We’ve all heard hundreds of times that good questions are open ended and insightful while bad questions are yes or no questions, Blah! Blah! Blah!

You know what no one ever does?  Teach how to ask better questions.  Want to know why?  Because it’s really hard if not impossible to teach.  Luckily, it is possible to learn.  Luckier still, a Notebooker does this automatically!  Here’s how…

Every time you write a notebook entry about an experience, you are answering an unspoken question.  If your entry was insightful, you’re asking an insightful question of yourself.  Then answering it.

Every single time you write about a bad experience and re-frame¹ it into a good or, at least, interesting experience, you are asking yourself some re-framing questions.

These questions you ask yourself are nearly always unspoken but make no mistake, they’re there!  This happens automatically and naturally.  In fact, the better you get at writing insightful, entertaining and dynamic entries the better you become at asking insightful, entertaining and dynamic questions!

This is a very good skill to have because better questions allow you to effortlessly become a gifted conversationalist.  People love the sound of their own voice and people love talking about themselves.  Ask someone a good open-ended question and they will talk and talk.  You won’t have to say much if anything at all!  Then later, when they think back to that conversation they enjoyed so much, they will remember how much they enjoyed talking to you.  Not that you only asked a few good questions and let them talk.

Ask someone an insightful question that goes to the heart of a story and they will think they had some grand epiphany!

If someone is having a bad day or telling you a whiny story (ugh), ask them a re-framing question and watch, with confidence, as their story transforms from a complain-y mess to a smile inducing anecdote!

And that’s just the beginning of it.  With an arsenal of great questions you crafted through Notebooking you can have great conversations that go as long or as short² as you like.

Are you ready for the best part?  Even though this happens naturally through good Notebooking, it is really and intuitive to speed up the process.

How?

This is my favorite part, probably due to its shocking simplicity:

You ask yourself a good question!  Just one, “What questions am I answering?”  This may seem simple because it is.  You might be skeptical because it’s too simple.  Allow me to assure you with a few examples:

Let’s say you take a trip to a store and have a bad time.  Let’s say you then Notebooked about it and tried to re-frame the experience into a funny story.  Whatever you come up with when you answer, “What questions am I asking myself?” will be re-framing questions.

Maybe you write an entry about an experience you had and at the end of the entry you found an insightful realization.  “What questions do I answer?”  Your answer is going to be some very good and insightful questions.

Faster than you think, this will turn into the habit and talent of asking good questions.  Enjoy!

1. “Re-framing” is a term used to describe a change in attitude that has the ability to change an entire experience.  As in, “change in someone’s frame of mind.”  But, you knew that!
2. Sometimes the fastest way out of a bad conversation is to ask a few yes or no questions.  Then after they answer yes or no, let the silence hang in the air for a beat or two and mercifully say something like, “Well, I’ve got to be running now. Good talking to you.”  What’s handy about this is that even though you ended the conversation, it will feel to the other person like they ended it! Ah, social dynamics, such fun.