The Magic Question

When I ask this question, it is interesting what happens. Instead of getting a straight answer, most people begin to describe their present circumstances and the things they don’t like about them. They think they are answering the question, but all they are really doing is restating their discontentment.

Some people might take the question the wrong way, thinking it is somehow sarcastic or obtrusive. But if they took a moment to examine the question for what it is, they might find inside themselves interesting insights they have been ignoring because asking this question invites them to use their imagination, a resource they may have abandoned as a child because, “We all gotta grow up sometime.”

When did the magic fade for you? When did you stop believing?

Neither of those is the magic question, but I offer them here to spur your thinking. If an answer comes quickly for you, I wonder why that answer. What does that answer offer you? Does it give you comfort, peace, or protection? Does it offer you a sense of certainty or adventure? Does it open your mind to possibilities or lock it into a fixed way of thinking?

The magic question is this:

What do you want?

This is the first question I ask myself and my clients. And as I said, it is interesting how they will begin to offer all the things they don’t want. And while that might seem helpful to list all the things you don’t want, your brain often focuses on what you repeatedly emphasize. The more you talk about how you don’t want x, and you don’t want y, the more your brain will lock into the thing you don’t want. It will begin to show you evidence supporting why you don’t want it.

But what if instead, we focused on things we actually want? When we do that, our brain starts looking for possibilities. It wants to help you get what you want. Why? Because our brains are teleological, meaning they are goal-oriented. They want to achieve something. Whether it is continual complaining about your undesired lifestyle and how life isn’t fair, or how every day you are getting better and better, your brain wants to help you get more of what you talk about.

So try this.

Get out a sheet of paper. Set a timer for 20 minutes. Write down all the things you want.

Give yourself permission to write down everything, regardless of your ability to get it, regardless of whether or not it is in the budget, or regardless of what other people might think of you if you were to get that thing. Write as many ideas as you can think of.

Then, file it away somewhere safe. You can review it once a quarter if you must. But just writing these things down will get the ideas out of your head and into a space where they can actually happen. How they happen will surprise you. I don’t even know how they will start to show up in your life, but they will. Sometimes, incrementally, through choices and decisions you make unconsciously. Other times, it will feel sudden, like magic. But it’s not magic, not in the sense of fairy tales.

It’s brain magic. And it’s what your brain does best.