Learn how to ask "why?"

I've talked in previous articles about how most of our problems are actually really easy to solve and the reason we're not always considering the first solution is simply because we don't really like it. A good example for this would be the lack of money. What's the easiest way to be wealthier and to have more money? Work and save more.

It's a simple solution, but not one that we really like. Working is hard, it takes a lot of time an saving money isn't fun at all, so why not search for fast ways to make money, like investing thousands of dollars into Bitcoin or similar things at the wrong time especially if you have no idea how cryptocurrencies work?

You get the point. But how can we find what's the simplest solution to our problem, or why we think something is indeed a problem and not a simple inconvenience?

By learning how to ask "why?"

This is a simple (correct me if I'm wrong here) Socratic method of getting to the core of a problem(or argument). It's surprising how well it works and how easily we can get to the truth by asking the same question several times and being truly honest.

Let's use as an example, again, the lack of money. We're gonna imagine that we're another person, John for example, and we have a crappy job where we're not getting a lot of money. We don't like that, we want to change the situation, but we have no idea how. So let's ask ourselves a few "why" questions.

Why are we not being paid well enough? Because we have a crappy job.

Why do we have a crappy job? Because we couldn't find a better one.

Why couldn't we find a better job? Because no one was willing to hire us.

Why wasn't anyone willing to hire us? Because we don't have the necessary skills or experience.

Why don't we have the necessary skills or experience? Because instead of learning new skills or working on personal projects we spent our time doing something different and fun.

Why didn't we learn new skills and worked on personal projects? Because we didn't feel like it.

Eventually, the answer to the first question, "Why are we not being paid well enough?" is "Because we don't have enough skills or experience in a good field". This is how we identified the problem without asking professionals and without spending money on services that could tell us something we figured out in a few seconds.

From this point you can start asking yourself another important question - "how?" This will help you figure out how to change your situation and do the right things. Look again at the questions above, and start with the last one.

The first "how?" question would be "How do we make ourselves feel like learning new skills and work on projects?", and the answer would be "By finding something we like and trying to learn more about it".

Now you can check each "why?" question and find solutions to each problem. This is a really simple method that can help you find out why you are where you are and why your life is not exactly what you want.

Most of the things we don't really like in our life are only a result of some decisions we made in the past. We can change our life right now by making the right choices. We just need to figure out what the problems are.