In ancient India, when the student has enough thirst for the “knowledge” they would seek a guru.
Some of them would be fortunate enough to get accepted as a student by some gurus. The student then starts living there with the other students growing vegetables, doing household chores and attending the lectures. The new student would be allowed to listen to the guru’s lectures but not allowed to ask questions for the first several months. Imagine that! They came to the guru because they had many unanswered questions but the guru says no questions for a while.
The inquisitive mind of the student would not be quiet. The student would ask questions and get clarifications from other students living there. Many of the questions he had before he came to this place would be answered in a few months. After this period he would have only more insightful and more meaningful questions. By the way, such questions and answers are given in the Upanishads (in Hindu scriptures).
In our daily life, if you ask such ‘distilled questions’ not only will the answers, when you find them, amaze you but also open you new doors for you. When you find answers and dig deeper and challenge each part of the answer until you find the one answer. That is, if you get 10 answers, challenge those answers, dig deeper until the answer you’ve is one and you think/feel that is the right one. Then use that answer to find the nirvana!
Here are a couple of examples:
- Ask yourself “Why does the customer buy from me?” – Maybe from the answer you get, you can start developing a “path” for your new prospects to follow so that you can convert them to customers; Maybe use that information to develop a new product or service for your existing customers; Maybe from that information you will decide on the route for your customer service team.
- What makes you for your organization to keep you in this job? – Maybe from the answers you get you will start to understand the value you provide to your organization and start focusing on increasing it; or maybe you will develop your own plan of becoming more valuable to this or any organization; or maybe you will end up understanding the value your boss is providing for the organization and eventually you get that job!
Answers will lead to new paths or open new doors but right questions are hard to get. To paraphrase Jack Palance in the movie City Slickers, there is only one thing that makes the difference. You just need to figure out that one thing. Then you will make it!
Good searching.
