When we are trying to change our thoughts about things, a great idea is to ask ourselves questions.  Whenever I am looking for change or growth I ask myself high-quality, empowering questions so that I can get inspiring and creative answers.  The higher quality the question, the high-quality the answer will be.  When we ask ourselves good questions, our brain will come back with amazing answers as long as we don’t block it by answer the question with “I don’t know.”

Saying “I don’t know” gives our brain permission to stop and not look for answers.  It blocks our own wisdom when we shut it down this way.  We won’t get the answers we need from ourselves by blocking our brain from coming up with what we need answers to.

Many times we ask questions about something and we look for answers outside of ourselves.  We don’t trust ourselves and our own intuition. We don’t trust our brain to know what we are capable of.

What if you could believe that you have all the answers you will ever need?  Or if you don’t know the answer, you are capable of finding out?

One of the best questions to ask yourself is “What am I thinking right now?” and then follow up with a question like “Why am I choosing to think this?”

This gives the responsibility for what we’re thinking back to us.

Then we can follow up with “How does this thought feel?”  If it doesn’t feel great, you may consider not thinking it.  Another way to go about it is to ask “What is the thought that’s causing the way I feel right now?”

These questions are so great for building self awareness as we become a watcher of our thoughts like we talked about in last week’s podcast.

My clients often ask me questions, and I don’t answer them.  I ask them what they think the answer is.  Because the truth is, I don’t have all the answers for them.  I believe that I have the answers for me, but you have the answers for YOU!  You just need to learn how to tap into those answers and trust yourself.

So here are some questions I want you to ask yourself and see if you can answer them yourself.  I suggest you write down the answers so you can remind yourself often what the answers are.  

• What do I believe about myself?
• What do I believe about my spouse?
• What do I believe about my marriage?
• How can I change my thoughts about myself?
• How can I change my thoughts about my spouse?
• What do I want to believe on purpose about myself?
• What do I want to believe on purpose about my spouse?
• What do I want to believe on purpose about my marriage?
• How does my current thinking about my marriage serve me?
• How can I make changing my thoughts about myself, my life, and my marriage fun and easy?

While you are doing this, you may come up with other questions you want to ask yourself.  One thing I want to caution you about is asking yourself a thought with a negative connotation.  Here’s are some examples:

• Why is my husband such a jerk?
• Why am I unworthy of love?
• Why can’t I change my thoughts?

See how the responses of those aren’t going to actually help you?  They’ll just make you feel worse about things.  So let’s try changing them around to get thoughts that will actually help us.

• Instead of asking “Why is my husband such a jerk?” ask yourself “How can I love my husband for who he is?” or “I wonder why he acts the way he does sometimes?”
• Instead of “Why am I unworthy of love?” ask yourself “What are all the qualities I love about myself?”
• Instead of “Why can’t I change my thoughts?” ask “How can I make changing my thoughts easy and fun?”

These are just a few examples.  But there are so many good questions that you can ask yourself and let your brain do the work to answer.

Alright my friends, like I said, short and sweet.  So get asking yourselves questions.  

My favorite question to ask myself is “How can I feel love in this situation” because out of all the emotions you can choose to feel, love is always an option.