53: The Power of Asking Yourself Great Questions

Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.

Well hello, everyone. welcome to episode 53. So, today I want to talk about this concept of thinking time and asking yourself questions. So, some of you might be thinking, “What is she talking about?”

And so, this is a concept I learned from Brooke Castillo, the creator of The Life Coach School, where I trained to be a coach. And she actually has an episode called Superthinking.

And so, I highly recommend you listen to that podcast episode. It will complement this one very well. And so, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, hopefully you understand that your thoughts create feelings, which lead to actions. And over time, these actions eventually become your life.

I guess you could say the problem is that most of us don’t think on purpose. Our brain just offers up thoughts. It offers up 60,000 thoughts a day, most of which are not conscious. But for the ones that are conscious, we believe them. We think we are our thoughts.

And so, this concept of putting time aside to think might be kind of foreign to you. Now, some of you might be journalers or you’ll spend some time journaling or you’ve been to conferences or retreats where they had you spend some time journaling.

And if you think about it, journaling is basically thinking time. That’s how I think about it anyway. And the reason why journaling can be so powerful is that it requires you to pause and reflect. And as you write your thoughts out on paper, I mean, that’s kind of what journaling is, then you get to read your thoughts and look at your thoughts with some distance.

Because otherwise, we’re just in our heads and the thoughts are just floating around and we can’t tell left from right usually. Now, most of us spend way more time planning a vacation than planning our life. Or said another way, most of us spend way more time thinking about a vacation than thinking about our life.

And even when we do, it’s often only about once a year, usually January. And so, I want to introduce the concept of thinking about things, your life, whatever is on your mind more often and deliberately. And one of the best ways to think on purpose, to access new thoughts to believe, is to ask yourself questions.

Questions are a great way to open up your brain to new possibilities. You know, our brains are supercomputers and if you ask yourself a question, your brain wants to answer the question. Not only are questions a great way to open up the brain to new ways of thinking. It’s also a way to disrupt the status quo inside your brain.

You probably have heard me say to never say the phrase, “I can’t afford this.” And to instead ask yourself, “How can I afford this?” Because if you tell yourself a statement like, “I can’t afford this…” what do you think happens? Nothing. Because you basically have accepted you believe, “I can’t afford this,” is a fact. Did you know that it’s a thought actually?

But when you ask yourself a question, “How can I afford this?” then you start thinking about ways to make it possible. So, that’s just a quick example of how questions can be so powerful.

I also think questions are great journal prompts. And like I said earlier, journaling is a great way – it basically is a way to see your thoughts on paper versus being in your head with your thoughts. Thinking on purpose, choosing your thoughts intentionally versus letting thoughts happen to you is the key to creating the life you want.

Because most of us, this is how we live. We think something. A sentence goes through our mind. And we believe it. And then our thoughts become self-fulfilling prophecies. And so, I said earlier that I call this concept thinking time or superthinking. There’s many different phrases given to it. But basically, it’s time set aside for you to think.

And so, this is something that I do every week purposely. Meaning I schedule time to think. This is very different than how most of us think about scheduling time to do things. This is thinking time. This isn’t doing time.

I think about my business. I think about myself. I think about my life. I think about my family. Any area that I want access to new thoughts to believe and to gain insight. And oftentimes during this time, I am basically asking myself questions and answering them myself.

So, I’m going to share some of the questions I ask myself and then I’m going to suggest questions that you can try on as well, since many of you listening probably don’t have a business like I do. But you may.

For example, you may own a practice. And so, if you do own a practice, I definitely encourage you to set aside some time to really think about your practice, your business. And so, I’m going to go over some of the questions that I ask myself around my business.

Now, the way I think about my job in the context of my busines sis that it is my job to think, for my business and my clients. Meaning I’m basically a think tank for the business and for my clients.

What do my clients need from me? What problems do they have that I need to solve? What are the common thought errors, or said another way, what are the common limiting beliefs my clients are having and how can I help them most effectively? How do I get my clients better and faster results? How can I make my concepts even simpler and easier for them to understand? What skills do I need to work on as a coach, as a CEO, as a manager, et cetera? How can I believe in my clients more today? How do I need to show up for her? What is my relationship to my business today? How can I add or create more value?

Here are some examples of some non-business questions that I’ll ask myself. What areas of growth do I have? How is it true that I have enough? Now, I ask that question often because my brain will often default to, “We don’t have enough,” or scarcity-based thinking. So, this is a question I ask to kind of disrupt that status quo in my brain.

Who do I want to be for myself? For Matt? For Jack? Who would I be if I deleted – insert negative thought or limiting belief? And so, these are just examples of some of the questions I ask. And you’re welcome to borrow them, of course. But I really encourage you to come up with your own questions based on what you want to work on or what you want to think on.

Now, some caveats about creating your own questions. It’s important that you ask the, quote unquote, right questions. And let me explain what I mean by that. Now, there’s no such thing as a right or wrong question, but I highly recommend you don’t ask negative questions.

For example, if you are trying to lose weight and let’s say the thing you do is eat too much pizza. Here’s an example of a negative question. Why can’t I stop eating pizza? That’s an example of a negative question because that question is basically insinuating, is basically judging yourself and shaming yourself for eating pizza.

And so, a better way to ask that question would be something like, “Why do I love eating pizza? Why do I want to eat more pizza, even when I’m no longer hungry?

Negative questions will often lead to negative answers. And negative thinking does not work. Shaming yourself, punishing yourself for a behavior that you’re labeling wrong does not work. And hint, it doesn’t work for other people either.

So, the next time you’re in front of a pen and piece of paper and you’re journaling, come up with three questions to ask yourself and answer them. You’ll be amazed at the wisdom that you already have inside versus asking someone else or Googling the answer. Google within yourself. Okay, I’ll talk to you guys next week.

Hey if you’re ready to create wealth, I want to invite you to join my program Money for Women Physicians. You’ll join a community of likeminded women physicians who are committed to creating wealth. Just head over to wealthymommd.com/money to learn more.