Many business owners are asking themselves the question “how can I be successful in a recession? Even more people are asking “what damage will the recession do to my business?” Our main article this month explores the power of questions and shows you that by changing the questions you habitually ask yourself you can transform the results you achieve in your life and business.

The way we think about our lives has a tremendous influence on the results we achieve. And very often our thought process involves us asking questions. For example if you are evaluating you might ask “what does this mean?”, if you were imagining you might ask “what is possible here?” and if you were deciding you could ask “what action shall I take?”

Ask and you shall receive
What we need to understand is that our minds are programmed to answer these questions. Whatever we ask ourselves we will always get an answer whether we like it or not or whether or not it is true. The key principle here is ask and you shall receive. For example if you make a mistake you could ask yourself “how could I do something so stupid?”. Your brain will immediately provide the answers

• because you always do stupid things
• because you didn’t study hard enough at school
• because you don’t have the right skills for this job.

and so on. How will those answers make you feel? So if you don’t think you will like the answer you are going to get you need to change the question.

So what questions could you ask? How about one of these

• What can I learn from this?
• What action can I take to make things better? or even
• what is great about this problem?

I am sure you will agree that the answers to these questions will make you feel differently and help you take actions to improve any situation.

Therefore we need to become aware of the questions we habitually ask ourselves each day. And if we want to improve our lives then we have to ask better questions. Often the key difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful people ask better questions. Quality questions lead to a quality life.

Do you feel you could improve your life if you started each day by answering some of the following questions

• What am I happy about in my life right now? If you find this a little difficult then try asking what could I feel happy about in my life right now if I wanted to?
• What am I proud about about in my life right now (or what could I be)?
• What am I enjoying most in my life right now?
• Who do I love? Who loves me?

And when you are setting goals for your business how about replacing the question “How many clients can I expect to lose this year?” with “What can I do to keep all my existing clients?” or “How can I win new clients?”  Keep asking these questions until you have the answers that will motivate you to identify and take the actions you need to achieve your goals and the results that you get.

I personally apply this concept to my own life and business every day with great success. I was first introduced to the concept by Tony Robbins the world famous life coach and author. This is a short clip where Tony talks a little more about how questions can change our lives.