My Sanctuary: Change Your Questions Change Your Life

Recently read a book by Marilee Adams titled 'Change Your Questions Change Your Life' and it's an easy reading book that helps you ask the right questions which can lead to great results. You can apply the questions to your worklife, with family and friends too.

It is all illustrated below in the Choice Map where you are either using a Learner Mindset or Judger Mindset. Click on the link above to have a clearer larger version of the Choice Map.

We are constantly faced with choices and sometimes we're not even aware when we're making choices. And when we make choices, we are always choosing between Judger and Learner mindsets. When we choose with a Judger mindset, we eventually end up stuck in the mud and when we choose with Learner mindset, we discover new paths and possibilities.

Though unaware, we are constantly shifting between Learner and Judger paths and we can have control over our choices - by asking the right questions.

I recently had an experience that allowed me to apply this. I received some feedback about myself and my performance and it was a mix of both positive and not so positive feedback. My initial reaction was to defend myself (in my mind of course) why the not so positive feedback were not right. I caught myself at that moment and 'stepped out' for a few seconds to be an Observer and I realised I was in a Judger Mindset. I was asking self-doubting myself, asking if I was really that bad and so forth. I didn't like how I was feeling and physically I felt my body go tense. That's because I was judging myself. As a Judger, you can either be judging yourself (internal) or others (external).

Don't confuse Judger to making good judgement. The former is about being judgemental - a form of attacking either others (get angry, resentful and hostile) or ourselves (feel depressed and diminish our self confidence) wherelse the latter refers to making wise choices based on sound information and intentions.

Then I tried changing the questions to 'What can I learn from these comments?', 'What's valuable from these comments?', 'What can I do to improve in these areas?'. It's hard to ask these questions but I had to 'force' myself and I didn't feel as bad as before because I am not judging or blaming myself (or anyone) but rather, looking at the comments in a positive light, something that I can learn from and better myself.

Using the Learner Mindset is something that takes time and practise and will not happen overnight and I do find myself on the Judger Path at times and that's when you should switch lanes (by asking switching questions) that help you go on the Learner Path. What is more important is that you're aware of which mindset you're using. The Learner mindset can be used when we're going in for meetings, where we asking questions like :

What are the goals of this meeting?
How can we all get aligned on the agenda?
How can I conduct the meeting to get the best from everyone?
What might be valuable and worth considering from each person?
Are we all on the same page with the action items we’ve come up with?

Currently, I am trying to use this Learner Mindset for myself and eventually I hope to try it out at work when working in teams to test if these questions work.

If you're interested, here are some questions found in the book to illustrate the difference between Judger and Learner Mindset. See if you can guess which set of questions belong to the Judger and which to the Learner:

Set A: