The 5 Power Questions that can instantly focus your mental power

(Featured photo by fotografierende from Pexels)

I wrote in my previous blog post about the importance of constantly minding our internal energy state when we are attempting to achieve an important goal or solve a vexing problem. Remember that whatever you constantly focus on mentally will expand in your mind.

If you are burdened with a problem, and you continually obsess about it, then the problem will grow. And if you don’t arrest its growth, soon the problem will overwhelm you. When you reach this point, you may feel an extreme sense of powerlessness to deal with the problem.

I’ve been there. I reached the stage of ‘overwhelm’ several times in the past — many years ago, when the first internet venture I started collapsed, leaving me with a 5-figure credit card debt, or when I first arrived in Australia 15 years ago, without knowing a single person and attempted to stay afloat mentally, psychologically and financially.

I’d like to teach you a powerful writing technique that can instantly focus your attention away from whatever daunting problems are facing you (and thereby arrest any possibility of overwhelm before it can even start) and lead it toward unlikely solutions you may not have thought about.

I credit Tony Robbins and his audio program Personal Power II for this technique. That program is life-changing.

To avoid the state of ‘overwhelm’ I’ve described above, when you are faced with any problem, ask yourself these 5 questions below.

What’s great about this? or What’s good about this? (If your brain says, “nothing” then ask “What could be great about this?”)

What’s not perfect yet? (presupposing it’s going to be perfect)

What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it?

What am I willing to no longer do in order to make things the way I want them?

How can I do what’s necessary to get this job done and enjoy the process?

The 5 power questions can instantly focus your attention away from whatever daunting problems are facing you and lead it toward unlikely solutions you may not have thought about.

To apply this technique, pull a problem out of your life, something that’s a real tough challenge right now.

Ask each question in turn and write down the answers. No, it’s not enough to just answer them verbally in your head. You have to write your answers on paper so that they come from your brain and are recorded on paper.

Remember that the brain is the most amazing computer ever created. It likes to solve problems. But to use it optimally, you have to give it the right tools and writing is one of the best tools to help your brain think of and process information. Writing has the wonderful ability to clarify thoughts.

The human mind can think of anywhere from 50,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day, or about 3,000 thoughts per hour, 50 per minute and 1 per second.

If you simply ask one of the 5 questions and answer it mentally, then you add to the plethora of thoughts already swimming around in your mind. I don’t know about you, but I already get confused thinking 3,000 thoughts per hour, I don’t need to add anymore!

Thoughts are also like links in a never-ending chain. If you don’t control them, one thought will link to another and to another and another, and before you know it, you are overwhelmed by this massive chain of thoughts, most of them negative.

The human brain can solve any problem, but to be able to do so, it must go to problem-solving mode, instead of problem-dwelling mode.

And if we dwell on a problem, rather than the solution, we keep the brain in problem-dwelling, rather than problem-solving mode.

The first step for the brain to go into problem-solving mode is to shift focus from what is bad or negative about the situation, to what is good or even great about it.

Writing forces our brains to shift from thinking that this problem is hopeless or “unsolvable”, to believing that this problem is a challenge, that it is “solvable”.

By writing down the answers to the 5 questions, we remove those thoughts from our brains and keep them separate on paper. If we keep them stuck in our heads, other negative thoughts are free to “link” to whatever answer we’ve created, usually in the form of objections — “ifs” and “buts — and rationalizations as to why our proposed solution will not work.

On paper, our thoughts can remain objective, in black and white as it were, a stark reminder to us that our problem has a solution.

There is another more critical reason, however, why you have to write down your answers to the 5 questions. Writing activates your entire mind and body and forces it to come up with an answer to even the most vexing problems.

Writing is a psychoneuromotor activity.

That’s a pretty big word that simply means that when you write anything down, you activate your intelligence (mind), emotions (heart) and your physical body too.

In other words, through writing, you can involve your entire being and bring it to bear on whatever it is you are thinking about.

So, whatever you write down, whether it’s a description of how big and unsolvable your problem is or an explanation of how your problem can be solved, gets internalized in your mind, body and heart — in your entire being.

Solving problems, especially big, tricky ones, sometimes calls for more than logic and the intellectual powers of the brain. Sometimes, we need to activate our emotions and our physical bodies as well.

Jack Canfield in his book The Success Principles teaches that the human body actually intuitively knows the answer to any question that we can ask of it. He describes a strange, yet amazingly accurate method, called “calibration” where we ask questions of our bodies and calibrate our bodies to accurately answer either “yes” or “no” to a question.

And as for the heart (emotions), it is wiser than we give it credit. How many times have you been faced with a problem, and thought of a possible solution that seems logically the best option on paper, but something about it just felt wrong?

You decide on another option, following your emotions in the process and find out later on that the logical solution would have landed you in even more trouble. Many times, the heart sees through the cold logic of the brain to lead us to the right answers.

By writing down the answers to the 5 questions, we activate our visual, auditory and kinesthetic senses. That’s a lot of power being brought to bear on a problem. Moreover, by writing down on paper:

• what’s good or even great about a problematic situation
• what you are willing to do to shift the situation to being an ideal one, and
• how you can do what’s necessary to solve the problem and even have fun in the process

you program your subconscious mind to think of nothing else but the solutions to your problem.

The conscious mind is powerful, but it shuts off when you sleep. On the other hand, the subconscious mind works 24/7, and continues to whirr like the powerful microprocessor of an advanced supercomputer, even when you are asleep.

When you ask the 5 questions and write down any answers that come to you, you are impressing the subconscious mind; without your awareness, the subconscious mind goes to work to bring even more solutions to your problem.

After some time asking these questions and writing down and dwelling on the answers, in the end you’ll find that not only will you have completely solved your problem, but you may have also created totally new opportunities and had more fun in the process!

Try it yourself: the 5-power questions technique

When to use: to control your mental focus, direct your will power, and manage your internal states; to avoid the state of ‘overwhelm’ when faced with a problem

Instructions:

Step1: Do first thing in the morning or just prior to sleep.

Step 2: Be in a relaxed state and environment.

Step 3: Pull a problem out of your life, something that’s a real tough challenge right now.

Step 4: Ask yourself each of the 5 powerful questions in turn, out loud:

What’s great about this? or What’s good about this? (If your brain says, “nothing” then ask “What could be great about this?”)

What’s not perfect yet? (presupposing it’s going to be perfect)

What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it?

What am I willing to no longer do in order to make things the way I want them?

How can I do what’s necessary to get this job done and enjoy the process?

Step 5: Wait for answers.

Step 6: Write down the answers as they come.

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