Are you feeling stuck and don’t know how to move forward to improve your current circumstances? Or, are you facing a problem and don’t know how to solve it in the best way possible?
Both situations require doing something, anything to gain momentum and while there are many ways to do this, one simple approach is to ask yourself the right questions.
Questions can be powerful to gain new insights and clarity when facing indecision, conflict, or lack of growth and development. After all, your thinking process involves questions and answers but asking the positive ones is essential if your want to get the best responses.
Keep reading as I share nine empowering questions that will help you move forward and grow into the person want to be.
9 Top Questions to Ask Yourself to Keep Moving Forward on Your Personal Growth Journey
1. Who AM I?
Yesterday I was having a conversation with someone who has just resigned from her job. I asked what her next step was and her response was, “I don’t know. I don’t even know who I am.”
This reminded me of my personal growth journey which started with me asking the question, “Who am !?”
If you’re unhappy about your current situation and you have been for a long time but you’re brave enough to start thinking and deciding what to do, you need to ask some deep questions.
If you’re at a crossroads in your life and realize you need to do some serious introspection to figure out who you are, you need to ask yourself, “Who am I?” to avoid finding yourself back in an unhappy space.
When you can figure out who you truly are, you can take small action steps to create the perfect life for YOU. Working with a life coach is one of the best ways to start getting answers to this particularly vital question if you don’t know how to unpack the process yourself.
2. What Makes Me Happy?
Knowing what makes you truly happy is important if you want to meet all your basic human needs healthily. This is one of the first exercises I ask my coaching clients to complete and they need to keep the list visible to remind themselves daily of what brings them genuine happiness.
When you know what makes you happy, you can write goals that align with who you are and what makes your life meaningful. Here are some things that make me happy:
Quality time with my husband
Playing with our rescue dog
Meditation and yoga
Daily walks in nature
Watching the sunrise as I have my first cup of coffee
Coaching and empowering clients
I encourage you to sit down and write a list of 50 things that make you happy and challenge yourself to do at least one thing every day to bring you happiness.
3. What Do You Live For?
Here’s another biggie! What do you live for? Why? Answer in one short sentence and put it somewhere where you see it daily. But, before you do that ask yourself does your answer align with your true SELF or is it a short-term gratification response?
Be careful with the words you choose to write down in reply to this powerful question.
Journal on this one, spend time meditating for the true response, and ask yourself, “Is the answer a reflection of my life purpose?” And, there’s another top question to explore – “What is my life purpose?”
You can only figure out the answers to these enormous questions once you’ve explored, in-depth, who you are and what makes your life meaningful.
4. What is Great About This Problem?
If you’re worrying over a problem and turning it into a mountain out of a molehill, you’re not going to find a healthy solution. However, if you choose to look at a problem as something that you can learn from, you’re operating from an open mindset while embracing the challenge of solving an issue.
Choosing a different perspective stops overthinking and worrying in its tracks while letting you view a situation with curiosity. You could expand on the answer to this question by asking the following:
What am I willing to do to get the right solution for me?
What am I willing to stop doing to get what I want from this situation?
How can I enjoy the process while working towards what I want?
By incorporating a set of questions after asking yourself, “What is great about this problem?”, you’re expanding the options available to you while making the process fun.
5. What Do I Need to Stop Believing So I Can Move Forward?
We all have limiting beliefs that stop us from doing what we want to do. These negative beliefs can keep you stuck in one place forever, stop you from living life to your true potential, or make you stagnate in your comfort zone for too long.
Do you have limiting beliefs that force you to self-sabotage your way forward? Here are some common examples of beliefs you may be holding onto without even realizing that they’re preventing you from growing:
I am not good enough
I am scared of failing
I am scared of success
I am not worthy
Maybe you believe you’re not skilled enough to get out of a job you hate. Or, perhaps, you believe you’re not lovable which is why it’s better to stay in an abusive relationship. One of my most destructive beliefs was, “I am deaf, therefore I am ugly.”
This kept me from forming healthy loving relationships until I changed that belief and was able to move forward into healthier partnerships.
6. What Are the FACTS Here?
This can be a difficult question to ask as what is real for you, is real for you but not necessarily for anyone else. You need to be 100% honest with yourself if you want to see the facts for what they are.
By digging deep and listening to your gut feeling, you know for sure it’s real and not some skewed perception of yours!
Looking at the hard and true facts allows you to identify when your EGO is messing with your thought processes and preventing you from moving forward. The ego loves to do this when it feels you’re putting yourself in danger such as like stepping out of your comfort zone.
This question requires you to put your subjective point of view aside and to explore the situation with an objective approach. If you struggle to see the facts, ask someone you trust to help you unpack the problem and find the truth so you can get the answer you need to move forward.
7. What Inner Resources Do I Have to Leverage the Situation?
When you’re feeling unable to move forward, it’s often because you have forgotten your innate resources. What do I mean? Let’s list some inner resources you own (but don’t recognize) that could empower you to take the first step to improving your life:
Traits such as courage, optimism, adaptability, and gratitude
Hard skills such as analysis, marketing, project management, and copywriting
Soft skills such as active listening, communication, teamwork, and time management
Your education, determination, commitment and a willingness to learn new things are some other inner resources you could possess to help you leverage the situation. Dig deep when asking yourself what inner resources you have to move forward and don’t allow the doubt to creep in!
When this happens, ask yourself the questions I shared for number 5 and 6 above.
8. What Conditioning is Holding Me Back Right Now?
We all carry stuff from our childhood that holds us back from living our true potential until we acknowledge the conditioning that stops us from moving forward. It helps to unpack this question with a therapist or life coach if you struggle to identify dysfunctional behavior from growing up as a child.
If you feel that conditioning is impacting your work or personal life you need to explore what it is to replace it with empowering beliefs. Growing up exposed to emotional alienation, invalidation, manipulation or narcissism in the family can hurt how you behave in the world as an adult.
While not everyone suffers severe childhood trauma you could be underestimating how your conditioning is preventing you from living a full and meaningful life.
9. Whose Expectations Am I Living Up to That Keep Me Stuck?
Are you still trying to meet your parents’ expectations while ignoring what is true for you? Or, have you put unrealistic expectations on yourself that stop you from taking a crucial step forward?
Wherever those expectations are coming from, make sure they’re not the reason you find yourself stagnating!
Meeting someone else’s expectations of you is a dangerous and limiting place to be. When someone places expectations on you they’re not considering your needs, your background, or showing empathy towards you.
By trying to fulfill someone else’s expectations of you often leads to failure and disappointment on both sides. This is unhealthy and counterproductive for you.
The only person you need to focus on is YOU and setting realistic demands on yourself is all that matters. That way, you will meet what is important for YOU and only YOU. However, be careful not to become attached to your expectations in such a way that should you fail you beat yourself up instead of learning and growing from your mistakes.
9. If I Could Do Anything and Know I Wouldn’t Fail What Would I Do?
This was my father’s favorite million-dollar question whenever I approached him about how to do something but I was too scared of the potential outcomes. Asking yourself what you would do knowing that you wouldn’t fail is a powerful way to move forward when fear takes over.
The real meaning of this question is that nothing is considered a failure and that every attempt is important if you view it from the perspective of a lesson to learn. If something doesn’t work the first time around, you choose to find a different approach until you do reach the outcome you’re seeking.
Robert H. Schuller asks the same question this way, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt phrased it as, “What would you do if you know you could not fail?”
However, you put it, the emphasis is on overcoming the fear of failure so that you can reach for the stars.
Final Thoughts
Asking the right questions allows you to find the best answers for YOU. It lets you start a positive thinking process that creates solutions while giving you direction and focus. What question will you start with now to take the first step towards moving forward?