Why is the sky blue? Why do I have to take a nap? Are we there yet? These are a handful of life’s most important and pressing questions… from a child’s point of view. But what happens to these questions when children grow up? It seems that they suddenly disappear, or maybe we just get more comfortable with not asking questions and receiving answers. What are the most important and pressing questions in your life right now? And have you ever actually vocalized them? Have you ever thought about the questions that drive your life? This week while reading Berger’s (2014) A More Beautiful Question, I reflected on the ways in which I do and do not ask questions in my everyday life. I noticed that one of the most common questions, and one of the only questions I ask day to day is “what’s for dinner?”. I found that for many of my friends and family members in the professional setting, if unprompted, they will also go days without asking questions in their professional lives. Berger (2014) states that “frequently in various professional domains […] basic, fundamental questions can make people impatient and even uncomfortable” (14). I have seen this phenomenon in my professional life, as even while I work in one of the most encouraging and welcoming settings that I have ever been in, many of my coworkers still do not make the time to allow and welcome questions in the workplace. This in turn, conditions us to stop asking questions and waiting for answers. With the first two chapters of Berger’s A More Beautiful Question in mind, I participated in a “quickfire” activity. The results of this exercise are pictured below. In this exercise I set a timer for five minutes and let my mind freely ask questions about my professional setting- no constraints, expectations, or guidelines. It took my mindset a while to get into the flow of asking questions, and looking back on this experience I realize that I was experiencing many phenomena that Berger discussed. I had a hard time starting this quickfire of questions, as I wasn't sure what questions I was ‘supposed’ to have. I also didn’t think any of my questions were important enough, relevant enough, or inquisitive enough to be valid. Once I got out of this mindset and allowed myself to record any and all thoughts I had, the questions started coming to me easier. Something I noticed in this exercise was that my mind jumped to statements instead of questions. What I did with the last minute of my time left was exercise changing these statements into questions. It seems that I have an easier time making observations than asking questions, but many times these observations are really just questions hidden in a statement format… interesting!
Reflecting on this exercise, Berger’s first two chapters, and all that I came to know about my lack of question-asking, I decided to do this quickfire exercise centered around asking questions about my own life. Being already in the question-asking mindset and with some practice under my belt, the questions flowed much easier. I found that I was better about turning statements into questions and allowing myself to question my world with no restrictions. Due to personal privacy and safety, I have decided not to include the image of my results. This personal quickfire taught me a lot about where my mind was in the moment, what I need more of and less of in my life, and some of my personal goals. I would highly recommend this activity for anyone looking for a ‘mind dump’. Similar to my personal quickfire, my professional quickfire revealed a lot of my, almost unconscious, thoughts/questions that I have been conditioned to suppress. Even though questioning my workplace felt uncomfortable, exercising this ability to question opened my mind to new ideas and allowed me more freedom in thought that I didn’t know was possible. References: Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. New York, NY
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