Falling in love with questions
It has almost been 8 years of doing the best thing I ever started - my blog. It has brought me so much joy, and has been the catalyst for so many other incredible things in my life. I met some of my favourite people through starting my blog. I wrote and self-published books because of my blog. I started my podcast because of my blog. I even launched into a new career - because of my blog.
And now - 8 years later, I want to celebrate this milestone with 8 lessons I learned over the past 8 years of blogging. One of them (which I may write about more at length) is that having a practice of writing and sharing has had wide reaching impacts on my life - some of them that feel totally unrelated - but that are intimately linked. It only seems fitting to write this series - since writing life lessons started it all - and I miss writing lessons. So this series is about 8 lessons I have learned in the past 8 years of blogging. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed writing them!
Today I return to writing lessons from the past 8 years of writing this blog. This lesson is one of my favourites, and has been so meaningful to me that I have started - an am continuing to write - a whole other series of blogs on the topic of more questions than answers.
And what is hilarious is - as curious as I have always been, and as much as I have always been the person with ALL the questions, I didn’t really like questions that much until a few years ago. I wrote about it recently in the introduction to that blog series.
“Questions have always frustrated me. As an endlessly curious child (who grew into a curious, yet somewhat impatient adult) I wanted all the answers. I wanted to know all the things - about humanity, about the world, about this life and beyond, and my questions felt like the only thing that stood between me and knowing all the things. They represented the things I didn’t know, and I almost just wanted to tick them off my list as I answered them one by one.”
So as you can see, I have long associated questions with answers! And that might not sound surprising. I think that most of us associate questions with answers. I think of all the questions that my nephew used to ask (and still asks) were his quest to understand the world, and what he really wanted was answers that made sense. I now also have a niece (and two more nephews) and they have had some impressive questions too! Some of them practical (Why do I have to go to school? When can I have back my tablet? When will the baby get teeth) and some of them philosophical (Why do we use money? Why can’t I teach the baby to do my homework?) and things like that.
What has changed for me over the past few years, is that I have started to appreciate questions themselves as something that stand alone - and that carry their own power and importance - whether I get an answer or not. In fact, I have been writing about some of the questions that have transformed my life - even though I don’t yet have the answer!
How can a question change your life?
Once I started to realise the value of questions, I started using them a LOT. I fell in love with a 100 questions exercise that a friend introduced to me - where I just write down 100 questions that are on my mind - big or small, deep or downright shallow. One of the things I loved about this exercise was that it meant I didn’t place a moral value on my silly questions (should I paint my nails?) but instead it encouraged me to make space for all of my questions. I found that doing this exercise would always boost my creativity. Something about me giving myself permission to have all types of questions meant that sometimes I might find myself asking a question that I might otherwise talk myself out of - something I might not otherwise dare to ask (is it too late to retire early? You can read about that one here.)
It made me realise that sometimes I would stifle my own questions, and it was through this exercise that I felt more free to ask bold and audacious questions.
“It made me realise that questions are the seeds of dreams.”
It made me realise that questions are the seeds of dreams. That sitting with the question can be more powerful than answering it, and that sometimes the follow up questions are what shape the dream - as much as the answers.
It made me excited to dream, to ask questions that shaped my dreams, and my thinking.
This has been one of my favourite lessons over the past few years. Asking questions - whether they need answers or not - has deepened my relationships, my curiosity, my connection to myself, and my creative practice. Asking questions has opened up possibilities (what would need to be true to expand my podcast?) and has opened doors. And it has inspired the fun blog posts I have been writing recently.
So - here are some questions for you - my wonderful reader as I close.
What is your relationship with questions?
How do you feel about questions that don’t yet have an answer (or that might not have an answer at all?)
What is a question that is on your mind right now?
And what are some of the questions that changed your life?
I look forward to hearing from you (and you can email me if you don’t want to make them public!)
I send you big love from by the sea.