o we prefer to quit. It is simply safer. If you are in a bad situation at work, it is harder to find solutions to the problem and a compromise not to mention the whole confrontation of the problem. For the exam it may be to spend more hours studying or to allocate funds to extra support classes.

Sometimes, the real answer is that we are not interested enough in the outcome itself. And motivation to achieve goals is very important.

This one I found super important as it re-frames any situation that may seem like the end of the world back into a realistic perspective. We all have amazing things, people and experiences to be grateful for and it does not hurt to remind yourself about them DAILY. This simple practice transform you into a more positive person just by truly appreciating all the wonderful things, people and experiences in your life

The learning part is so powerful as it helps us to see challenging situations as lessons and difficult people as teachers. I first learned about this concept in a book written by the Dalai Lama that I read when I was a teenager. It made me look at life in a whole different and new way and even today I try to see things this way as there is always something to learn.

What other questions you find useful to ask yourself in order to grow? Please let me know on the comment section below as I would love to hear opinions on this.

Thank you for reading!

Elena

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