the power of questions
in this society we are taught, from the earliest of ages, that in order to see any modicum of success you have to stay ready. to be prepared. it is drilled into us—especially in educational systems that reinforce rote memorization—to always have an answer. in school, if our teacher asked what two plus two was, we had best answer without hesitation, without doubt that the answer was four—earnestly, in unison, and with our whole chest.
and, in a society that deems your worth by how much you can contribute, this feels particularly acute for marginalized communities. how often did our elders remind us that black folks have to work two times as hard for the same gains as our white counterparts? we are made to believe that if we don’t have the answer, why were we in the room? why were we seated at the table if we don’t have a contribution? what is our value? aren’t we taking the spot from someone else more deserving? are we simply tokens?
this underlying tenet of having the answer, on the ready, is reinforced educationally, professionally, and culturally time and time again. so, as we navigate late-stage capitalism, we toil to ensure we have as many answers as possible—you don’t have to get ready if you stay ready. we develop what edward de bono, writer and thinker, coined: rivers of thinking. imagine for a moment that the human mind is a mountain, and overtime rain drops down upon that mountain. each droplet represents some piece of knowledge. and, over more time, those droplets begin to create little creeks, and those creeks grow into streams. as more rain comes down they become thrashing rivers with giant embankments—or, deep, deep beds of knowledge. that knowledge becomes our expertise. and, within this social construct, more often than not, we are rewarded for that expertise. we get that promotion. that title. that bag.
those rivers are wonderful if you simply want to push down a linear path; however, they do not serve us when we are in search of new ideas, fresh thinking, or bold new futures.
instead, we become stuck in our rivers of thinking.
within innovation, clients pay a pretty penny to get jolted out of their rivers.
but, in our day-to-day lives, how do we claw ourselves out and up over those embankments? how do we transport ourselves to new pools of water that allow us to float towards something new, something emboldened for ourselves?
we start with just that—a question.
the use of questions, or, as my good friend keith yamashita invites, the use of a beautiful question, redirects us from a place of having to have an answer to an exploratory place. beautiful questions invite us to connect to self in a deeper way.
“a stupid question is one that goes unasked.”
— my daddy (or confucius)
you see, when we are so focused on having the answer (2+2=4) then it allows our minds to close the book. check the box from to-do to done. move onto the next issue or topic at hand. our mind narrative in control. productive. efficient. but, now a beautiful question, well, a beautiful question requires the mind to stay open. to ruminate. to continue to consider. to even wonder. and in that space, that tiny opening, between wondering and knowing lies an incubator for new signals—ones from our hearts and guts. pings of passion. pings of deep intuition. open-ended questions allow our minds to settle into the ambiguous gray space of the unknown and marinate—to stay receptive to possibility.
and, if we get to that richly nuanced and luxurious place of answering a question with another question, well, then that’s where the magic truly happens. this is where we begin to use questioning to poke at assumptions, push past false limitations, and challenge convention in a way that acts to move us towards the answers we actually seek.
it will all likely feel so counterintuitive—afterall, we’ve been taught to never answer a question with a question. at times, we may have even been made to feel stupid, or ridiculed, for asking any questions at all.
what we fail to realize is that living in a scarcity-driven, reductive world any immediate answer we have to a question will likely be small, limited, and narrow. our answers leave so much possibility on the table. probing our questions with further questions offers the potential to push our envisioning into wild abundance.
wondering where to start? if you haven’t joined our wayfinder community yet, do so. our newsletter invites you to get grounded through a new ritual—one that helps us craft those beautiful questions. this practice helps us push away from our need to have all the answers and sit in the juicy ambiguity of the yet to unfold—the dreamy land of all that’s possible!
