A few questions to use in the moment
Actionable instead of contemplative
Most questions make you think, and some alter your actions. I’ve assembled a bunch of the latter. The answers to these questions aren’t to journal on; the answers are what you end up doing because of it. They’re meant to take with you throughout the day and used all the time.
What would I say when I knew I would be met with unconditional love?
Most of the time you hold back something you want to say because you’re afraid of the reaction, or afraid of what’s going to happen next. Deep down you also know that the only way forward is to say it, and this question helps you enable the right state of mind to do so. When you hedge, when you defend yourself while saying something, people will pick up on that and it’s likely they’ll respond in the way you so badly want to avoid. By speaking up in a way where you knew you would be met with unconditional love, you bypass this completely and speak from a place more likely to be met with love.
What would I do if I knew I had permission?
I found this one on twitter and don’t remember the source. It will help you with the small things that normally make you overpolite or too insecure to act. Try it out when you’re trapped by overprotecting yourself from not crossing people’s boundaries. Don’t try it out when you don’t want to do the thing because it doesn’t feel appropriate to do so.
If I knew there was a way for me to enjoy this, how would I do that?
Sunshine, great food, and the company of loved ones are trivial things to enjoy, but there’s something to be said for finding the hints of joy in nausea, fatigue, and anxiety as well. What tiny part can you start to enjoy? The sense of wonder that’s opening up will help you guide the way. A non-obvious side effect from this is that you’ll become more impartial, meaning that you’re less likely to only make decisions to avoid states of consciousness you don’t want, like nausea, and more likely to go in the directions of things you do want.
How does my body feel right now?
There’s a firefox extension called Leechblock that gives you a delay screen before you enter a distracting website, like twitter. For a couple of months last year, I had this question displayed on that page. I recommend you do this too, because you will find that everytime the message comes up, you find yourself hunched over your computer, lost in the virtual world and your thoughts. It’s the easiest question to bring you back to presence, because the body itself is always present and never lost like the mind.
In what ways is my judgment about them actually about something I judge myself for?
Leverage your frustrations with the power of projecting and speecdrun find your points of growth.
What’s the most intense way ahead of me right now?
Joe Hudson has “embrace intensity” as one of the principles he lives by. This doesn’t mean create intensity, there’s simply no need to, life will give you plenty of opportunities to dive into something. Perhaps it’s saying the vulnerable thing, speaking up, going out of your comfort zone. This question is like a compass for that. Perhaps it will make your life full of unnecessary strive, idk.
Who am I seeing as a false authority right now?
Everywhere you don’t look there’s just some guy* making stuff up. This question will find that guy and see through that guy. It also sometimes helps you find there’s no guy at all and no one but you were making anything up. Finding out the rules aren’t rigid will kind of like, drop the rules? *This can also describe a girl.
What would a high-agency person do right now?
A lot of these questions leverage the psychological phenomenon of projection, which simply means that you project your inner experience onto others such that you think they conform to your world. You’re angry and you see the bad sides in people, you’re sad and the whole world suffers. With this question, you project the high agency part of yourself onto a hypothetical other person. Making up this person in your mind will be done so by the contents of your own brain: your high agency move that follows will be the fruit of your own being, honing the high agency part in you at the same time.
What intensity am I protecting myself from right now, by shutting down?
One thing I recently learned about the nervous system is basically that when you’re shut down, the most convenient road back to feeling present and connected again is to move to a high arousal state first. A friend of mine occasionally uses a fucking spicey sauce to kick him into an active nervous system mode when he’s dissociated. It does the trick, but there’s another way. By using this question, you’ll find the intensity that’s already there but you’re blocking (by shutting down). Perhaps it’s anxiety, or awkwardness, or maybe even pleasure? Experiment with opening up to that intensity to some extent, like you turn up a dial, and see if it helps you get more active in a desirable way.
What’s scary and true for me to say right now?
Just three drops of this question to improve your authenticity.
What do I not want people to know about me right now? (Shadow)
So there’s this concept by some guy Carl Jung called the shadow and it basically refers to the part of your inner experience that you don’t want to show the light of day. Maybe it feels inappropriate to think, rude, or shameful. This is taking up part of your mental bandwidth of being. When part of your attention goes to hiding a part of yourself from yourself, you’ll simply have less left for other things. By not burying a part of yourself but instead admitting it to yourself as a desire you don’t have to give into if you don’t want to, you’ll clear up space!
How much do I believe this thought is true? (0-100%)
A couple of years ago I was developing a cognitive behavioural therapy app with one of my best friends. We found an awesome strain of CBT that didn’t suck and wanted to pour it into accessible format. For reasons other than the effectiveness of the techniques, we couldn’t continue the project, but through all the research a couple of important things stuck with me. One of them was to write down your negative thoughts (part of the CBT practice) and add to that how much you believed the thought is true (0-100%.). It allows for more nuanced thoughts to come forward. Ones you’d otherwise dismiss, because it’s just something silly in the back of your mind and not a true belief. This question will give you access to those subtleties.
That’s it for now; please promise me you won’t take these to journal on and only to actually let your behaviour be changed. Off you go!