Why asking questions often destroys people.
“The Unexamined Life is not worth living.” – Socrates (and other random gurus).
The common thought is to sit down and think about what matters to you, how to make your life better, how to progress, and all that typical stuff. But introspection is a slippery slope to hell if you’re not careful.
When asking yourself a question about how you could have done something differently, or better, or what your true motivation was, there’s an easy chance it turns into things you regret, or can’t change, or can’t improve from.
While asking questions to yourself to make better decisions in the future, it’s important to remember if there’s even an opportunity to do things better in the future. If you ask yourself if it was a bad idea to never tell your sibling that you loved them and now all your siblings are dead, then maybe answering that question only leads to regret. If asking yourself when you’re 65 and broke, if you should have saved when you were younger, it’s a bit too late and the answer can only lead to regret.
Maybe regret can be used to save other people to help prevent them from making your mistakes. But we all know most of us will simply be overtaken with guilt and regret more than we’ll be overtaken with joy from spreading the message to others to not repeat your own mistakes.
Focusing in on questions where you have a chance to make things better and change your behavior moving forward is far superior to just asking yourself questions that can NOT give you clarity on how to behave differently moving forward.
Beware of sea of guilt that is always just a few introspective questions away. It’s far better to focus on the questions that you can see yourself benefitting from by having clarity for moving forward. It’s an art to look inward, find yourself, ask the right questions, and when you do stumble into the questions that lead you into the abyss that can’t be changed at all for the better moving forward, to simply release it and/or help other people not make those mistakes.
What’s an introspective question you asked yourself that helped you make a better decision moving forward in life? What’s an introspective question you asked yourself that really only resulted in your regret?
