I saw someone the other day I hadn’t seen for a while, and he smirked at me.
Our recent history has been anything but good.
For the first time in my life, I felt like I had someone out to get me. He was constantly scheming up ways to mess with my sense of safety.
When I saw his smirk, the immediate question that popped into my mind was “what is he up to now?”
I love the power question asking has, but I find we have to be very careful with it sometimes.
The wrong questions can give you bad answers, the right questions can change an entire situation because our brains are wired to find answers no matter what.
I just love it when someone says, “maybe we are asking the wrong question.”
As my mind raced to find the answer to “what is he up to?”, my anxiety began to rise as I was anticipating the worst.
I began to notice the change in how I was feeling over the next several minutes of mind racing, which prompted me to come up with a new question, “do I really want to make up an answer about what he is up to?”
That answer was a definite no. He is not someone I want to tap into and fully understand, or outguess, and I stopped assuming I could guess the answer.
And with that, my mind stopped racing and my anxiety began to settle.
This might be the first time I have consciously caught myself asking the wrong questions, coming up with bad answers…and then changing my question.
One year at the awards banquet in 4-H I was awarded Miss WhoWhatWhenWhereWhy.
It seems I have always loved asking questions, now I know for sure the difference a question can make, I’m going to be more careful.
And guess what? He hasn’t done anything… yet. Maybe that was his new ‘friendly smile’ instead of a smirk.