Are you aware of the amazing power of questions?
Yep, a question itself to start with. Well, that’s deliberate. Most people only ask questions when they’re incredibly stuck. Usually it’s for directions or someone’s phone number or what a particular shop’s opening times are. But, we generally don’t ask enough of them because we (incorrectly) believe that, if we do, it suggests we are stupid or people will think less of us.
So let me dispel this myth. Those that ask questions are usually numbered in the most shrewd, progressive, sharp, and versatile people on the plant. Questions build knowledge, perspective, understanding, and awareness among others. Without them we own one viewpoint and limited judgement and can be easily influenced or refuse to budge from our fixed position.
The real key to questions is what they lead to. And certainly what they solve.
In certain situations they might seem like they could ever make any difference. But, a good question put the right way can turn things 180 degrees round.
Questions can be life savers.
Chris Voss is a life saver because he uses questions. He uses them calmly and skillfully. And very, very deliberately.
He’s no in depth political interviewer. He’s not an elite level recruiter. Nor is he some Ivy League professor or a veteran counsellor. He was perhaps the world’s no.1 hostage negotiator. The FBI’s finest. And if you were ever unlucky enough to find yourself in such a situation, Chris’s art of questioning probably will have kept you alive and escape unharmed.
Now a best selling author Voss was an experienced police officer in the New York joint terrorism task force who worked his away up to be the FBI’s chief international hostage and kidnapping negotiator. After three decades of high level crime and terrorist situations, dealing with 150 international cases alone, he shared his insights in his worldwide hit book, ‘Never Split the Difference’.
The book featured using a style of questioning that focused on understanding the criminals perspective in their mind, build rapport and elements of respect with them, and ultimately to calm the situation towards a mutually beneficial end point. Effectively he got the terrorists/gangsters/kidnappers to open up and feel heard and validated. His questions led them to reveal their priorities and desired outcomes from the highly charged scenario, but also their personal worries and concerns. Now who had ever done that in such depth before?
All with the power of a) questioning them and b) questioning them in the right way. He moved them from blame and threat upon their life, to collaboration and a kind of alliance. It was brilliant and he alone saved hundreds of people’s lives as a result.
Now do you believe questions aren’t that important?
A life changing question.
I want to share a story with you from my life about how a question changed someone’s life.
About 15 years ago I was working with a large private school specifically with their older pupils on a life enrichment programme. The teacher who was head of year often sat in on our sessions as he was curious and intrigued about my course content. In fact he seemed to turn up for most classes for a good while every week.
Weeks later after the school had wrapped up for the Summer break he called me with a dilemma. He had worked solidly for nearly two decades to reach his position at this high quality establishment. Then, out of the blue, he was offered a role in a more remote part of Africa. This really appealed to him but so did furthering his career aspirations and he was torn on what to do. So, he asked if I could help him at all.
I told him I’d give it some thought (always a good thing) and call him back the next day. That’s exactly what I did and I simply asked him ONE question. Which was,
‘Have you been waiting for this opportunity all your life’?
I told him not to answer me then and there but to give it time to sink in and come back to me. Six days later I heard from him and he was going to Africa. The question had got to the heart of what mattered to him. He went and made a massive success out of it. And even more special – some years later he was able to hand his work over to someone else and he returned to develop his career from where he took off.
One question = one life changing answer.
Start with one.
Maybe you are in the same quandary as well?
Multiple choices or too many woods for the trees to know clearly what decision you should make.
Bring in the power and truth of a question. One question. Practice asking yourself one question at a time and then sit on it and see what stirs in your mind. In no time one particular question will stand out and hit home. One self enquiry will touch base with the absolute answer that will shift the whole darn shebang.
You don’t need to be a skilled negotiator with your own conflict. You just have to ask questions to self understand and unlock the best route forwards based on who you are. That’s how they work. They draw truth out in the form of answers.
The best minds use their minds to ask questions that unlock major doors.
Doors to freedom like Chris Voss’s captives or my teacher friend’s next big move.
Which leaves only one important question to ask,
‘Why aren’t you using questions more to create the freedom you badly need?’.
Reference – Chris Voss, ‘Never Split The Difference’, published by Random House Business.
Photo attribution under Pixabay free content license – https://pixabay.com/photos/man-thinking-doubt-question-mark-5723449/ by Tumisu
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. OUR SuperMinds.
This week – Suicide.
Suicide has reached epidemic proportions. More and more people succumb to it every single day. It’s a worrying trend. And that means we have to have a good SuperMind think about what can be done. Let’s do that.
- Every year more than 720, 000 die due to suicide. That is the equivalent of the complete population of the city of Okayama in Japan not existing year after year. But that is just an estimate as some countries are poor at collecting data. Therefore the figures will be far more. While the reasons are various one fact remains – minds feel there is no way out of the current life situation. How can we begin to improve the resilience and strength of minds as a whole everywhere?
- The facts show that men make up some 80% of suicide cases. Men are known for not been talkers, not opening up, not doing ‘touch feely’ stuff as they call it. What would help men open up up more about their problems? How can we encourage and support that?
- The most alarming statistic of all is that suicide is now the 3rd leading cause of death among 15-29 year olds. In 2021 alone it was the No.1 cause. Young people are increasingly feeling their life is not worth living. Most are impulsive decisions. Are young people being too exposed to the wrong things that are affecting their minds? Or is social media making their life look dull and themselves as losers? What is the root cause?
- Thought/question – Why suicide? In this modern world where there’s a multitude of ways to better yourself and your life, do people chose just this one?
- Suicide is personal. An individual has lost all hope or all self-belief. Is this then how life has become in this day and age? Is self-esteem and self-belief at the heart of why suicide claims so many lives?
That’s another SuperMind Saturday for your mind powers to work on. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its potential. Consider more, generate ideas more, think on bigger possibilities more, activate your connection to your personal higher mind more and more. Employ your SuperMInd and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Have you ever gone on holiday and believed that you could live there? Then you have been caught by the mental sunshine effect.
The Sunshine Effect is when we are caught up in a joyous experience, seperate from what we normally live, and believe that it can fully replace our current reality. That moment, that space around us, feels so happy we consider we can exchange our existing everyday life for it. Most typically it’s on a vacation to some beautiful sunny location. Hence The Sunshine Effect.
In September 2000 Channel 4 TV in the UK launched a brand new lifestyle TV show. The premise was that British couples were helped to find their perfect property abroad in warm climates that they could retire to or rent out part of the year when they weren’t using it. The show was called, ‘A Place in the Sun’.
Twenty five years later and it has aired some 2000 episodes featuring over 3500 people seeking the sunshine dream that the programme wants to make real with them. For some, that’s precisely what happened, for others, something else ended up taking place.
Perhaps the clue that it may not all turn out like the idyllic future that some had in mind on the show, was that some 10 – 15% of participants had never actually been to the location they wanted to relocate to. They saw it once on TV, read about it in a magazine/newspaper, or heard about it from others, and decided as it was a sunny seaside place that looked beautiful, it would be their forever home.
But forever changed fairly soon.
Dreams are full of sunshine.
All our dreams are full of sunshine. We see ourselves happy or wealthy, or loved or successful. And that’s all. We believe so much in that sunshine, in our mind it’s all we see. Reality will match the imagined fantasy. Nothing else could possibly happen.
It’s clearly what many couples and lone buyers on A Place in The Sun felt too. But the dream in the head wasn’t the same daily life they encountered when they got there. The picture postcode mindset gave way to less than sunny experiences. What they expected in heart, feelings, and circumstances, didn’t materialise either fully or in any part.
While no exact numbers have been released, the estimated numbers of those who bought abroad on the show but then came home is as much as 20%. You can even find stories of those who did just that and shared why they never found quite what their sun filled mind had promised them.
That’s the Sunshine Effect. Seeing only the Cinderella type outcomes and the feelings and beliefs that come with them, and nothing else. We don’t need a beach to cause that. It’s something we’ve all done at some time in normal life. Maybe you recognise a few of these yourself –
Pictures of love.
Here’s some typical examples of amazing sunshine pictures we’ve shown ourselves that turned out as nightmares –
- Buying the expensive sports car that would get you the girls that kept breaking down and left you with no money to do anything else.
- Falling for blonde haired guys who dressed well because they were your ideal man but looks couldn’t buy you love as they liked to enjoy lots of ladies attention.
- Spending more than you could afford to buy the house you always wanted but it cost you a small fortune to run it and traffic locally was hellish.
- Quitting your job to travel and blog or film YouTube videos as an influencer but you soon realised your were one of thousands of others doing the same and no-one followed you or saw your postings.
What’s yours been? Or keeps being?
And the list goes on. Each situation starts with the Sunshine Effect all warm and welcoming. All of them end up with seeing the cold light of day. Sure, have a big goal or aspiration to follow. But, develop a growth plan over time based on research and knowledge, not just feeling the vibe and being drawn in. Big aspirations are highly recommended, but don’t get sunburn in the mind having ones that are more hope than personal meaning.
We all adore a bit of sunshine but don’t let that take root in your mind.
That mindset can lead to a place in the no fun.
.
References – www.aplaceinthesun.com – About us.
www.inews.co.uk – A Place in The Sun
It’s often said that we shouldn’t live life life alone. The same goes for ideas.
More often than not making ideas work is a solo thing. But, partnering up with ideas can be the real game changer and work wonders for the end results. History shows it and proves it. In fact it’s what saved one of the biggest and most famous companies on the planet.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s Lego was the go-to plaything for children. Almost all kids from that era owned some or had built with some at home or school. They were the staple play toy for children everywhere, and they were everywhere. But times changed and so did preferences. The mid 80’s saw the advent of technological toys like robots and computer games and the business seemed headed for bankruptcy after a $23m loss.
They needed help. And they got that help with an ingenious partner. The Star Wars film franchise was launching The Phantom Menace and sought to engage a younger audience in sci-fi and its brand. Further instalments of the Star Wars story were planned and a new fan base would be needed through the years. They felt creating special Lego based kits would achieve just that.
And boy did it! The revenue kept Lego afloat and led them to creating new licencing tie-ins elsewhere and the business turned around. In 2024 it made 17.1 DKK (over £2.4billion) profit and sold 12% more products than the previous year. That’s what partnering ideas can do.
And they are not alone!
Eating ice cream in a Rolls.
In 1978 two school chums who hated gym but loved ice-cream decide to take a basic $5 correspondence course on their favourite food. Enjoying it so much they decided to give it a go and set about making ice-cream through using local Vermont ingredients they also loved. They survived their first harsh winter and soon word got around. The two guys with their flavoursome ice-cream with chunky ingredients (that they threw in day to day on their own whim) such as cookies and candy, began to become popular.
Within a decade they had opened 80 shop outlets in 18 American states. These two ice-cream creating fans were Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. The world knows them as Ben & Jerry’s. When they sold the brand in 2000, the price tag was $326m. Two friends, one idea, one partnered success story.
Perhaps their ice-cream is considered a bit of a luxury. Well there’s another luxury item that we all love that never would have come about without a partnership. The Rolls Royce car.
Charles Royce was the son of a Lord and had an affluent background. He studied engineering and became an accomplished driver even breaking the world land speed record in 1903. He set up one of the first car dealerships to import cars to fund his driving escapades. The very opposite can be said of Henry Royce who was a working child from the age of nine. He managed to gain an apprenticeship with a railway company and loved all things engineering.
Royce began to build cars as he felt other designs were lacking in engineering. Rolls was also disappointed in the foreign cars he imported. Hearing of Royce a friend of Rolls invited the two to meet and in 1904 they sat down together for the first time. They hit it off. Royce agreed to make cars for his new friend who agreed to sell them exclusively through his car dealership. They both needed each other for what the other brought to the table.
We all know how that story turned out. Today Rolls Royce is worth a whopping $100.3 billion!! Not bad for two people who probably would never have done what they did without their joined union.
Who’s your other ideas half?
If you have been struggling along alone with an idea or business, then ask yourself, ‘Who can I partner up with’?
Who can be the Ben to your Jerry? The Rolls to your Royce? The Star Wars to your Lego?
Don’t look in the obvious. It could be an old friend. A person who simply seems to know what people think or like. Another business who you can meet in the middle to form something good for both of you. Or a fellow enthusiast who loves what you do but in a different way. Even someone in the bus queue. Get talking, get sharing with others, get connecting, get yourself closer to your partner in dream. You could be theirs too!
Two can become one and create one mega success. Two works wonders where one is trying to work things out.
Two heads and two ideas are better than one. And can be waaaaay bigger as well.
References – www.thisforthat.biz – ‘The partnership that saved LEGO’.
www.cbr.com – ‘How star wars saved LEGO’.
www.lego.com
www.unilver.co.uk – Ben & Jerry’s
www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com – how rolls met royce.
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Stress.
Stress is the No.1 killer in the background. Heart disease, alcoholism, smoking related diseases and drug taking all stem from the stress in our lives and our attempts to get away from it. Stress is a negative force for humans. We need to talk about it here on SuperMind Saturday.
- Stress is classed as a mental reaction to perceived pressures upon us. These cause physiological changes in the body such as a raised heart rate, impaired thinking, and increased body temperature and sweating. This means stress itself DOESN’T EXIST. It’s our response that does. Should we therefore be approaching stress completely differently than we are because of this?
- American philosopher William James observed, ‘The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over the other’. That being true as stress severely impacts work, relationships, and the health service here’s an idea. Could we start training children at a young age how to manage thinking and mindset so they are prepared for it as adults? And make that part of schools curriculum?
- SuperMind Thought – Stress does not have a level. There is no official measurement system to gauge it. No-one knows a job’s designated level of stress merely a level of skills and requirements. What we need is a stress scale from mild bother to extreme like the Beaufort scale from a breeze to a fully fledged hurricane. This helps us make informed choices as to whether the salary is worth the pressure.
- We never talk about stress until it’s got its grip. We almost never expect it to be there but invariably it is, certainly at work. And yet, we all know it exists. Maybe employers should have a stress policy that is declared with job candidates before they apply. How would you make pre-stress awareness compulsory in work and life?
- On the other end of the scale, some stress is good for us. It pushes us to achieve, make better efforts, can keep us fit, and get out of us what nothing else would….or we would. What are the best positive stresses we should aim to experience?
That’s another SuperMind Saturday for your mind powers to work on. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its potential. Consider more, generate ideas more, think on bigger possibilities more, activate your connection to your personal higher mind more and more. Employ your SuperMInd and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
