Give the gift of questions

Once you know how to ask empowering questions, you not only can help yourself, but others as well. You can give these as a gift to other people. Once in New York City, I met a friend and business associate of mine for lunch. A prominent literary attorney, I admired him for his business acumen and for the practice he'd built since he was a young man. But on that day, he had suffered what he perceived as a devastating blow—his partner had left the firm, leaving him with tremendous overhead and not many ideas as to how to turn it around.

Remember that what he was focusing on was determining the meaning. In any situation, you can focus on what is disempowering, or on what is empowering, and if you look for it that's what you'll find. The problem was that he was asking all the wrong questions: " How could my partner abandon me this way? Doesn't he care? Doesn't he realize that this is destroying my life? Doesn't he realize that I can't do this without him? How will I explain to my clients that I can't stay in business any longer? " All of these questions were riddled with presuppositions about how his life was destroyed.

I had many ways in which I could intervene, but I decided that I could just ask him a few questions. I said, " Recently I've created this simple questions technology, and when I've applied it to myself, I've found it to have incredible impact. It's pulled me out of some pretty tough spots. Do you mind if I ask you a couple questions and see if it works for you? " He said, " Yeah, but I don't think anything's going to help me right now." So I started out by asking him the Morning Questions, and then the Problem-Solving Questions.

I started with, " What are you happy about? I know that sounds stupid and ridiculous and Pollyanna, but what are you really happy about? " His first response was, " Nothing." So I said, " What could you be happy about right now if you wanted to be? " He said, " I'm really happy about my wife because she's doing really well right now, and our relationship is very close." I asked him, " How does that make you feel when you think of how close you are with her? " He said, " It's one of the most incredible gifts in my life." I said, " She's a special lady, isn't she? " He started focusing on her and feeling phenomenal.

You might say that I was just distracting him. No, 1 was helping him to get into a better state, and in a better state, you can come up with better ways of dealing with challenges. First we had to break the pattern and put him in a positive emotional environment.

I asked him what else he was happy about. He started talking about how he should be happy about how he'd just helped a writer to close his first book deal, and the writer was delighted. He told me that he should feel proud, but he didn't. So I asked him, " If you did feel proud, how would that feel? " He began to think about how great that would be, and his state began to change immediately. I said, " What are you proud of? " He said, " I'm really proud of my kids. They're such special people.

They're not just successful in business; they really care about people. I'm proud of who they've become as men and women and that they're my children. They're part of my legacy." 1 said, " How does it make you feel to know that you've had that impact? "

All of a sudden, a man who had earlier believed that his life was over came alive. I asked him what he was really grateful for. He said that he was really grateful that he'd made it through the tough times when he was a young and struggling lawyer, that he'd built his career from the bottom up, that he'd lived the American Dream. Then I asked, " What are you really excited about? " He said, " Actually, I'm excited that I have an opportunity right now to make a change." And it was the first time he'd thought about that, and it was because he'd changed his state so radically. I asked him, " Who do you love, and who loves you? " He started talking about his family and how incredibly close they were. So I asked him, " What's great about your partner's leaving? " He said, " You know, what could be great about this is that I hate coming to New York City. I love being at my home in Connecticut." He continued, " What's great about this is that I get to look at everything in a new way." This started a whole string of possibilities and he resolved to set up a new office in Connecticut not five minutes from his home, bring his son into the business, and have an answering service pick up his calls in Manhattan. He got so excited, he decided to immediately go and look for a new office.

In a matter of minutes, the power of questions had worked their magic. He always had the resources to be able to deal with this, but the disempowering questions he'd asked had rendered his power inaccessible, and had caused him to see himself as an old man who'd lost everything he'd built. In reality, life had given him a tremendous gift, but the truth had been deleted until he started asking quality questions.