How to Create an Owner’s Manual for Your Brain: Power Questions

If you are new to my blog, this is the third post in a series that I’m working on that may not have an end in sight anytime soon. The first post introduced the concept of an owner’s manual, while the second post dealt with neuro-associations. The concepts in the owner’s manual are largely based on Tony Robbins Personal Power II Program, and the exercises he asks you to go through at the end of each day of the program.

This is one of my favorite personal development techniques and something I think can really be a tremendous asset to your owner’s manual. The power of questions is something that I have mentioned before, but I think is worth exploring in a bit more depth. From everything we’ve read, seen, and heard over the last couple years after The Secret was released we know that our thoughts control our reality. But, controlling the focus of our thoughts can seem like a daunting task. In fact if you spent all day trying to control all of your thoughts you would probably find yourself in an insane asylum at some point. But, we can direct the focus of our thoughts through a simple concept that Tony Robbins refers to as morning power questions.

So, how does this work? It’s pretty easy. Let’s say that you have a goal you want to accomplish or you have an emotion or feeling that you want to create. The brain works in a very literal manner when it comes to answering questions. To borrow a term from computer science, GIGO(garbage in, garbage out) accurately describes how the brain functions. So i you ask yourself a question such as “Why am I such a jackass?”, your brain will spit out answers. Believe it or not this is one of the most awesome functions of your brain that most people are unaware of. Why is it awesome? It’s awesome because you can choose the question you are going to ask. The key to making this work however is commitment and consistency. Tony Robbins recommends choosing 5 questions and repeating the process below every morning for 30 days. If you think about it, when you take medications (antibiotics) if you take one pill, you don’t cure an infection. You have to finish the prescription. The same concept applies here. By repeating the process every morning for 30 days your brain will eventually create a neuro-association between being awake, and the empowering state produced by your questions.

I want to break it down in an an example.

A 3 Step prescription for changing anything with questions

1. I want to be/create more confidence in my life
2. Question: What is it about me that allows me to be extremely confident?
3. Come up with two answers to the question

Repeat every single day for 30 days upon waking.

Give it a shot for 30 days and you’ll notice some dramatic changes in your life. In fact you will take your brain from functioning like a car on the verge of breaking down to a high performance vehicle.