A remarkable thing I’ve learned from my research is that in the growth mindset, you don’t always need confidence.

What I mean is that even when you think you’re not good at something, you can still plunge into it wholeheartedly and stick to it. Actually, sometimes you plunge into something because you’re not good at it. This is a wonderful feature of the growth mindset. You don’t have to think you’re already great at something to want to do it and to enjoy doing it.

The ruthless and relentless game. Carry around in your back pocket these dozen ruthless and relentless questions. Flourish them whenever you feel you are not getting to the heart of a personal or professional problem.

• At the moment, what is my aim? This question is about your deepest wish, not goals, for the next fiscal year. Put your key life purpose on the line at that moment, not in the past or the future.

• If the truth be known, what’s really going on? There is a certain magic in asking for the truth. Use this question to cut through to the basics in any situation so that you can act with efficiency.

• What is the VOJ saying? This question reminds you to be aware of and eliminate the negative effect of inner blame and criticism.

• Is this who I am, or who I’m attempting to be? The central contradiction of your life is between the Essence and ego. This question helps silence the ego.

• What is it that this person provokes in me? Instead of concentrating on questions such as: “What’s wrong with her?” “Why are they doing this to me?” focus on what you can do something about: your own actions, thoughts, feelings, and sensations.

• What is the objective reality? Appeal to your own objective intelligence with this one. Strip away all the rest: fears, judgments, chattering of the mind, ego, false personality. This question acts like a meditation: All that is extraneous slips away and you concentrate on what is real.

• What is the emotional truth? Four emotions - fear, anger, hurt, and sorrow - cloud your thinking. If anger, or any of the emotions, is getting in the way, you must acknowledge that truth first rather than blame other people.

• What pain am I avoiding? Over and over, our speakers, students, and clients point out that real learning and progress arise from pain and difficulty. This question teaches you to pay attention to the pain in order to gain insight.

• What stubbornness am I holding on to? You know intellectually that the only constant thing is change, but you might find it difficult to live this truth. Change isn’t the problem; holding on to stubbornness is. Acknowledge and understand that with this question.

• Is this choice the same as my real choice? Your real problems might be different from the apparent one.

• What is it that I don’t yet understand? Again, if you feel upset, there is something that you do not understand. If other questions fail to lead you to this understanding, you can just ask yourself directly.

• Who said that, my mother or my father? This question smokes out the VOJ.

Here are your spades, questions to ask yourself so that you might reboot your leadership and move forward on your journey of growing up.

• How would I act were I to remember who I am? 

• What choices would I make, what actions would I take, if I regularly said the things that needed to be said? 

• Who would I become were I to be fully, completely, and wholly heard? 

• What is it that I wish the people in my life understood about me? 

• Who would I be without the myths I’ve told about myself; the stories that took hold when I was yearning to feel love, safety, and belonging?

So often I’m called in to help lead conversations about mission, value, and purpose. When, really, the only questions that matter are those that tell us who we are and wish to be.

• How would our organization respond were we to hear all the things that are being said, regardless if they are being said with words or deeds? 

• What does it mean to be a leader at our organization? 

• What does it mean to be grown, a fully actualized adult? 

• How would we feel if our children were to work for the company we’ve created or the team we lead? 

• How has the unsorted baggage of what has happened to us shaped who we are as leaders? 

• When our employees and colleagues leave our sides and our company, what do we want them to say about our time together? 

• What do we believe to be true about the world? 

• What do we, as a community of people working toward a common goal, believe the world needs?

I believe questions can be even more powerful than answers. As I indicated at the very beginning, this is a self-knowledge book, not a self-help book. It is a call to “Know Thyself”— and to bring that knowledge to life in the choices you make— not a prescription. Questions are the seeds of discovery, and the spirit of discovery is at the very core of this work. Not only about discovering shared patterns across the vastly different lives in this study, but also about making discoveries pertinent to our own lives.