Want To Feel Better? Ask Different Questions

The process of changing our state is often as simple as asking ourselves different questions about our situation

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Perhaps one of the most important lessons I've learned in the last year comes down to a very simple, straightforward realization, courtesy of Tony Robbins: our emotional state is largely shaped by the questions we ask ourselves.

When we ask ourselves disempowering, limiting, or negative questions, such as 'why does this always happen to me?', we inevitably give ourselves an answer that is bound to make us feel like shit. It's easy to fall into a spiral of pessimism when we prime ourselves to see the world through a prism of gloominess.

Emotions don't necessarily arise from the mind, as they can be rooted in our physiology as much as within our psychology. The question of whether feelings originate in our body or mind is difficult to fully quantify, as it is often a product of both interacting with one another.

An important fact to realize is that our minds have an immense amount of power to influence our emotional state. If we are always looking for the next impending catastrophe in our lives, chances are we'll find something worth having a breakdown about.

Stop asking why

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Let's say you're in an undesirable situation. Maybe your current work situation is unfulfilling, perhaps you've just been broken up with, or maybe some other undesirable circumstance has befallen you. It's understandable to ask why this situation has happened, as we seek answers and meaning to our predicament.

However, asking why sets us up to feel pretty damn terrible. The 'why' question is incredibly open-ended, allowing for an infinite amount of interpretation and rumination, usually to the detriment of our emotional state.

Think about a time when something terrible happened in your life, a moment where you were overcome with despair, shame, guilt, or any other horrible feeling. Did the act of asking why help your situation? Did it bring about a sense of relief or clarity? Or did it amplify the feeling instead, making you feel even more hopeless? My guess is the latter.

The answer lies in the act of asking

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If you ask questions that set yourself up to feel terrible, you're not going to get an answer that alleviates your pain. Asking 'why do I never get what I want?' is not a recipe to relieve suffering, it's a surefire method to unnecessarily extending that feeling.

Instead of asking why you feel terrible, ask yourself how you can learn from your current predicament. If you're unsatisfied with your life, asking questions that open yourself up to a new interpretation of your situation will greatly increase the chances that you'll arrive at a new conclusion.

Creating space within our minds to allow new answers to flow in is a fantastic method to changing how we feel about our lives. Undesirable situations are made much worse when we find ourselves seeing things with a narrow focus that merely magnifies the level of dissatisfaction we have.

It has been said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. In this way, asking the same questions over and over again and expecting different answers is equally crazy. If we want to shift our feelings about our lives and arrive at a new emotional state, asking different questions is a great start to finding the solutions we seek.

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All uncredited pictures from pixabay.com or my personal account

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