What if having a better life was simply a matter of asking better questions? 

This episode is for you if you want to discover the power of asking the right questions, if you want to know what type of questions to ask, and if you want to hear my top questions that will allow you to have more business clarity, more job satisfaction, and better relationships.

Hi there I'm Hanne host of the Well Balanced Success podcast. In this weekly podcast, we explore how you can have it all how you can have a successful career, an active social life, a thriving love and family life, all of that while being healthy and happy. Now, if that sounds like something you would like, then keep on listening.

Have you ever been in that situation where all the sudden, a really simple concept or something that you've heard like 1000 times before, but all the sudden it just clicks? And that is exactly what happened to me because I was hearing from different books and in different context about questions. And all the sudden I had this epiphany I had this realization of being like, yes, the quality of your life is actually dependent on the questions that you ask yourself. So the books that I was reading that we're all covering the idea of asking better questions, in different forms matters.

We're the one thing by Gary Keller and Jay papasan, the road less stupid by Keith Cunningham, and the coaching habit by Michael bungay. And so these three books really made me realize and simplify this idea about questions. And now the way I think about it is that there are basically two big ways to use questions and asking questions in order to create a better life. Now, first, let's talk really quickly about why questions are so powerful. And well, it's actually because your brain loves questions, your brain loves solving problems. And so the moment that you formalize something as a question automatically, your brain will start looking for answers. So a really good example with this is if you hurt or if you read anything about copywriting, I'm sure you came across this that a title with a question will make you want to read the article. So if the article is something like, do you know the whatever amount of things you can do in order to improve your health? And you're like, How do I know? I'm not sure I can find three things. But what are the other five things? So automatically, and this is not even really conscience? Right? This is like your brain doing all the work. So if you think about it this way, then any problem that you have is an unanswered question or an unasked question. And so that is the first way that you can use questions, and that is when you have a really specific problem. And this is mostly where Keith Cunningham's book The Road Less stupid is about. And the way he thinks about this is that you need to ask the right questions so that you can find the real problem and not the symptom before solving the question. So this will be easier with an example.

So imagine, you're either Head of Marketing, or maybe you have your own business, or your Freelancer or consultant, and you just don't have enough sales. Now, if you ask yourself, how to get more sales, you're actually fixing a symptom. And so you're asking a question that will fix the symptom or you're trying to fix the symptom. So that is actually not a good question to have. Because First, you need to find the real problem before you can start solving it. So the first question that you want to ask when you have a problem is a question that will help you find the real problem. And that is mostly a why question. So your first question in this case would be why are sales low? And so a great question to solve a problem will give you insight on the actual problem will simplify the problem and make it solvable and it will expand the possibilities to solve the problem. So the best way to do this is asking a question that says how might I do x so that I can y? So first when we start about our idea of why our sales low? If you're a consultant, maybe your thing is why our sales low? Well, I'm afraid of selling, you know, and if you have had asked that question of like how to boost sales, then probably you wouldn't fix that problem of you being afraid of selling, because now you can ask yourself, how might I overcome my fear so that I can sell confidently? So it becomes a different problem to solve. And that is where when Keith says that every problem is an unasked question. That is what he means where, basically, if you're still having a problem, you're probably asking the wrong questions to your brain. So you can't solve it yet. But questions are actually really, really powerful, even if you don't have a real problem. So this might sound a bit weird. But that's mainly what the book The one thing is all about. The goal of the book is to boil everything down to just one thing, like the title says, right? And so the way that you would ask a question that is useful in this framework is, what is the one thing that I can do within a certain timeframe to solve a certain problem? Now, this is, again, if you have a problem. But there's one thing question, you can also use it when you don't have a quote unquote, problem, but actually, just to improve what's going on in your life. And that is actually the way that I like to use this one thing, question.

So every month, I set objectives on 12 different areas in my life on love and relationship, adventures, friends, family, environment, creative life, intellectual life skills, career health and fitness, mental health and financial life. Now, if you want to do the same, if you want to follow along with me doing this, then you can download the PDF for this tracker on the website, well balanced, success, calm. And so the way that then you can start using this is every beginning of the month, you ask yourself, what's the one thing that I can do this month, so the timeframe to improve? So your problem, quote, unquote, problem would be to improve? And then you insert the area that you're thinking about? So what's the one thing this month that I can do to improve my relationship? What's the one thing this month that I can do to feel closer to my friends or to my family? What's the one thing this month that I can do to have more financial success, and so on, and so on. And in that way, having this one thing question can be really, really powerful, especially if you apply it to all these different areas in your life, because then you can make sure that you keep that well balanced life, and that you don't only think about work, but that you also think about how you can improve adventures in your life, how can you improve your relationships, and so on.

So for me, having these 12 areas really, really helps me to, to balance everything. And not only think about the career and financial, which is, I think the first area where people think about setting goal or fixing problems, or whatever. So to give you a very, very concrete example, I wanted more interactions with my family. So one of the problems that I had was that I felt like I wasn't enough in contact with my family, and that I wanted to have a better relationship with them. And the way to do that was to have more frequent contact. So I sat down and I was thinking, How can I improve my relationship with my family? What's the one thing that I can do this month to improve my relationship, and the one thing that I came to the conclusion was, I can give them a call every Sunday morning, to have a chat just to know how their week was and to share with them how my week went. Now, if you listen to Episode Two of the podcast about how to create better relationships, you will see that sharing and proactively sharing is one of the ways that you can really improve your relationships. So I took that idea, and I decided to call my family every Sunday morning. Now what's really funny is that after just doing it for three, four weeks, or doing it for a month, now my family actually expects me to call them on Sunday morning. And so the other day, I was talking to my dad, and he was telling me that he really appreciates those Sunday morning calls. And that he actually expects me to call now. And if I don't, he will actually call me. So it does became this snowball effect of like, what's the one thing that I can do? And then it just really improved that area of my life. Now the truth is that you need thinking time for any of this to work. You need time to answer these questions. You need to do that deep work without distractions and preferably, probably a lot Like after meditation or after having been calm, so that you can really tune in and discover like, what is that one thing that would be most valuable? Or why am I having this problem? Like what is like, why am I having this symptom? What is the problem that is behind this symptom? That is why I believe that at least once a week, you can sit down and just ask yourself these three questions, which is what's happening right now that I don't like, it's actually a really good question to discover those little things that are like, annoying, but not big enough, but you can then bring them to the forefront. And then you can ask yourself, what would they like to see happen instead, which, again, is super powerful, because often you're just annoyed with something, but you're not quite sure what you want to happen. So if you're not sure about what success looks like, or what improvement look like, it will, you will never be able to get there. Right? And then the third question is, what's the one thing right now that I can do to bridge that gap? So when you sit down when you go through those 12 areas in your life, which you should do at least once a month, but if you if you get into this habit once a week is really, really nice. And then you can be like, Okay, what, what is happening right now, in my career that I don't like, okay, I feel stuck. I feel like I haven't done and I would like to improve this skill set, whatever it is, and what would you like to see happen instead? Oh, instead, I would really enjoy having a new project to work on blah, blah, blah. And then you can ask yourself, what's the one thing right now that I can do to bridge that gap?

So what do you think I would love to hear from you? Come on over to the well balanced success.com website, leave a comment. And let me know whether you use questions to find those unanswered or unasked questions whether you read one or multiple of the books that I suggested and what you thought about it. I would really love to have a conversation about this. And I'm always open to hearing other questions that you find really helpful for you to improve any area in your life. Thank you for listening and toxins.