The Ask Yourself Questions
Club
. . . an
informal, free online community of people who are
concerned, curious, courageous, and caring.
Created
by ARLENE
HARDER, MA, MFT
Ask Yourself
Questions . . .
Change Your Life and the World
We're
born with curiosity. A little child will drive her
parents crazy with a thousand questions. She'll
keep asking until she receives a satisfactory answer.
Unfortunately, something happens after many of us
grow up; we lose that sense of intense curiosity.
Why Don't More People
Ask Questions?
There are many reasons why people are reticent to
probe for more information than they're given or to delve
deeply into why they believe as they do. Here are a
few of them:
 In
school the focus is on learning the "correct" answer
rather than on asking questions that may challenge
the teacher.
We
don’t ask questions because we're afraid that
if we do we'll be thought stupid for not knowing
what we think we should have learned long ago.
Every
day we are bombarded with so much information we're
afraid that if we ask questions we'll get more information
than we have energy to absorb.
We
have accepted a religious, philosophical or political
point of view that claims to have all the answers; questions would upset the comfort
we have in what we already believe.
Are You a Candidate
for the Ask Yourself Questions Club?
If you answer
yes to the following questions,
you are a candidate for the Ask Yourself Questions
Club:
Are you concerned about
the direction in which the world, or your life, is
moving?
Are you curious about
what you can do to change the world and your life?
Are you courageous enough to question
your most cherished assumptions?
Do you care enough to do something
about the answers you discover?
What Happens When We
Don't Ask Questions?
When we don’t ask questions
or when we just accept what we're told is true, we
are at the mercy of someone else’s opinions
and the facts they use to support those opinions.
When we don't ask questions and probe more deeply
into how the world works, and how our own lives work,
we are like a leaf floating down a river at the mercy
of the currents. Life changes around us and we assume
there is nothing we can do about it but go along for
the ride.
Yet as the theme of the Support4Change
website notes, "Change is not a necessity for
life. It is life." So the most basic
question you can ask is this: Are you willing to allow
others to manage the changes in your life, or do you
want to discover how to manage what happens in your
life to the greatest extent possible?
An even more important question is, would you like
to make a difference in the world by joining a growing movement in which people
ask questions, and answer questions, that can lead to better answers for everyone?
How Can Questions Change
the World?
In the center of the conflicts,
extremism, and hyper-partisanship that divide us today we can plant a
flag with a motto first stated many years ago by the cartoon philosophy
character Pogo, "We
have met the enemy and he is us."
Unfortunately, most of us are convinced
that we know all the questions, have all the answers, and assume that
the enemy is always the other guy. However, the willingness to
question our most cherished assumptions is the first step in bridging the
gap between us.
Once we make an effort to understand ourselves
and why we believe what we believe, once we recognize that reasonable people
can have legitimate differences of opinion, once we push ourselves beyond
what we assume we know and what others tell us is true, we are like a pebble
thrown into a pond that creates ripples spreading out in wider and wider
circles of understanding that will allow us to meet others at least part
way.
Where Can You Find Ask Yourself Questions Club Questions?
Follow me on Twitter, read the Blog or Newsletter,
and come here to the Ask Yourself Questions Club section of Support4Change.
© Copyright 2007, Revised 2010, Arlene
Harder, MA, MFT and Support4Change
|
and
creator of the 
