The Question IS The Answer

Will this article make you smarter?

Questions. Questions. Questions.

Everyone is looking for answers. No one is looking for questions.

But the answer is within the question.

Research has been done by scientists on the power questions have on human brains.

Questions trigger a reflex in humans know as “instinctive elaboration,” which means when someone asks you a question, the question takes over the brain’s thought process. 

Behavioral scientists Morwitz, Johnson, and Schmittlein did a study on this topic and found that asking people questions about their futures significantly influenced their decisions. This is known as the “mere measurement effect.” The study was done in 1993 with over 40,000 participants by asking them if they were going to purchase a new car within six months. This question increased their purchase rates by 35%.

Similar surveys have been done on the topics of voting, donating blood, exercise frequency, and more. 

Each survey found that all these behaviors can be increased by asking about them!

Your mind is powerful!

Research has found that the more the brain thinks about a certain behavior, the more likely it is that you will do it.

Thinking about something can change your behavior and sensations.

Imagine sipping some warm hot chocolate. 

Can you taste it? 

Can you notice your mind shifted its focus from where it was to the hot chocolate?

Your mind is powerful…

So if you never ask a question, you will never get an answer.

If you ask a negative question like, “why do bad things always happen to me?” You will get an answer, and it will reinforce bad things happening to you.

If you ask a positive question like, “how can I live my best life?” You will get an answer and it will reinforce ideas of how you can live your best life.

Questions are powerful tools you can use to live more of the life you want to live.

Here are some others who strongly agree:

“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.”
Alan Watts

“Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”
Tony Robbins

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
Voltaire

“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”
Eugene Ionesco

“Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
Rainer Maria Rilke

“One of the many qualities that separate self-made billionaires from the rest of us is their ability to ask the right questions.”
Justine Musk

“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”
E. E. Cummings

“If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.”
W. Edwards Deming

“Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.”
Tennessee Williams

“I think that probably the most important thing about our education was that it taught us to question even those things we thought we knew.”
Thabo Mbeki

“He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.”
Voltaire

“A wise man’s question contains half the answer.”
Solomon Ibn Gabirol

“A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.”
Francis Bacon

7 powerful questions Tony Robbins asks to spark positive emotions are:

—What am I happy about in my life now?

—What am I excited about in my life now?

—What am I proud about in my life now?

—What am I grateful about in my life now?

—What am I enjoying in life right now?

—What am I committed to in my life right now?

—Who do I love? Who loves me?

What are 3 other questions you can think of that by asking yourself them will help you achieve a goal?