Asking Empowering Questions

Download the Empowering Questions PDF here

Most small business owners think their results come from strategy, effort, or timing, but in reality, they’re being shaped by something far more subtle: the questions they repeatedly ask themselves.

In this episode, we break down how your internal dialogue can undermine your experience of business. From confirmation bias to habitual thought loops; your brain is constantly searching for evidence to support whatever you believe, meaning the quality of your questions directly influences what you notice, what you miss, and what you act on.

We explore the difference between low-quality questions that keep you stuck in self-doubt, comparison, and victim thinking, versus high-quality questions that create clarity, ownership, and momentum. You’ll learn how overthinking is often just intelligence misdirected by fear, and how self-leadership begins with becoming aware of the questions running your mind.

This isn’t about ignoring reality. It’s about learning how to interrupt unconscious patterns and start asking better questions, the kind that move you from reaction into responsibility, and from confusion into action.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in your business, overwhelmed by your own thoughts, or unsure how to move forward, this episode will help you step back into clarity, perspective, and self-trust.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome back to episode two. I'm so excited to bring this episode to you. I've been planning it for weeks, so I'm just going to get straight into it because the more I think about it, the more I just want to share it with you, and I want it to really hit home so that you know how powerful you actually are in your business. So, years ago, I heard a saying that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions that you ask. And I actually think the same is true in business. The quality of your business is going to be determined by the quality of the questions that you ask. Because the questions you ask of yourself, of others, those who are supporting you on your business and growth journey, your coach, your mentor, or anyone else, they're going to shape the way you see and experience so many things, all of the different layers and levels of things that we experience while we're growing our business. The way we see problems, how we experience people, the way you look for opportunities, how you work through setbacks, the way you plan for growth, how you calculate risk, what you see as possible for yourself. They'll even impact your identity as a business owner. They'll impact what you actually think you're capable of and how powerful you think you are at any point in time. Ultimately, the quality of the questions you ask will 100% shape the decisions that you end up making as you grow your business. And I've seen this, I've seen this be the difference between someone seeing even more opportunity and going out and growing their business, and someone else saying, actually, there's no opportunity left here and closing their doors. It can be that big. So while that sinks in, I also want to tell you something else I heard years ago that has always stuck with me. As humans in our day-to-day life, we have approximately 6,000 to 14,000 thoughts per day. Our brains love to run all the scenarios, all the scenarios. If you're an overthinker, you'll probably be nodding along with this, right? But here's the funny thing: those thoughts are not unique thoughts. It's estimated that something like 90% of those thoughts are the same thoughts that you had yesterday. We actually think the same things on repeat. And the sad part about that is that 80% of those are thought to be negative thoughts. Why does this always happen to me? Why how did I end up like this? Why aren't I doing what they're doing? Why aren't I going as fast? Why isn't this working? Those negative thoughts is what cause people to spiral. Those low quality questions are usually the reason why we end up either giving up, slowing down, or not seeing what's actually in front of us and what's actually possible for us. That's why this episode is so important. It's a powerful episode that will teach you not just how to ask better questions. I want everybody asking themselves and their mentors and their coaches better questions. But I also want to teach you how to coach yourself through nearly any situation in your business so that you keep yourself from spiraling. Because here's the thing: I know that mentorship costs money. Sometimes we can't afford the mentorship that we need at the time that we need it. But I don't want that to be a reason why an ambitious business owner doesn't make progress in their business. If you are ambitious and you have the drive, there's going to be times where you have to coach yourself. And when you're equipped with really powerful questions that you can ask yourself to work through tough situations, you will build the most amazing toolkit and skill set for yourself as you grow. So I want you to consider that. Your brain is the biggest yes man to you, your own thoughts. And two, your brain is wired to find evidence for everything that you tell it. So when we ask ourselves things like, why am I so behind, or why does this always happen to me, our brain, because it's trained to agree with us, it will always say, actually, yes, you are behind. And here's how you are behind, and it will prove to you all the ways that you're not doing what you're meant to be doing, or you're not at the stage that you're meant to be at. It will show you all this evidence that can lead to you spiraling. That's just how the brain is built. Our brain is built for survival. Unfortunately, it's not built for success, and successful thinkers, successful builders, successful business owners, they actually train their brains to think differently. So here's what I want you to know. We're not trained this way. Our parents, grandparents, society teaches us to look for the wrong, to look for the bad, to look for the to look out for fear and for danger. Our brains are hardwired to look out for the scary and to keep us safe. So overthinking every situation is often seen as preparation. We're getting ready just in case things go wrong. We're preparing ourselves in business, that's gonna keep us stuck. I do think overthinking can be a sign of high intelligence. I trust me, I know that a lot of the most intelligent people I know are also those who do prepare themselves for the worst. But I think sometimes that our intelligence is a thing that does us that disservice. Because instead of asking ourselves really strong, powerful questions like, How can I make this work? How am I showing up? What else could I do? We ask things like, what if it all goes wrong? What is wrong with me? What why does this always happen to me? And the thing is, if we're always training our brain, if our brain is trained to always look for the evidence that we're failing, it's gonna be really, really hard to see how much you're actually growing and how much you're learning and the qualities that you're developing, the resilience and the persistence and the determination, and those qualities and character traits that are actually necessary to grow really successful businesses. So I just want you to keep that in mind as we move on to the next section of this podcast. Because usually you're not behind, you're not failing, you've just experienced some challenges that have developed and are helping you develop the muscle of persistence and resilience and the strength in character. But unfortunately, people will say, Oh, that promotion failed, or the strategy didn't work, and take it as a personal blow instead of saying, I'm learning resilience, I need to refine. What else can I try? And growing that muscle. So I think one of the most important skills in business is learning the difference between low-quality questions and high-quality questions because not all questions are created equal. Low quality questions are questions that are usually emotively reactive, right? Usually they come from fear or shame or judgment or comparison or helplessness or perfectionism or self-judgment. It's questions like, why am I so bad at this? Why is everyone else ahead of me? What if I embarrass myself or make a fool of myself? What if I why can't I keep it together? What if it all falls apart? These questions create a lot of emotional noise. And unfortunately, they usually keep us stuck because we keep ruminating, we keep thinking about the problem, and we keep spiraling in the same mess and in the same muddy questions, and usually they keep us stuck for a long time. Sometimes we even move backwards in the messy, messy middle. Um, and they very rarely actually help us create anything of significance from the experience that we're going through. So, what are high-quality questions? High quality questions help us create awareness, take ownership, find solutions, and create action steps. They move us back into self-leadership and bring back our own personal power. They can actually help us create our own strategy for moving forwards and for growth. High quality questions are the types of questions a coach or mentor will ask you. And as a huge hack for growth, these questions, when you get really good at asking them for yourself, they can actually help you grow your business too. So these are questions like what's actually true here? And finding the data. What does the data tell me? What am I making this mean? What else could it mean? What patterns can I see? What have I learned? What is this teaching me? What's within my control? What could I try next? What else could I try? Where are my knowledge gaps? Where are my skill set gaps? What skills do I need to develop? What would make the biggest difference right now? And what am I avoiding because it feels uncomfortable? These questions, you can notice the difference immediately when you ask yourself questions like this: from why does this always happen to me? To what could this mean? What does the data tell me? How can I refine this? What else could I try? We're moving from the why and the rumination and the oh, you know, uh the the woe is me to action and powerful questions that can help you create another strategy. What else could I try? Where else could I look? What else could this mean? How else could I phrase this? What can I refine here? Low quality questions will keep you trapped in the problem. High quality questions help you become the person that's capable of solving the problems. Now, I honestly think one of the biggest differences between people who stay stuck and people who actually grow businesses of significance and businesses that they're proud of and profitable and do all the things that you want your business to do is the quality of the questions that they ask during the hard seasons. Because hard seasons happen to everyone. And I think as responsible business owners, we really need to prepare ourselves not for if hard seasons happen, it's for when hard seasons happen. Rather than asking why me, ask yourself what is this teaching me? What is this asking of me? Rather than saying, oh, that's so impossible or everything is changing or everything is so hard. Why is everything so hard? You could ask yourself questions like, what would need to happen in order for this to work? What help would I need in order to make this happen? Who knows more about this than I do and what questions can I ask them? One is gonna cause you to spiral into negative thoughts and self-doubt. The other one moves you into self-leadership. I know I'm making this sound way easier than it actually is. This is where good mentorship absolutely comes into play because a lot of the times when we're in the thick of the hard, challenging times, we it's natural, it's really natural not to have the capacity to ask ourselves those questions. Also, in business, it's really hard to see our own blind spots, and it's challenging to bring awareness to thought patterns that have been rooted in our minds for years. We were actually not taught to think this way. So, this even thinking this way takes awareness and a commitment to unlearning. And I don't want to pretend that this is easy and that everyone can do it or that everyone can do it immediately. It absolutely takes time and patience with yourself because the first way the asking the lower level questions, especially if you catch yourself thinking that way, trust me, that's a well-worn track in your mind. The when the trigger occurs, the thought pattern that presents itself is one that you have thought many, many times before. Training yourself or teaching yourself to think differently takes a lot of effort. It takes awareness in the moment. You have to catch yourself in that you're spiraling or that you're thinking this way. It takes a decision. So making the decision that you're not going to think that way anymore, that those thought patterns have protected you up until now, but they're no longer serving you. And then it takes that commitment to thinking a different way and asking yourself different questions. So trust me, I know that it's not as easy as I'm making it sound, but now with this an awareness, now that you've listened to this episode, I'm gonna equip you with some of my favorite, powerful questions that I love asking myself. And what I'd encourage you to do is print off the PDF that's going to be attached to this podcast in the show notes. And when you catch yourself spiraling, try to bring yourself back around and ask yourself even just one or two of these questions. And even if there's time, give yourself time and be kind to yourself, give yourself grace if this is new to you. Even if you spiral for a day and then catch yourself out, that's still better than spiraling and then making poor decisions because of it. So, my favorite powerful questions. What do I actually want? What's actually true here? Or what is the data telling me? What am I making this mean? What else could it mean? What specifically is the issue? What could I try? What else could I try? Is there another way? What would the next level or the most successful version of me do in this situation? What evidence do I have that I'm actually growing? What is this teaching me? What is this asking of me? What would this look like if it were easy? What am I avoiding? What knowledge gaps do I have here? What skill set gaps do I have here? What am I really truly afraid of? And why does that matter? What would it look like if it was fun? What can I learn from this? And if I trusted myself fully, what would I do next? So that's a handful of some of my favorite questions. I actually believe that you don't need a lot of questions to coach yourself, just three or four very powerful questions used on repeat in multiple circumstances and in multiple situations can actually be really, really useful. So choose a few that have resonated with you or create your own and write them down somewhere, visible. Keep them, don't hide them, keep them handy where you work so that the next time you're feeling out of control or you're feeling like things aren't going your way, or that there's things that are beyond your capacity. Bring those questions out or have them there in front of you and try to ask yourself those questions in a way that is empowering for you. If you're feeling overwhelmed, ask yourself what specifically am I overwhelmed by? If you're worried about doing things wrong, ask yourself, what is the fear? Where is the fear? What am I actually scared will happen? Right? So it's about just using a handful of questions in a really powerful way to help you move through so many different situations. So I'm gonna end here and I'm gonna end with this. I think a lot of business owners are unknowingly building evidence against themselves every single day. Evidence that they're failing, that they're behind, that their business isn't growing, that they're not good enough, that they're not capable, that they have no control over the outcomes, that the economy is shifting and there's nothing they can do about it, that they're not cut out to chase or follow their goals or dreams. Unfortunately, we're not taught to think in powerful ways as we're growing up. This is a brand new way of thinking for so many people. And unfortunately, what happens is when we forget our power as business owners and as human beings, we overlook so much of what's actually happening, like the truth that we are growing and that we're learning new skill sets every day, and that we might be expert cake makers, but we are beginner business owners, and that we're evolving and that we're becoming, and that becoming takes time. So, something that you have to grasp is that eventually the quality of the questions that you ask yourself also become the quality of your self-leadership. And like I said, we'll circle right back around, right? Right at the start of this episode, I said the quality of the questions can be the difference between someone seeing absolutely no hope and no opportunity and feeling like it is all doom and gloom and that there is no nowhere else to turn, and them actually closing their business and not going for growth, feeling like there's nothing else to achieve. But it can also be the difference between someone asking great questions and seeing the next opportunity, the next possibility, building the resilience muscle, building the skill set of growth, and actually becoming the person who achieves the goals that they want and that they've set for themselves. So, what I want you to know is this leaders ask better questions. Not how do I avoid the discomfort? Why can't it be easy? We don't ask those questions. We ask what will the growth that I want actually require from me. So I've got a challenge for you this week. Instead of obsessing over whether you're doing enough or growing enough or not seeing the growth that you want and spiraling, I want you to start paying attention to the thoughts that you're having. And I want you to challenge your own thinking and start asking yourself better questions. And send me an email. A week from now, I want to know whether you have taken bigger, bolder, more aligned, and more strategic and powerful actions in your business just because you taught yourself how to think differently. I hope you've gained so much from this episode. I've loved to bring it to you. I can't wait for so many more fun episodes to come. This is leadership. This is what it takes to grow businesses that become significant. And just like in last, in the last episode where I spoke about what does it actually take? It takes courage, it takes self leadership, it takes thinking differently, it takes surrounding yourself with people that have actually grown something significant themselves, right? When we teach ourselves and surround ourselves with people doing big things, it becomes normal and natural for us to want to. And to aim for bigger things too. And that is what I want for you. I want you to know that anything that you want is possible and that your thinking and the opportunities that you actually see for yourself are shaped by the questions that live in your mind every single day.