When “why” is the wrong question
Our brain loves to solve problems. It functions beautifully to figure out how to make a pumpkin pie, sail across oceans, or build a house. It’s a wonderful tool for creativity.
But if we are trying to understand ourselves, find a way out of suffering, it can derail us because our minds get caught in the process of figuring out why.
Do these sound familiar?
- Why am I feeling this way?
- Why did this happen to me?
- Why did I do that again?
Asking “why” is our mind’s attempt to make sense of things. The “why” question stimulates our mind to keep searching for stories and explanations.
Right now, ask yourself a why question like “why am I feeling this way?”
Then notice what your mind does. It tries to come up with reasons to answer the question of why. Rather than focusing on what needs to shift, you’re trying to research the why.
So…
We could forget about asking why and instead ask questions that bring our attention to our right-now experience and see what our mind does with that.
- What is most important to me right now?
- What can I do differently?
- How can I help?
- What can I surrender right now that isn’t serving me?
We can feel the difference because these type of questions open us to the expansiveness of the moment and the choices we could be making instead of looking back and trying to figure out “why.” Our brain does want to answer our questions!
So today, instead of looking for reasons as to why things are the way they are, we can try asking ourselves how we’d love it to be, what we would need to do.
We do live in a responsive universe. Asking a different question can generate a new energy in our hearts and minds. This is a new cause and new effects are on the way!
To paraphrase an important saying,
2 Comments
‘Why’ is often the incorrect question to be asked first. Asking the others seems more useful in the right here, right now world. Then, we could progress perhaps to ‘why’ at a more leisurely pace as it isn’t actually the urgently useful one or to which we really need the answer. Oddly, today I actually did that on a silly thing: purchasing a flannel shirt. My first idea was to ask the company ‘why don’t they make solid colored ones, only plaids?’ then simply changed it to ‘Will you please make solid colored ones?’. It felt more likely to solve the problem. The why might be interesting, just not productive.
Fay, I agree that it’s often just curiosity that has us asking why and the other questions are much more likely to be productive!