Asking The Right Questions
- Yusuf Kemal
- Jun 24
- 4 min read
Foreword:
It is said that questions lead to the answers; but in reality, when we ask the right questions, don't questions then themselves become the answer?
After deep thought and rumination, it occurred to me that, when it comes down to it, questions don’t lead to answers, questions are the answer.
Let me explain.
As a youth climate advisor, perpetual learner, and catalyst, I have encountered my fair share of people asking the wrong questions and then griping about why they always hit a brick wall.
And after some time, I grew sick and weary of it. I just could handle it no more. So I decided to analyse and delve into why.
Why do we persistently keep asking the wrong questions? And is there some deeper underlying mental mechanism whereby we function that prevents us from asking the right questions?
So there I embarked on a journey to find the answer. I do not think, however, that simplifying the answer would be appropriate though, -that would be facile- so what I realized and found out from research and digging into this, is unlikely to be the full answer. Nonetheless, half a loaf is better than no bread.
Upon perusing my Psychology textbook from Cambridge from last year, and having researched and scoured the internet for answers, I realized that there is indeed more than one factor or reason behind such behavioural phenomena.
The Sunken Cost Bias (When group members remain committed to a plan because some investment of time or money has already been made, even though this plan may now be obviously flawed.);
The Einstellung Effect (When the first idea that comes to mind, triggered by familiar features of a problem, prevents a better solution from being found);
The Irrational Primacy Effect, (Greater reliance on information encountered early in a series);
and The Fluency Heuristic (Tendency to think something is true just because it is familiar);
All seem to contribute to our faulty cognitive decision-making processes, that in the end, tunnels our vision, limits our mind, inhibits further thought, essentially eliminating any possibility of thinking outside the box, and overall, consequently keeps us away from our true potential.
No wonder a lot of people seem to be lost and confused as to what to do next, but that's due to them asking the wrong questions.
When confronted with a challenge, an issue or even stumbled upon an opportunity, we usually almost instinctively think about it in a certain way that is not truly relevant or connected to our end goals, and is mostly on emotional grounds.
This is where emotional intelligence comes in. When we learn to observe our emotions, we enable ourselves to be self-aware and cognizant of any biases we might be having. Thus, the trick lies, not in making the decisions, but in reflecting on how they were made; its not about finding the answer, but nay about figuring out what type of questions will get us to the appropriate answer we need.
If one is to have clarity and vision for the future and how one could proceed moving forward, one could start first by looking for the right questions to ask, instead of directly looking for the right answers. Because, at the end of the day, when we think about it, there are no right or wrong answers anyway, everything is about understanding what one seeks to achieve, what does it take to get there, as well as what is the best and most efficient or effective way to do so.
We have to remember that, we can’t be what we can’t envision; we can’t fight what we can’t see; we can’t address what we don’t recognise; and we can’t influence or change what we don’t understand.
To achieve anything, we ought to first understand what it truly is; what does it look like when it's done? What does it feel like? What does it take?
As Warren Buffett brilliantly put it “You’ll never get where you want to go if you can’t describe where it is.”
Therefore, if we begin to ask ourselves questions such as “What is it that we are hoping to achieve, and how do we get there given our current constrictions or circumstances?", we then open the mental and cognitive doors of our minds into reflecting on what truly matters: Why we're doing what we're doing? and why do we want to do it moving forward? As there are often hidden and buried psychological and subconscious reasonings unbeknownst to us that can only be detected when we dig deep into ourselves and constantly ask questions.
And even when two answers seems to be in direct contradiction with one another, we can remember that they might still be both simultaneously correct.
Ram Dass, a spiritual mentor and sage, -and whose personal second-generation disciple is a close friend of mine- once taught us,
“Across planes of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that opposite things can be simultaneously true.”
And I couldn’t have put it any better than this.
When we know what type of questions to ask, and how to ask those questions, we then empower and allow ourselves the opportunity to be able to dig deep into the latent, underlying and hidden biases, motives and subconscious reasonings within our psyche, and thus enable ourselves to find the real and relevant answers, that, once found, seem intuitively obvious.
Original Entry Date: 5/30/2023
Comments