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12/17/2008: "Question Thinking"

I just finished reading a new book that my boss lent me. It's titled: "change your questions change your life" by Marilee G. Adams.

I found it helped me understand a number of things about myself and my own attitudes and even shed light on some things I had been doing intuitively. It explained some advice my uncle gave me last year.

A year ago this time, I was in Taiwan, Taipei. I was gathering with my mother, my uncle and my grandmother for dinner. My grandmother had made a great meal, but I was sick with food poisoning and in a foul mood. There were some jokes made at my expense and in a moment of weakness I quipped back something sarcastic.

I immediately apologized and smoothed things over. But that night, I tried to understand why I couldn't hold the comment back. I spoke with my uncle and he gave me a few bits of advice that I didn't understand at the time.

He told me that getting upset from time to time or even annoyed is natural. You need to accept it, and embrace it-- holding it in or back makes no sense. But what he said next caught me by surprise. He said that this approach really only gets you so far. Ultimately, the next level of self-thought is to simply not get upset at all. While it took many years to learn, he explained that the trick is to simply consider the positive aspects of whatever situational context you're in and move forward from that.

At the time I felt that what he said was impossible. After reading this book, I think I have a small understanding of what he meant.

The book describes an extremely useful and practical active-thought framework to identify, choose and actively question your emotions and create positive outcomes. I found that I had used some of these items intuitively, but that the approach described in the book was stellar. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to get great results from life.

The book's key theme? "Great results come from great questions."