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Our lives are full of questions. We get many from those who surround us in our lives, and just as many, or probably more, we put ourselves.
And the latter are often huge and quite unanswerable. Especially in times of crisis, these questions tend to be simply overwhelming instead of helping.
“What should I do to clean up this mess of my life I have?”
You will agree that such a question is not only helpful, but it is both much too dramatic and utterly unproductive.
I recently discovered the following fun quote in a fun book about game design by Justin Gary with the title Think Like A Game Designer: The Step-by-Step Guide to Unlocking Your Creative Potential:
“There are no sure answers, only better questions.”
— Dick Van Dyke
So, what are the right and better questions?
I find the following quote gives a brilliant clue:
“Your brain wants to play! A question wakes up your brain and delights it.”
— Robert Maurer, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way
So the clue is to make the questions fun.
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Two-choice games
But the next question is how to make them fun. ;D
Here is an idea.
Have you ever played a two-choice game? I came up or probably recalled from the experience, where this wasn’t called a game, with a little game for my children when they were upset and felt stuck before making a decision and when they feared to make a wrong choice.
I then tell them, “I will give you a choice of two words, and you pick one without much thinking. Just pick one word.” Then, I assure them that there is no wrong answer. The clue is to make a choice quick — whatever comes to mind first.
And so we start. I say, “Blue or green, chair or table, game or computer, Superman or Batman, white or black, chocolate or ice cream, chocolate or computer, …” and they make their choices. In the process, their faces light up, and they relax.
Right after playing that little game, I offer them to go back to their challenge and see if they have a choice there too. I again remind them that there is no right or wrong, just right for them. And we are all delighted when that choice is made with great enthusiasm.
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Yes-or-No questions and their power of a simple choice
Yes-or-No questions are such two-choice games. And if we don’t judge ourselves for saying either Yes or No, but simply look at their essence, we can then turn the card with the answer to the one leading us in the direction of our goals and dreams.
Our lives are made out of many projects — both at work and in our personal lives. To help others and myself disentangle a stagnating project, I came up with 15 Yes-or-No questions to help us find a way out of being stuck. I summarized them in a little book called Turn Your No Into Yes: 15 Yes-or-No Questions to Disentangle Your Project.
Here is what one of the book’s readers wrote in his review:
“This little book is just the tool for ending procrastination for any kind of project! Just reading Victoria’s questions shifted my resistance to my working on a play I’m writing. The book is easy and fun to read and got me back on track very quickly.”
— Michael Hanko in review on Amazon.com
Here are these 15 Yes-or-No questions:
Have you:
- Taken some time off?
- Created an elevator pitch?
- Identified what your customer wants?
- Identified what your customer needs?
- Compared what you can offer with their wants and needs?
- Estimated what you will need to invest (time, money, etc.)?
- Considered your feelings about the outstanding tasks?
- Talked to your customer about possible changes?
- Created a checklist for your project?
- Left space to add more items or make changes?
- Shared the checklist with your customer?
- Devoted enough time to the tiniest details?
- Stopped to realize that your project brings value?
- Asked your customer what value the project provides?
- Considered what completing the project means to you?
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To take the next step
To learn more about these fifteen questions, I invite you to read this little book, Turn Your No Into Yes, which costs only $0.99 in e-book format. Click on the link with the book’s title above or on the image below to view and buy it on Amazon:
If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.
Alternatively, you can subscribe to my page, Optimist Writer, on ko-fi for $5 a month, and besides supporting what I do, you will also get access to all my motivational books, which I share there once a month or each time a book is out. Right now, you can get access to four of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support, and three in the posts solely for subscribers. Turn Your No Into Yes will appear later this year or upon explicit request from subscribers.
But you can also get an earlier version of the book for free if you subscribe to my blog or newsletter. You can do it here.
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Enjoy playing the above and developing your very own Yes-or-No games, and turning your challenges, projects, activities, tasks, and anything else in your life into fun games! 