The right question, at the right time, can move mountains! Coaching is all about questioning and a great Coach understands the power of a perfectly-timed question designed to challenge current thought and help you to move your mind forward. Reducing our often ill-fated New Year’s resolutions down to small, actionable goals is the only way to create real change, which got me thinking about how using one of these ‘power questions’ every day for a week on whatever area you want; career, business, relationships, productivity, creativity, confidence, dating, health etc. can certainly help you identify ways to ensure your 2016 is starting off with an appropriate bang!

For maximum effect:

• Take 1 question a day, write each question at the top of a page and challenge yourself to write a full page on that one answer. I would even go so far as to ask yourself the question out loud. If you don’t like writing, record your answers on your phone and listen back.
• Focus on one area of your life at at time, the one you most want to improve or a problem that most needs to be resolved or even the first thing that comes to mind once you’ve asked yourself the question.
• From that page of writing your answer, identify one action you could easily do that day, that would make the most positive impact on your day.
• Take that one action, resulting from the answer of that day’s question.
• Then take one question a day for the rest of the week.
• After 7 days, write about your progress and decide which actions helped you most and which you’re going to incorporate into your daily life - maybe, it’s even just continuing to ask yourself well-placed questions.

Day 1.

If you had an extra hour a day from today, what would you do with it?

Day 2.

What would you do if you had unlimited resources?

Day 3.

What story do you tell yourself, about yourself, that is holding you back?

Day 4.

What are you waiting for?

Day 5.

How would your ideal-self create a solution?

Day 6.

What advice would your 80 year-old-self give you?

Day 7.

What are you trying to prove to yourself?

 

Here’s a few bonus questions that have worked wonders for our career coaching and executive coaching clients:

• If I was in your shoes and asked for advice, what would be the first thing you’d tell me?
• If your money could talk, what would it say?
• What am I/ you not asking that you really want me to ask?
• What do you think the moral of that story is?

If you want to find out more about working with one of our Career Coaches or Executive Coaches to help you achieve your goals for 2016, drop us a line at [email protected].