Losing the fear of making questions
Overcoming Fear: The First Step in Mastering Value Hacking Through Skillful Questioning
The fear of asking questions is something that affects us all, right from those early school years. To some in a higher dimension than to others. The reasons for that fear will differ from person to person, yet if we all remember way back in our childhood, every kid had a moment where they would learn to ask the why of their surrounding, and as parents, we have the opportunity to test our knowledge, test our teaching skills, and certainly test our patience.
As Value Hacking has become the center of focus at Inspiral Growth, it is now more than ever the objective to share with you tools to overcome that fear and later on how to transform that fear into a new empowering tool: Skillful Questioning.
Tip number 1: Giving meaning to FEAR
A fellow coach, Alejandro Bratti, shared a picture within a private group of coaches about the meaning we can give to the letters that compose the word FEAR.
FEAR could mean: Forget Everything And Run
Or FEAR could mean: Face Everything And Rise
The choice is yours.
There is nothing wrong with the existence of Fear; in fact, fear can keep you sharp and save your life in specific situations, yet the fact of remaining frozen by fear is something we need to reflect upon.
Tip number 2: The Power of Exercise
This insightful image came to me just a day after having as an honored guest on my podcast, David Meltzer. In the wonderful conversation, we had with David, we also addressed the number ONE piece of advice for anyone expanding into a new horizon: ASK FOR HELP. Take inventory and ask for help.
David also shared with me a wonderful exercise to overcome this fear. In David’s words:
“… so in order to practice ending fear, what we want to do is practice identifying fear. I’ve developed a four-step process in order to effectuate one, identifying fear, fear of the past, which usually is an aspect of guilt and resentment or fear of the future that’s created by anxiety or worry. And what we wanna do is practice identifying when we are afraid and instead of resisting that fear, instead of trying to go over and under it, throw it around it, instead of trying to lie to it, manipulate and cheat it.
Like we spoke of earlier, what I want you to do is stop, breathe through your nose, and out through your mouth…
…I want you to remember the source of your faith… I want you to remind with the source of your faith… I want you to recollect with the source of your faith. And then I want you to roll in the trajectory of where you think you want to be or better by giving meaning to that fear. And when I talk about giving meaning to that fear, I’m asking myself what ego-based consciousness am I prescribing to protect myself emotionally with my energy to that fear? Do I have a need to be right? I need to be offended and need to be separate, inferior, superior, anxious, frustrated, angry, guilty, resentful. And if I can identify that I can now put myself back on track back into a trajectory of where I think I want to be or better by giving meaning to that fear in that trajectory.
And now I can ask myself, what do I want? Who can I help? Who can help me? How best can I be productive, accessible, and gracious allowing me to understand what’s important to me, not what’s important to you or what’s missing, what I don’t have or what we don’t want, what’s important to me so that I can prioritize my Now. Nothing 100% of the things we do now get done.
And if I prioritize my NOW, I’m now applying my why identifying the fear, the interference between me and my potential me, and my truth.
If anyone out there wants these five daily practices to effectuate clearing the interference, it’s identifying the fear, just email David to david@dmeltzer.com.”
David’s words resonated with me on so many levels that I was more than thankful to be able to share them with everyone now, here in this article, and I invite you to follow the wonderful podcast of David, The Playbook.
Tip number 3: Your own warrior, Breathing
Recently, at a live event in Tallinn with Paul Mckenna, together with over 700 coaches, we learned about a breathing exercise from Aikido. This exercise can reduce stress levels by bringing your attention from your head to your stomach and counting from 10 to 1.
We repeated this exercise, and it was certainly quite a wonderful moment watching hundreds of open-minded people experimenting with this breathing exercise. For me, it was special in the sense that it was a validation moment because it was a very similar exercise to what I have been practicing for years thanks to my sifus and lessons in Kungfu and now in Taichi.
My sifu Paul Resnick teaches the art of conquering your battles with his program, Martial Mind Mastery. One of the exercises he teaches is the act of grounding, finding balance through your breathing, and how relaxation, grounding, breathing, and some of these practices, though for centuries in Taichi and Kungfu, can help you overcome fears. If you are interested in knowing more about Sifu Paul Resnick’s teaching, I would strongly advise you to follow his channels at the link.
These are three insights that aim to help you practice ending fear. Now, once that is more under control, the next insights are about how to craft your questions to enhance value hacking.
Before we conclude
we’d like to mention that this article is just the first part of our insights into the art of skillful questioning. For a deep dive into the kinds of questions you can use for value hacking, we invite you to check out the second part of this article here.
To stay updated and learn more about how value hacking can become an integral part of your life and business, connect with us on YouTube and LinkedIn. We’re excited to embark on this journey with you and explore the boundless possibilities that skillful questioning and value hacking can unlock. Let’s transform the way we create value together.
