Are you getting better, smarter, wiser, faster and stronger in your life? If not, why not?
When we ask, the answers cause us to strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.
Questioning helps us discover, and then transcend, our human limitations.
When you embrace the asking journey, it will give you an opportunity to review your life day by day to discover:
- What your expectations are for your life
- What your expectations are for others
- Your highest potential and service to humanity
Why self-improvement questions are important
No matter who you are, what you do or what stage of life you are at, recognizing the opportunity to ask will continually advance you to the next stepping-stone toward your dreams of a better life or better way of living. When we request, inquire of and question one another and allow those answers to come, it brings us to a new understanding or gives us the feedback to improve a relationship, a project or a life goal. Movement in a positive direction toward your dreams, your goals and a better quality of life is just a question away.
How to ask good self-improvement questions
It’s important to prepare to be a good asker. Getting into the right mindset and understanding the power of the tools at your disposal and how to navigate through the process are important to manifesting the answers that will continue to guide you along destiny’s path.
There are four elements to put into practice to help fortify your results:
- Belief: Believe and trust that the answer is there somewhere, waiting for you. Expect it!
- Action: Keep taking steps in the direction of your dreams even if you haven’t received all the answers. Your actions will continue to prompt more questions and open up your curiosity so that your requests and inquiries become bigger and more relevant.
- Visualization: Use the power of your imagination to create positive images and feelings around the answers you seek. Allow yourself to create mental pictures of having issues resolved, relationships healed, wishes completed and dreams fulfilled.
- Prayer: Never forget the existence and wisdom of a higher power in your practice. The Creator of you, the Universe, and everything else is certainly your greatest and most benevolent ally when it comes to the fulfillment of your destiny.
Self-improvement questions to ask yourself
Now take out your journal and let’s work through this exercise together. Write down the categories and answer the questions that follow:
Define your desires
What is it that you really want? Do you want more cooperation? More understanding? More intimacy? More friendship? More riches? More adventure? More love?
Connect to your core beliefs
What is driving your current state? Do you think you’re not worthy? Do you think your happiness is your or someone else’s responsibility? Do you believe you deserve to have your greatest desires fulfilled?
Understanding someone else’s core beliefs
In any relationship, it’s important to know where someone else is coming from. How can you better understand the core beliefs of the people who matter to you? Asking is the best vehicle to use to get to new understandings with the people who are important to you in your personal or work life.
Honor your values
“What am I not willing to compromise—ever?” Define it so you can ask for the understanding and honoring of your values when you’re in relationships and those values are challenged.
Heal misunderstandings
While it can seem like a powerful advantage to hold up your hurt or disappointment as a bargaining chip, it usually leads to deeper turmoil. Ask yourself:
- “What does it cost me to hang on to hurt?”
- “What would I gain by releasing it and starting with a clean slate?”
- “What steps need to happen for me to release this?”
Discover the truth
Everyone experiences their world from their own particular state of consciousness. What we hold up as truth may be more the result of our own subjective set of conclusions based on our own experiences. This is where asking really pays dividends in relationships. Ask the other person what they think happened—what the experience or reality is to them.
Define the steps forward
“Where do I really want to go from here? What do I hope to get out of this experience? What do I see as the best resolution or conclusion? Where do I see myself a year from now? Five years from now?”
We recommend turning to your journal frequently to review your questions and answers. You’ll probably begin to see that you’re evolving as you go. That you’re overcoming some of the hurdles that used to hold you back. Make sure you keep a victory section to acknowledge and remind yourself that, step by step, you are moving into your dreams and toward your destiny!
Excerpted from Ask!: The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny by Mark Victor Hansen and Crystal Dwyer Hansen. Post Hill Press. Used with permission.
This article was published in April 2020 and has been updated. Photo by Ground Picture/Shutterstock
