Where am I blocking the flow of new possibilities?

The question that changes everything

There are questions in life that change everything.

Before that question, life was heading one direction.
After the question? A whole new adventure.

What if I went to Florida for college?
Will you marry me?
Are we ready for kids?
Could I be a writing pastor?
Are you Jeremy‘s sister? I’m calling from the hospital.
What if we bought that house?
What if we moved to Oregon?

The same thing happens in organizations. Maybe not the same kinds of questions but there are moments when people gather and a question is named into the space and everything starts to shift.

Photo by Ana Municio on Unsplash

Our brains love their loops. They are rewarded with dopamine and good vibes when they repeat their loop over and over, regardless of whether that loop is actually good for us or not.

Think most kinds of addiction. Our inner critic voice on repeat. That niggling fear that won’t pipe down.

It takes an awful lot to interrupt those loops. It takes even more to lay down new pathways that represent new patterns and behaviors. We’re learning so much about brain plasticity so we know it’s possible. But as someone who has been actively laying down new neural pathways and interrupting harmful ones since 2017, this work is beautiful, and endlessly challenging.

I have noticed that the kind of questions we ask are powerful catalytic moments for those neural pathways. The right kind of question has a way of interrupting the march of the neurons, so one can see an entirely new future reality.

Systems are funny things

A system is an organization’s approach to getting things done.

I’m serving in two overlapping systems right now in my daily work. Systems are funny things. They often remind me of neural pathways stuck on repeat. So most of the time I have a lot of compassion for the systems I find myself in.

Beth Zemsky is an equity facilitator and she often says something that’s shifted how I show up in my work. Be hard on systems and gracious with people.

Like our brains, systems fall into patterns, and unless interrupted with a radically different kind of question, they will keep on marching. Whether they even like the direction they’re moving or not.

This is why honest challenging questions are so powerful. They have a way of waking up the neurons in the system so they can look around and realize this actually is not what we want or need. If we continue this loop, it won’t end well.

It takes great courage and curiosity and strength to ask the question and genuinely hold it with openness.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Our question

The two overlapping systems I spend a lot of time in are asking this question:

Where are we holding onto what we’ve loved so tightly
that we are blocking the flow of new energy and possibilities?

When the people who sit at the center of a system genuinely wrestle with this question first, and they allow their own energy to shift, people in the system pick up on that. We can feel the difference.

My answer to this question?

I’ve been protecting the feelings of my older friends over the needs of my younger friends.

I have known this for years. But there was something about asking that question in a room full of people I trust that invited me to be more honest with myself.

Once I said it out loud I felt trapped energy unlock.

That one question has made all kinds of room for new possibilities and stories and energy to move in these systems. Which is what a good question can always do. If we sit at its feet and genuinely welcome it in.

Photo by Matthew Smith on Unsplash

Good questions have ways of slicing through thick inertia and fear.

And friends, we’ve got one go around at this beautiful life (that I know of). We owe it to ourselves and the beauty of what love can do in our midst.

What question might you ask in these days that could change everything?

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