‘Why’ Is A Useless Question
If you want accurate insight, ask ‘what’ instead.
‘Why’ is what we’re told we need to ask.
When you want to build a business, you hear you need to ‘find your why’ to motivate you. It’s supposed to help you tap into your life purpose and identify your most important values.
When you want to become more self-aware, you think the way to do it is through introspection. Asking yourself questions like ‘why did I act this way?’ or ‘why am I not a fan of this person?’ and then journaling about them is supposed to help you uncover deep layers of your personality.
Tasha Eurich, who’s been researching self-awareness for years, found that asking ‘why’ is often useless and misleading. Rather than help us gain accurate insight, it clouds our awareness of the truth.
“As it turns out, “why” is a surprisingly ineffective self-awareness question. Research has shown that we simply do not have access to many of the unconscious thoughts, feelings, and motives we’re searching for. And because so much is trapped outside of our conscious awareness, we tend to invent answers that feel true but are often wrong.” — Tasha Eurich
Eurich advises that to gain a more accurate perspective on our thoughts, feelings and actions, we’re better off asking ‘what’ instead of…
