Are your questions helping you?

If you've followed this blog for a while, you know I'm interested in questions. Which questions come first? How does the wording of a questions effect the response?

So I was attracted to Marilee Adams' book Change Your Questions Change Your Life and picked it up to read on a recent plane trip. It's an easy read and makes a worthwhile point: the questions we ask -- of ourselves and others -- shape our possibilities and options for action.

Adams' says there are two basic paths we can take in the questions we ask, Learner or Judger.

Judger questions are questions like:

Who is to blame?

What's wrong with them?

Learner questions are questions like:

What happened?

How else can I think about this situation?

What's useful here?

What assumptions am I making?

What am I responsible for?

Learner questions open up possibilities, Judger questions close down possibilities.

We all go to Judger questions sometimes, but when we catch ourselves in judging, we can switch to Learner questions -- and experience a different outcome.

I've tried a few little experiments with myself asking different questions. The questions I choose really do influence my mood and my outcomes.