46. Ask Better Questions for Better Business Results
I want you to picture this. You've spent weeks preparing for a webinar. Your heart is racing as you go live, only to watch as just one person joins. Or you're at a networking event, confidently handing out business cards to promising prospects who smile, they take your card… and then silence. Nothing but crickets. You never hear from them.
In those gut-wrenching moments, our minds flood with questions like "What did I do wrong?" or "Why isn't this working?" What most entrepreneurs don't realize is that these seemingly innocent questions are actually sabotaging our success without us even knowing it.
The specific questions we ask ourselves in challenging moments are the hidden determinants of our business growth or failure. Not all questions are created equal – there are high-quality questions that propel us forward and low-quality questions that keep us stuck. In this episode, I reveal my POWER question method – a practical framework for transforming any business obstacle into your next breakthrough.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How to identify the difference between high-quality and low-quality questions that shape your business results.
The five types of POWER questions that transform obstacles into opportunities: Possibility, Ownership, Wisdom, Expansion, and Resolution.
Why disempowering questions are our brain's default mode and how to consciously override this pattern.
3 simple questions to keep handy for whenever you experience a setback, failure, or success.
The direct connection between the quality of questions you ask and the quality of your business results.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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8. Managing Your Mind: The Secret Weapon for Building Your Business
43. Lead Magnets Made Simple: Your First Step to Business Growth
Full Episode Transcript:
Okay, I want you to picture this. You've spent weeks preparing for a webinar. Your heart is racing as you click go live, only to watch as just one person joins. Or you're at a networking event, confidently handing out business cards to promising prospects who smile, they take your card and then silence. Nothing but crickets. You never hear from them.
In that gut-wrenching moment, your mind floods with questions. What did I do wrong? Why isn't this working? Am I fooling myself to think I can succeed as an entrepreneur? These seemingly innocent questions are actually sabotaging your success without you even realizing it. What most entrepreneurs don't know is that the specific questions we ask ourselves in these make-or-break moments are the hidden determinants of our business growth or our business failure, unfortunately.
So in this episode, I'm going to be talking about an invisible force that's either propelling top entrepreneurs forward, or keeping others stuck in a cycle of frustration. You'll discover why we default to disempowering questions, and exactly how to rewire this pattern with an easy to use framework that will change how you approach every challenge, and yes, failure. By the end you'll have a practical formula to transform any business obstacle or setback into your next breakthrough simply by changing the questions you ask.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. It’s a podcast that helps working moms just like you, optimize your time, manage your mind, and start a business that helps you create more freedom, flexibility, and, yes, fun. I’m business and mindset coach Jenna Rykiel. And I offer practical tips to help you ditch the nine-to-five. I have been exactly where you are and I know what it takes to make the transition without trading one form of burnout for another. So, let’s get started.
Hi mom friends. Spring is right around the corner, so hang on. We've been getting small glimpses of sun where I'm at. And it gives me hope. I love those warmer summer months, hiking with the kids and making the most of the outdoors. Winter is my time of rest. But spring, spring is when we flourish. So I am excited.
Today, we're going to talk about questions. And they say there are no bad questions. But I'm going to disagree. Not all questions are created equal. There are high quality questions and low quality questions. Okay? The questions you ask yourself literally shape your reality.
I'm always talking about the importance of thoughts because our thoughts produce our feelings. And when we feel energized and excited, we produce better results than when we're feeling deflated and discouraged. And if you want more insights on that, check out episode 8. But questions are a special type of thought. When we ask, what's wrong with me? What we're really thinking is something is wrong with me, right? Or I'm not capable.
When we ask, why isn't this working? We're really judging ourselves thinking this won't work, or I'm not good enough, or I'm not capable of figuring this out. And I want to share a real example. I talked about the example of a webinar and only one person showing up, right? So I recently hosted a webinar, registrations were lower than I'd seen for past events and fewer people had visited the landing page in general, even though my marketing process hadn't changed much, right?
The immediate question that popped into my mind was, why aren't people signing up? And this question seems innocent, but it's actually low quality. Even as I was asking it, I was judging myself and the process, right? Behind that question, I was thinking about all the reasons why I'm not good at webinars, blaming algorithms, blaming emails going to spam, not having enough social media visibility. Right?
That low quality question had me blaming factors outside of my control and put me in a discouraged funk. Okay, not only did I wanna avoid digging into solutions, I was far from excited to host another webinar.
So why is a low-quality question our default? Because disempowering questions are automatic. They don't require us being intentional. They're our brains lazy mode. I mean, they're also a protection mechanism, just like the self-defeating thoughts that we have, right? Questions work the same way. These automatic questions, they're not going away. So we will need a system to challenge ourselves to ask better ones because with better questions we will get better answers.
So this is where the POWER question method comes in. When you hit any obstacle, challenge, or failure in a business or life, I want you to run through five types of questions. Each of these are empowering in their own way.
The first type of question is a possibility question. Possibility questions open your mind to options you haven't considered. They move you forward, they move you from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Okay? So instead of asking something like, why isn't this working? Ask what's possible that I haven't considered yet. Okay? See even just the feeling that changes and shifts as we ask that different question.
When I faced low webinar attendance, I shifted from the question, why aren't people signing up to what do I need to change in my webinar to increase attendance, the possibility of increased attendance, and a thoughtful question about what's in my control to change. And this led me to brainstorming new topics that appeal to my audience.
So other examples could be things like instead of why can't I afford to hire help, maybe asking what creative ways could I bring support into my business or life. Instead of asking why is my social media growth so low, ask what unconventional content might captivate my ideal audience.
The next type of question is an ownership question. Ownership questions put you back in the driver's seat. They focus on what you can control rather than external circumstances. So instead of why is the algorithm working against me, asking what part of this situation can I influence or control?
Let's say you are struggling with consistent clients. The question you might automatically ask yourself is, why is my business always feast or famine? Right? And you can shift that question to, how can I create a marketing system that generates leads, even during quiet periods? And that question might lead to things like a referral program, it might lead to things like starting a podcast, it might lead to a lead magnet like I talked about in episode 43.
So other examples of this could be things like you know we might ask why don't people respond to my emails? And instead, asking a question like, how can I make my communication more compelling? Instead of why is my industry so competitive, we can ask what unique value can I offer that others don't?
So I hope you're seeing the difference here. In the first question, our brain wants to think of all the reasons, the negative reasons that keep us stuck, right? When we ask, why is my industry so competitive? We think about all the reasons that it's working against us. Instead of a solution and forward thinking perspective of, okay, maybe my industry is competitive, but what unique value can I offer? What makes me unique in this competitive industry? And our brains love those types of questions. They just light up.
So those are the first two types of questions. The third is in the acronym POWER is W, wisdom questions. So wisdom questions extract the learning from every experience, okay? They transform setbacks and challenges from what we all might automatically think as failures into data.
And I've talked about this plenty of time before, right? So instead of asking the question of why did I waste my time on this? We might ask, you know, what can I learn from this experience? One of my favorite questions to ask when a challenge or an obstacle presents itself is how is this my teacher? Right? What is this trying to teach me? And that's in life and business.
When my toddler is having a meltdown, you know, being able to pause and say, you know, instead of saying something like, what's wrong with him? Why is he acting like this? Being able to step back and say, how is this my teacher? What is this trying to teach me? Oftentimes it's something like patience, of course, or something like how to take that challenge and figure out what I can do differently in order to support my kiddo in those really, really big feeling moments.
So, maybe it's a situation in your business where you've generated fewer sales than expected. We're wrapping up Q1 here and maybe you're looking at it and you didn't hit your revenue goals. And what you might ask yourself is or what I would encourage you to ask yourself is, what did I learn in Q1 that didn't work? What did work in Q1? Maybe you have fewer sales but you have sales. And so what did work and what didn't work? What did I learn from fewer sales?
Other examples of this might be, you know, instead of saying, why did a client leave? Or why did a client not sign up? Asking what feedback from this experience can improve my service, right? This is also a really good springboard to figure out ways to get feedback from clients in certain situations.
So if a client says no on a consult or if a client ends the service at any time a client ends the service, thinking about how do I get feedback how do I get more data points so that I can learn from this experience I've talked about this before but it's always putting a scientific hat on, that scientist's hat, and being able to collect as many data points as possible.
The next type of question is an expansion question. These stretch your thinking beyond your current limitations. Okay? They help you envision bigger possibilities for your business. So instead of how do I meet this month's goals, you can ask yourself what would I need to believe to double my income?
When feeling stuck in business growth, it can be easy to ask ourselves, like, why is scaling so hard? Right? One of those limiting low quality questions, but shifting it to something like how would my business operate if serving 100 clients were effortless or easy or simple, right? Asking that question of yourself can help you to develop systems and offers that allow you to scale without requiring so much energy.
The next and last type of question is a resolution question. And resolution questions prompt immediate action. They move you from analysis paralysis to implementation. So instead of, why am I stuck, asking what's my next best step?
And when we're feeling overwhelmed by all the marketing strategies available and all the things we know we could be doing in our business, instead of asking a question like, why is marketing so complicated? We can ask ourselves what single marketing action would create the biggest impact this week. This allows you to focus energy on high-leverage activities instead of scattered efforts trying to do it all.
Instead of asking the question, what if I fail again? You can ask, what specific action can I take today to move forward? So those are POWER questions. When you consistently ask questions and apply the power method to your business challenges, you'll find your focus shifting from problems to solutions, limitations to possibilities.
And the transformation isn't just in your thinking, it shows up in your results, in your revenue, in your resilience as an entrepreneur, okay? It gets you out of your head and out of that funk and into forward motion.
And I know you're probably listening and you want to put some of these questions that I've talked about in your back pocket. So I encourage you to go to the transcript for the episode which is at Jenna.Coach/46 and you can copy and paste some of these questions or maybe even write them down on a Post-It note that you're able to look at and remember these questions.
Which leads me to the next thing that I want to bring up which is how do we practice this and build it into our lives? How do we practice better questions? The first piece is awareness, right? Just like with thoughts it's easy for disempowering questions to play on repeat without us realizing it.
So start by noticing when these questions arise. I want you to think back to maybe the last time you didn't get the results you wanted in business or had a difficult situation with your kiddo. What questions popped up? Was it something like, "Why is he always acting like this?" Or "Why can't I get more clients?" And I want you to see if you can pick out patterns in your questions.
Also, if you can't recall asking yourself questions in those moments, know that they were happening. You just weren't aware of them. Okay? Just like we have 60,000 thoughts a day, many questions operate below the surface. Okay? We might not be as aware of the questions that are happening, but they are.
The second step is being proactive, OK? I want you to prepare thoughtful, empowering questions in advance, so that you're evaluating every situation, every setback, every challenge in a solution-oriented way. So I want you to have some of the questions that I talked about in your back pocket. I'll also talk about three really easy questions to keep on a Post-It or you know in your notes that you can always refer to after a challenge or a failure or a success even because that's important to evaluate too.
So for the example that I keep talking about with the webinar, the automatic question, "Why aren't people signing up?" that had a lot of judgment had a lot of weight to it, had a lot of tension. I can shift that to "How can I shift my marketing to better engage my people?" And "What would make my webinar so compelling that people can't help but share them?" Right? These questions direct my brain towards solutions and opportunities.
With those questions, I'm focused on the language in my marketing and taking ownership that there are shifts I can make to yield better results. I talked about maybe there's a structural shift I can make instead of giving people a framework. Maybe what they want is to walk away with a result. So maybe my webinar is more like a workshop instead of an information session.
There are so many things I could do differently, literally infinite things. And what we want to do is make sure that we're engaging that creative and solution-oriented part of our brain so that we aren't staying stuck when we hit a challenge or a failure. As I've said many times on this podcast, there is no failure, there is only learning.
So the three simple questions that I want to encourage you to keep in your back pocket and to refer to whenever you are going into a business activity, something new, something you're doing for the first time, after a challenge, a setback, a failure in life or business. I want you to think about these three questions and keep them again close to the cuff.
The first is what went well? We don't often allow ourselves to go there and to think about what went well, but I want to encourage you to keep that question handy.
The second is what didn't go well? That’s where we're able to really pick out all the things potentially that were within our control that didn't go well. Maybe we fumbled over our introduction. Maybe we sent out an email and only 2% of recipients open the email, right? We write down all the things that didn't go well. Maybe we just like weren't feeling ourselves when we were in the moment and taking that business activity.
The third question is what will I do differently next time? This is an ownership question. This is also a possibility question. What will I do differently next time? It allows us to prepare. It also sets the stage that we are going to try again, right? This setback or this challenge or this obstacle is not bigger than us. We know that we can shift things and we can do something differently next time. And our brain is engaged to think of what those things are. There are infinite things we could do differently.
The beauty of these prepared questions is that they put you in that evaluation mode with your scientist hat on. You're no longer taking results personally or making them mean something negative about you or the business. You are simply gathering data to improve. Okay?
The quality of your life and business is directly determined by the quality of questions you consistently ask yourself. Okay? Better questions lead to better answers, which create better actions and ultimately better results.
So I want to challenge you this week to catch yourself asking those disempowering questions that we all do, right? Nothing's wrong with you. Don't ask the question what's wrong with me, right? But notice those disempowering questions and write down three empowering alternatives using those five different types of questions I talked about.
Remember, it's the POWER method, possibility questions, ownership questions, wisdom questions, what can I learn from this, expansion questions, you know, going above and beyond what's possible, and the resolution questions. See how your brain answers these more solution-oriented questions. Recognize the feeling you get when asking more empowering questions for yourself. Does it create more motivation and energy? Are you excited to go in and try again?
I know it does it for me and my clients when we are intentional with questions. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend who could use better questions in their life or business, right? And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. These episodes, I try to fill them with practical strategies so that you can keep taking steps forward to grow your business while raising those amazing little humans.
Until next week, remember you are the most important asset of your life and business. And the right question doesn't just find answers, it creates possibilities. All right, see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
In that gut-wrenching moment, your mind floods with questions. What did I do wrong? Why isn't this working? Am I fooling myself to think I can succeed as an entrepreneur? These seemingly innocent questions are actually sabotaging your success without you even realizing it. What most entrepreneurs don't know is that the specific questions we ask ourselves in these make-or-break moments are the hidden determinants of our business growth or our business failure, unfortunately.
So in this episode, I'm going to be talking about an invisible force that's either propelling top entrepreneurs forward, or keeping others stuck in a cycle of frustration. You'll discover why we default to disempowering questions, and exactly how to rewire this pattern with an easy to use framework that will change how you approach every challenge, and yes, failure. By the end you'll have a practical formula to transform any business obstacle or setback into your next breakthrough simply by changing the questions you ask.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. It’s a podcast that helps working moms just like you, optimize your time, manage your mind, and start a business that helps you create more freedom, flexibility, and, yes, fun. I’m business and mindset coach Jenna Rykiel. And I offer practical tips to help you ditch the nine-to-five. I have been exactly where you are and I know what it takes to make the transition without trading one form of burnout for another. So, let’s get started.
Hi mom friends. Spring is right around the corner, so hang on. We've been getting small glimpses of sun where I'm at. And it gives me hope. I love those warmer summer months, hiking with the kids and making the most of the outdoors. Winter is my time of rest. But spring, spring is when we flourish. So I am excited.
Today, we're going to talk about questions. And they say there are no bad questions. But I'm going to disagree. Not all questions are created equal. There are high quality questions and low quality questions. Okay? The questions you ask yourself literally shape your reality.
I'm always talking about the importance of thoughts because our thoughts produce our feelings. And when we feel energized and excited, we produce better results than when we're feeling deflated and discouraged. And if you want more insights on that, check out episode 8. But questions are a special type of thought. When we ask, what's wrong with me? What we're really thinking is something is wrong with me, right? Or I'm not capable.
When we ask, why isn't this working? We're really judging ourselves thinking this won't work, or I'm not good enough, or I'm not capable of figuring this out. And I want to share a real example. I talked about the example of a webinar and only one person showing up, right? So I recently hosted a webinar, registrations were lower than I'd seen for past events and fewer people had visited the landing page in general, even though my marketing process hadn't changed much, right?
The immediate question that popped into my mind was, why aren't people signing up? And this question seems innocent, but it's actually low quality. Even as I was asking it, I was judging myself and the process, right? Behind that question, I was thinking about all the reasons why I'm not good at webinars, blaming algorithms, blaming emails going to spam, not having enough social media visibility. Right?
That low quality question had me blaming factors outside of my control and put me in a discouraged funk. Okay, not only did I wanna avoid digging into solutions, I was far from excited to host another webinar.
So why is a low-quality question our default? Because disempowering questions are automatic. They don't require us being intentional. They're our brains lazy mode. I mean, they're also a protection mechanism, just like the self-defeating thoughts that we have, right? Questions work the same way. These automatic questions, they're not going away. So we will need a system to challenge ourselves to ask better ones because with better questions we will get better answers.
So this is where the POWER question method comes in. When you hit any obstacle, challenge, or failure in a business or life, I want you to run through five types of questions. Each of these are empowering in their own way.
The first type of question is a possibility question. Possibility questions open your mind to options you haven't considered. They move you forward, they move you from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Okay? So instead of asking something like, why isn't this working? Ask what's possible that I haven't considered yet. Okay? See even just the feeling that changes and shifts as we ask that different question.
When I faced low webinar attendance, I shifted from the question, why aren't people signing up to what do I need to change in my webinar to increase attendance, the possibility of increased attendance, and a thoughtful question about what's in my control to change. And this led me to brainstorming new topics that appeal to my audience.
So other examples could be things like instead of why can't I afford to hire help, maybe asking what creative ways could I bring support into my business or life. Instead of asking why is my social media growth so low, ask what unconventional content might captivate my ideal audience.
The next type of question is an ownership question. Ownership questions put you back in the driver's seat. They focus on what you can control rather than external circumstances. So instead of why is the algorithm working against me, asking what part of this situation can I influence or control?
Let's say you are struggling with consistent clients. The question you might automatically ask yourself is, why is my business always feast or famine? Right? And you can shift that question to, how can I create a marketing system that generates leads, even during quiet periods? And that question might lead to things like a referral program, it might lead to things like starting a podcast, it might lead to a lead magnet like I talked about in episode 43.
So other examples of this could be things like you know we might ask why don't people respond to my emails? And instead, asking a question like, how can I make my communication more compelling? Instead of why is my industry so competitive, we can ask what unique value can I offer that others don't?
So I hope you're seeing the difference here. In the first question, our brain wants to think of all the reasons, the negative reasons that keep us stuck, right? When we ask, why is my industry so competitive? We think about all the reasons that it's working against us. Instead of a solution and forward thinking perspective of, okay, maybe my industry is competitive, but what unique value can I offer? What makes me unique in this competitive industry? And our brains love those types of questions. They just light up.
So those are the first two types of questions. The third is in the acronym POWER is W, wisdom questions. So wisdom questions extract the learning from every experience, okay? They transform setbacks and challenges from what we all might automatically think as failures into data.
And I've talked about this plenty of time before, right? So instead of asking the question of why did I waste my time on this? We might ask, you know, what can I learn from this experience? One of my favorite questions to ask when a challenge or an obstacle presents itself is how is this my teacher? Right? What is this trying to teach me? And that's in life and business.
When my toddler is having a meltdown, you know, being able to pause and say, you know, instead of saying something like, what's wrong with him? Why is he acting like this? Being able to step back and say, how is this my teacher? What is this trying to teach me? Oftentimes it's something like patience, of course, or something like how to take that challenge and figure out what I can do differently in order to support my kiddo in those really, really big feeling moments.
So, maybe it's a situation in your business where you've generated fewer sales than expected. We're wrapping up Q1 here and maybe you're looking at it and you didn't hit your revenue goals. And what you might ask yourself is or what I would encourage you to ask yourself is, what did I learn in Q1 that didn't work? What did work in Q1? Maybe you have fewer sales but you have sales. And so what did work and what didn't work? What did I learn from fewer sales?
Other examples of this might be, you know, instead of saying, why did a client leave? Or why did a client not sign up? Asking what feedback from this experience can improve my service, right? This is also a really good springboard to figure out ways to get feedback from clients in certain situations.
So if a client says no on a consult or if a client ends the service at any time a client ends the service, thinking about how do I get feedback how do I get more data points so that I can learn from this experience I've talked about this before but it's always putting a scientific hat on, that scientist's hat, and being able to collect as many data points as possible.
The next type of question is an expansion question. These stretch your thinking beyond your current limitations. Okay? They help you envision bigger possibilities for your business. So instead of how do I meet this month's goals, you can ask yourself what would I need to believe to double my income?
When feeling stuck in business growth, it can be easy to ask ourselves, like, why is scaling so hard? Right? One of those limiting low quality questions, but shifting it to something like how would my business operate if serving 100 clients were effortless or easy or simple, right? Asking that question of yourself can help you to develop systems and offers that allow you to scale without requiring so much energy.
The next and last type of question is a resolution question. And resolution questions prompt immediate action. They move you from analysis paralysis to implementation. So instead of, why am I stuck, asking what's my next best step?
And when we're feeling overwhelmed by all the marketing strategies available and all the things we know we could be doing in our business, instead of asking a question like, why is marketing so complicated? We can ask ourselves what single marketing action would create the biggest impact this week. This allows you to focus energy on high-leverage activities instead of scattered efforts trying to do it all.
Instead of asking the question, what if I fail again? You can ask, what specific action can I take today to move forward? So those are POWER questions. When you consistently ask questions and apply the power method to your business challenges, you'll find your focus shifting from problems to solutions, limitations to possibilities.
And the transformation isn't just in your thinking, it shows up in your results, in your revenue, in your resilience as an entrepreneur, okay? It gets you out of your head and out of that funk and into forward motion.
And I know you're probably listening and you want to put some of these questions that I've talked about in your back pocket. So I encourage you to go to the transcript for the episode which is at Jenna.Coach/46 and you can copy and paste some of these questions or maybe even write them down on a Post-It note that you're able to look at and remember these questions.
Which leads me to the next thing that I want to bring up which is how do we practice this and build it into our lives? How do we practice better questions? The first piece is awareness, right? Just like with thoughts it's easy for disempowering questions to play on repeat without us realizing it.
So start by noticing when these questions arise. I want you to think back to maybe the last time you didn't get the results you wanted in business or had a difficult situation with your kiddo. What questions popped up? Was it something like, "Why is he always acting like this?" Or "Why can't I get more clients?" And I want you to see if you can pick out patterns in your questions.
Also, if you can't recall asking yourself questions in those moments, know that they were happening. You just weren't aware of them. Okay? Just like we have 60,000 thoughts a day, many questions operate below the surface. Okay? We might not be as aware of the questions that are happening, but they are.
The second step is being proactive, OK? I want you to prepare thoughtful, empowering questions in advance, so that you're evaluating every situation, every setback, every challenge in a solution-oriented way. So I want you to have some of the questions that I talked about in your back pocket. I'll also talk about three really easy questions to keep on a Post-It or you know in your notes that you can always refer to after a challenge or a failure or a success even because that's important to evaluate too.
So for the example that I keep talking about with the webinar, the automatic question, "Why aren't people signing up?" that had a lot of judgment had a lot of weight to it, had a lot of tension. I can shift that to "How can I shift my marketing to better engage my people?" And "What would make my webinar so compelling that people can't help but share them?" Right? These questions direct my brain towards solutions and opportunities.
With those questions, I'm focused on the language in my marketing and taking ownership that there are shifts I can make to yield better results. I talked about maybe there's a structural shift I can make instead of giving people a framework. Maybe what they want is to walk away with a result. So maybe my webinar is more like a workshop instead of an information session.
There are so many things I could do differently, literally infinite things. And what we want to do is make sure that we're engaging that creative and solution-oriented part of our brain so that we aren't staying stuck when we hit a challenge or a failure. As I've said many times on this podcast, there is no failure, there is only learning.
So the three simple questions that I want to encourage you to keep in your back pocket and to refer to whenever you are going into a business activity, something new, something you're doing for the first time, after a challenge, a setback, a failure in life or business. I want you to think about these three questions and keep them again close to the cuff.
The first is what went well? We don't often allow ourselves to go there and to think about what went well, but I want to encourage you to keep that question handy.
The second is what didn't go well? That’s where we're able to really pick out all the things potentially that were within our control that didn't go well. Maybe we fumbled over our introduction. Maybe we sent out an email and only 2% of recipients open the email, right? We write down all the things that didn't go well. Maybe we just like weren't feeling ourselves when we were in the moment and taking that business activity.
The third question is what will I do differently next time? This is an ownership question. This is also a possibility question. What will I do differently next time? It allows us to prepare. It also sets the stage that we are going to try again, right? This setback or this challenge or this obstacle is not bigger than us. We know that we can shift things and we can do something differently next time. And our brain is engaged to think of what those things are. There are infinite things we could do differently.
The beauty of these prepared questions is that they put you in that evaluation mode with your scientist hat on. You're no longer taking results personally or making them mean something negative about you or the business. You are simply gathering data to improve. Okay?
The quality of your life and business is directly determined by the quality of questions you consistently ask yourself. Okay? Better questions lead to better answers, which create better actions and ultimately better results.
So I want to challenge you this week to catch yourself asking those disempowering questions that we all do, right? Nothing's wrong with you. Don't ask the question what's wrong with me, right? But notice those disempowering questions and write down three empowering alternatives using those five different types of questions I talked about.
Remember, it's the POWER method, possibility questions, ownership questions, wisdom questions, what can I learn from this, expansion questions, you know, going above and beyond what's possible, and the resolution questions. See how your brain answers these more solution-oriented questions. Recognize the feeling you get when asking more empowering questions for yourself. Does it create more motivation and energy? Are you excited to go in and try again?
I know it does it for me and my clients when we are intentional with questions. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend who could use better questions in their life or business, right? And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. These episodes, I try to fill them with practical strategies so that you can keep taking steps forward to grow your business while raising those amazing little humans.
Until next week, remember you are the most important asset of your life and business. And the right question doesn't just find answers, it creates possibilities. All right, see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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