Questions to ponder: In life we come across different situations. These questions are applicable to all circumstances.
Life takes us through different twists and turns. How useful it will be to have tools that are applicable to all circumstances, help us analyze the situation and to guide us in the right direction.
Qustions to ponder
Variables vs constants:
Life takes us through different twists and turns. Some events in life are constants like we brush our teeth sleep and eat. But others are variables – something that we don’t do ordinarily.
Variables provide variety to life and make today appear different from yesterday. Imagine everyday appearing exactly same. This will obviously lead to boredom.
Variables as good they are also have an inherent drawback of introducing stress. A lot of stress in life is caused by mostly unknowns. We are asked to do a job within a week (that we don’t even know how to start), we are transferred to different country that we don’t know much about, car broke down in the middle of journey and we don’t know what to do etc. Most of these situations seem so intimately familiar. Imagine for a moment being in these situation. Stress level in the body suddenly rises. Everything seems out of control due to variables.
Balance:
While all constants leads to boredom, all variables lead to stress. So what we need is a fine balance of constant and variables so that we can lead a balance life. Even better would be to have tools we know are constant but that are applicable to all variable circumstances. These tools should help us analyze the situation and to guide us in the right direction.
Answer:
Answer lies in the following quote:
I kept six honest serving- men
(They thought me all I knew);
Their names are WHAT and WHY and WHEN
and HOW and WHERE and WHO
– Rudyard Kipling
Instead of emotionally getting stressed, we can analyze any situation by asking above mentioned six questions: what, why, when, how, where, and who.
Let’s analyze the above situation of car breaking down in the middle of journey:
What? (What happened?) – Car broke down in the middle of journey
Why? (Why did this happen?) – Didn’t get it serviced regularly or servicing is not done properly or everything was working fine but something broke down on the way (Please note it guides us to future possible precautionary action)
When? (When did this happen?) – Middle of night, when I am with my family
How? (How did this happen?) – While driving I smelt something burning and it came to a halt (can help in corrective action by competent person)
Where? (Where did this happen) – High way number 123 near the place ABC (can help to guide the competent helping person to the location)
Who? (Who can help me in this situation?) – Other car drivers to get dropped to nearest hotel, hotel directly and ask them to send a tax, car service personnel, police etc.
This analysis is so obvious that we do it all the time. While all the questions may not have the same level of importance in all situation, they do provide framework to analyze any situation and avoid/in most case reduce stress level/
A related useful tool is to ask the question repeatedly. “Why?” place an important role here to get to the root cause of anything, provide motivation, clarity and even to come up with alternate course of action. Combinations of questions can also be asked to achieve clarity
The following great quotations inspire you towards asking questions:
•A person can become so comfortable with everything that they don't know, that they just stop asking questions altogether
•He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
•Always ask the questions you want to, life is too short to know if you'll get a second chance to ask , and afterlife is probably too long to wonder what the answer may be
•When one needs an answer to life's greatest questions, look towards either Chaos or Nothingness
•At the end of the day, the questions we ask of ourselves determine the type of people that we will become
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