I’ve spent the last seven years in pursuit of understanding what makes human beings successful and extraordinary.

And when I started, I thought, “The smartest people are the most successful because they have all the answers.”

I couldn’t be more wrong.

Because now I know the truth. It’s not the one with the most answers who succeeds, it’s the one with the most questions (especially of the right kind).

And that’s what we’re about to uncover today: a whole new way of harnessing the power of questions in our lives!

Ready? Let’s go.

The Power of Questions:

It’s funny how much we’re obsessed with finding the answers to everything in life.

Every problem begets a solution. Every question we think of, we try to answer. Every doubt in our heads feels like a fire that must be urgently extinguished.

But what if that fire wasn’t there to burn things down, but to give birth to something new? 

What if, instead of solving the problem, we just stayed with it and became a whole new person?

What if instead of answering the question, we looked at it through the lens of curiosity—transforming ourselves and our world?

Because the people who’ve lived the most successful and rich lives (not just by money, but by experience) have all sworn by the power of staying with questions, and not just rushing to answers.

Richard Feynman, one of the most legendary physicists the world has known, once said, “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”

And the 20^th Century Austrian Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, once wrote, “Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It’s a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question.”

If there’s one thing we have forgotten to do, it’s to live with the question.

But that’s exactly what will help us find revolutionary answers that transform our lives.

When 1+2 is not equal to 3:

We have all the information in the world, but we don’t feel as creative.

We have all the answers in the world, but we don’t feel as sorted. 

Because for human beings, the process of learning and asking questions has never been about finding information; it’s been about discovering themselves.

And when we are all just taking the highway to the answer, that self-discovery dies before it can even take form.

That’s what makes our lives feel boring, even when we have access to unlimited knowledge, fun, and entertainment on the internet.

Everyone can tell us that 1+2 is equal to 3. That’s a simple answer to a quick question. The blunder we make is, we ask a question like, “Why do people behave the way they do?” and then expect an answer as simple as 3.

We don’t stay with the uncertainty. We don’t wait to explore different possibilities. We just look for a way to find a satisfactory answer, but that blinds us from the best one.

Mediocre answers will lead to mediocre thoughts, which will lead to mediocre actions and eventually a mediocre life that will only let us ask more mediocre questions (and the cycle will go on and on).

So, the way to really live your best life is not to look for answers, but to live a little more with your questions.

The Art of Asking Thoughtful Questions:

The most successful people know how to think deeply. They can do that because they know how to ask thoughtful, provoking, and transformative questions.

They won’t ask, “How can I make money today?”

They’ll ask, “What can I do to add so much value that I make millions as a byproduct?”

Then, they don’t look for the answer right away. They stay with the question. They explore different tangents around it, and they develop it a bit more.

In their relationships, they won’t ask, “Why did he or she hurt me so much?”

Instead, they’ll ask, “What went wrong before this conflict happened? What was the trigger point? What motivated them to lash out? And could I have done something differently?”

The way you ask the question completely changes the kind of answer you’ll get.

To get the best one, you must learn to live with the question for a moment, to get internal clarity on what exactly you’re looking for, and then to explore it with curiosity.

That’s the recipe for successful learning and successful growth.

It may give you some confusion and uncertainty for a while, but the moment you start looking at all your life problems as a possibility to explore and learn something new, your questions will change, the answers will change, and your life will change.

For better, or for worse? Well, that choice is in your hands 🙂