Chapter 18: Asking the Right Questions 287
We often talk clients through these questions, and the decisions can be
major – shall I leave my wife, move house, change career direction, have a
baby, recruit a new team? The questions focus your attention and challenge
your thinking. When you reach the last question, you may stop and think,
‘that’s confusing’. Good. This reaction means that you’re arriving at a break-
through in your thinking.If you make a change in one area of your life at the expense of another area,
the chances are that the change isn’t going to last. So, for example, if you
move jobs but have to give up important interests or friendships where you
currently live, the change isn’t going to make you happy in the long term and
you probably won’t stick with it. Don’t take our word for it; try the questions
out now on something about which you’re deliberating. You can see that the
questions encourage you to check out your decision based on the impact on
the whole of your environment, in a healthy way – what we call an ecology
check (we talk more about this aspect in Chapter 4).Challenging Limiting Beliefs
When someone’s thinking is stopping them from achieving a much sought-
after goal, you can ask three simple questions in order to challenge such
thinking. To help others (or yourself) overcome a limiting belief, ask the
three questions set out in this section.When asking the questions, give the person plenty of time to talk about an
issue, and move on only when you sense that they’ve ‘got it off their chest’:✓ Question 1: ‘What do you assume or believe about this issue that
limits you in achieving your goal?’
Ask this question three times until you’re sure that you’ve reached the
heart of the matter – what NLP describes as a limiting belief. As you
delve deeper, you may say: ‘That’s right, and what else about this limits
you?’
For example, the person may be thinking ‘I’m not good enough,’ or
‘Nobody will let me,’ or ‘I just don’t know how.’ When you hold a
negative position like these ones, you stop yourself from doing what you
need to do to achieve what you want.
✓ Question 2: ‘What would be a more empowering belief, one that’s the
positive opposite of the one holding you back?’
This question flips the limitation over to the positive side. For example,
the positive opposite of the assumptions and beliefs above would be
stated positively as ‘I am good enough,’ or ‘Somebody will let me,’ or ‘I
do know how.’