During my holiday in Vietnam, I have had alot of time to reflect on everything that I have been through during my life. I think holidays are great, not only we are in a state where we are relaxed but we are in a state where all of our stresses, thoughts and feelings are at rest. Our thoughts are clear and settled. When our thoughts are settled, we can think more clearly and our mind is more open for other productive thoughts. I noticed this when I started thinking of big questions in Vietnam. I sought our these big questions and was responded by people saying that even though I don’t speak much Vietnamese, I tend to ask very hard questions, questions that cut through the core of Vietnam. What I then realised is this:
“You get big results by asking big questions and answering them honestly”
I started testing the idea that everyone has the capacity to ask a question. Could other creatures ask questions also? Maybe. Anyway, as I was watching poor people in Vietnam and remembering rich people in Perth, I realised that everyone has the capacity to answer a question. But why should we ask questions? I thought to myself that if we do ask a question, we get a result. I believe that we are all here to grow into greater beings for a greater purpose. One of the key strategies from my beliefs in growing is getting results. If we achieve the results we want (goals) we learn and grow and move forward in life. Therefore, what I then realised is that questions can be categorized into three dimensions (perhaps there are more, which I may discover at a later date).
Three dimensions of questions
1st level – short term results
The first dimension question that can be asked are simple, short term oriented and achieve instant results. An example would be:
“how did you loose weight?”
If you were to ask this question to someone, they would give you their response in how they lost weight. Perhaps the answer would be they would do lots of walking, pills, sports etc. You can achieve your results through this if you wanted to.
2nd level – results specific
The second dimension of asking questions involves asking for what you want while explaining yourself. The structure of this question would be to state what you are currently doing and then asking how you go about doing it. An example would be:
“For the past 6 months, I have tried to loose 10 kilos through eating healthy every 2 days, walking for 1 day and only eating once a day. I look at you and you seem to be loosing weight, could you give me some advice in how I can loose 10 kilos in 6 months?”
By explaining what you have done, what you have achieved and your honest story, you will get a more accurate result response. The response would be prescribed to you because they have diagnosed your story.
3rd level – end goal result specific
The third dimension of asking questions would be to ask yourself the question first. Not only you are asking yourself a question, you are asking yourself what is the end goal, not the result of achieving your goal but what is the overall end goal of getting the result you want. An example would be:
“Why should I loose 10 kilos? Honestly, why should I bother to loose weight at all, I enjoy eating foods, I enjoy not sweating like a grease monkey, I honestly can’t be bothered with exercising, so whats the whole point of loosing weight?”
By asking yourself 3rd level questions, you begin to find our the answers yourself. I believe once you ask yourself questions first, analyze yourself from the inside, you begin to uncover bigger questions and answers to yourself. When you reach this state of mind, I believe this is the path using greater parts of the brain, which in turn, could reshape the human race as a whole by uncovering a new paradigm of thinking. You view the original question from a different perspective. For example:
“I guess there are a lot of health implications behind not exercising, also I don’t want look obese, I don’t want my family and friends to look at me differently, I don’t want to spend so much money in buying health products that would “fix” my health.” These answers begin to arise, you gain some insight into yourself such as this.
“So if I want to loose weight for my family and friends, why should I do this for them?” Then you ask yourself bigger questions and so forth, you start to uncover truths about yourself, ONLY if you answer them honestly. As you delve deeper into yourself, something happens to you, you get a greater (perhaps full) understanding of yourself and motives behind your question. Once you get behind that understanding, something then happens, you get either motivated or you are convinced whether the goal you want to achieve is really what you really want. This result from delving deeper gives you a win win result. You get added motivation to achieve your result, or you are free from being limited to an answer to a question you don’t really need in your life.
I remember when I was waiting for my mum to return back from the shops in the car park. During that time, my self esteem was very low because I believed that I was stupid for not speaking Vietnamese very well. Alot of people used to tell me that my Vietnamese was poor and everyone used to tease me. This severly affected me for many years. It affected nearly all parts of my life. What happened was that I asked myself a big question. I asked myself how I really felt. I told myself I feel really stupid for not speaking Vietnamese very well. Then I asked myself, does not speaking a language very well make you dumb? For example, Einstien who is considered a very smart man only spoke German, does that mean that since he only speaks German, he is dumb? Then it hit me, my old paradigms shifted, a new one began to form immediately. I immediately realised that Vietnamese is only a language of communication, just because I struggle to communicate in a language does not make me stupid. If I had the power to write books on new age inventions in English but not in Vietnamese, that does not make me stupid. A person who can not speak at all, how do you know they are not thinking of a answer to solve a cure for cancer? At that point on, my self esteem was at a record high, I started building confidence, which amazingly, started to affect more areas in my life and strangly, my Vietnamese started to improve. All because I asked a big question.
I believe that by asking the big questions and answering them honestly, you begin to shift your thinking from old thoughts to new ones. When you continually shift your thoughts and continually change, practice and apply new thoughts, I believe, that, alone, is helping achieve our purpose in life, which is to grow into a greater being. I believe a way to start asking bigger questions would be to ask many questions from different levels, different perspectives, different feelings and different environments. Project your mind as far as you can. Remember, you are reading this because you can read English, this text could all be different, what if you soaked this information into your mind using some method of learning in 100 years time? What I am trying to point out here is, stretch your mind as far and close as you can when approaching the results you want. Does buying that big tv or nice car matter if you were on Pluto? If you were beyond the galaxy on a planet with breathable air, would anything you are doing right now matter? Perhaps some of it, perhaps all of it? What if there really is no one out there, the text your reading now is really something that was inserted into your mind by a greater purpose? Could this be all a simulation? Can we prove some of the things we tend to commonly prove? When asking questions, ask big questions, ask the question from a view point of a 2 year old, ask the question from a point of a 20 year old and vice versa. Ask the question if you were a fish, ask the question if you were a ghost, ask the question from a tree. Use everything, use everyone, test new theories, beliefs, past experiences, future experiences, hunches, immature beliefs, mature beliefs, everything you have accumulated in your life, use it all. We are so scripted in thinking in human ways to go about our living. Remember, America may do things one way, Vietnam may do it another way. Could there be a better way suggested by other life forms? The power behind asking big questions is that you can unravel inventions, theories, ideas, paridigms and things that you could shape the future of the human race. Intellegence, I believe is using your imagination, something that begins by asking great questions.
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