Never Say Never: How 12 Questions Can Change Your Life
By Lenedra J. Carroll at www.IVillage.com
Your heart knows exactly what it will take to make you happy, but are you listening? Entrepreneur and author Lenedra Carroll, who is also mom/manager to pop star Jewel, says that the secret of her success has always been staying true to herself. In her memoir The Architecure of Abundance, she shares the story of how she beat the odds and found joy, plus provides helpful tips so that you can reach your own goals too. Read this excerpt to learn how she stopped obsessing about what other people thought -- and started hearing her own heart instead.
Why I Always Ask 12 Questions
Understanding questions and the answers, and utilizing them creatively, can be surprisingly productive. My understandings and methods have grown organically out of the manner in which I live, breathe, and think -- in the ways I break down ordinary circumstances. I am speaking of common circumstances that usually cause us to shrug and say "Well, that's how things are and there's nothing that can be done about it." When I find myself in a circumstance that is unique or troubling or stagnant I ask myself questions that help assure a more graceful movement through it.
It is a technique that came from a process I developed when I was 11 or 12 years old. At the time I often supposed someone was thinking, feeling, or acting in a certain way only to find out that something quite different was going on. I began to notice a high degree of fallibility existed any time I postulated about the highly idiosyncratic workings of another's world. For instance, I might think a grouchy teacher was displeased with my behavior only to find out they were having a dispute with the school principal. Again and again I observed this and realized there were a lot of options beyond what I first supposed.
This led me to develop a game I called "12 What Else." In the game, I asked myself to name 12 possibilities other than the one that occurred to me first. So in the case of a seemingly disapproving teacher I might also guess that they were hungry, had a fight with their spouse, a family member had died, they didn't get enough sleep, or they were ill, depressed, had a headache, and so on. I began to apply the game to other circumstances. When I was stuck for a solution I would ask myself to think of 12 possibilities no matter how impractical. In fact, I found it helpful to throw in some that were truly outrageous. When I needed a good idea for a report for school, I played "12 What Else" for creative inspiration. If I was afraid to discuss something with my parents or a friend, I played "12 What Else" to imagine different approaches and outcomes of the conversation.
As I grew older I began to understand that my initial impressions were all too often based on projections of what I feared someone might be doing or thinking, or what I wanted or needed them to do. I also observed that I typically thought of things more usual to my own life rather than circumstances having anything to do with theirs. Seeing this lead me to add a step to the game in some cases. First I would think of 12 other things going on with them. After doing that exercise, I would ask why I cared and what was going on with me. For this part I played "12 Questions" -- a slightly different version. I might initially ask what was gong on with me, and answer I was afraid they didn't like me. Then I would ask another question such as "Do I often think people don't like me?" The answer might be that I often worry that people don't like me. Then the question "Why?" would take me to my home life perhaps, and an answer leading me to a deeper understanding about myself and eventually a question about how I could become less worried about what people thought. The answers to that would be "12 What Else" again -- I would come up with 12 ways to be free of this fear of other people. By asking 12 questions I would go further and further into important information for myself.
Becoming aware of my perspective and assumptions, I began to gain a freedom from my own fears and problems. And I gained increased independence from the opinions and expectations of others. Rather than being in reaction to others and victim of my own vaporous projections I began to ask questions about what else was possible and more desirable. I played "12 What Else" to answer that question. When I had 12 more desirable scenarios I inevitably began to wonder how to create the one I preferred. Then I started to think of 12 ways I could achieve it.
Circumstance after circumstance after circumstance, I have followed my questions. This has led me step by step to an experience that a vast majority of people in our culture crave; the experience of abundance, of being loved, of being able to be generous, of feeling within my being that I have more opportunity than I know what to do with. This experience is within everyone's potential. If we ask the right questions the answers will inevitably lead us out of undesirable circumstances.
Choose your questions, rework them, challenge your common ideas and conventional wisdom and find your way to the best questions -- the ones that illuminate more elevated answers. Then, if you can get to the right questions, the next obvious step is to act on the answers you find. Action is necessary. It's certainly not always easy, some answers require significant change and this takes courage. But if you don't act on the answers then at best they are little more than an interesting mental exercise. At worst they become inner mandates, deep longings that go unfulfilled and block our energy over time. Action grounds the answers into material reality. The follow-through into action reaps the rewards of the process of questioning.
Excerpted from The Architecture of All Abundance by Lenedra J. Carroll 2001. Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, California
posted by Denise Michaels @ 10:24 PM
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