Ask The Right Question

Good morning Beautiful people, how was your weekend? So happy to have you here on our Monday e-Boost date #widegrin. Before I go on to today’s Boost, I’ll like to give some blognews, please sit tight, hehe.

As expected, a lot of people have asked me what distinguishedlives is really about and what my main focus is. Lemme, try to answer that. Distinguishedlives has 3 core focus –

a. Motivating and challenging you to maximise your skills|talents|potentials and thereby increasingly live out an excellent life on all fronts until it becomes a norm and default mode. This focus is driven by the weekly Monday posts tagged ‘Monday e-Boost’. FYI, the ‘e’ in the Boost stands for EXCELLENCE not the conventional e for electronic. So it’s Monday ExcellenceBoost not electronicBoost.

b. A career|business driven column where we will have CEOs of companies teach us the secrets to a successful career|business. They’ll also tell us how to be on top of our game as employers|employees; how they have grown their businesses and how you too can start (if you don’t have one already) or grow your existing businesses. This focus will be driven by the ‘CEO Memoirs’ (talked about it in my first post here). The column will be launched in March and will come up fortnightly on Wednesdays afterwards.

c. Last but not the least is a ‘Frankly Speaking, Random Topics’ column. This is a miscellaneous column where we will talk about various topics ranging from family to health to movies to music to academics to food to anything you’d like us to talk about. Column will be launched in February and will come up fortnightly on Friday evenings. Hope you’re as excited as I am, hehe. So please help me spread the news of distinguishedlives.wordpress.com to your family, friends, colleagues, neighbours, acquaintances and everyone you can reach – social media or otherwise. Thank you #hugs

Now unto today’s gist…

After last week’s post on ‘Understanding Is Key‘, someone asked me a very interesting question. He said, “Nice work! But I felt u could probably have given more points on how to get understanding. For example I have a task at hand which I need to understand, Will I just seek God’s face and study God’s word?”, and that got me thinking. It is not enough to say that understanding is key without going further to explain how to get that key. That brings about today’s topic – Ask The Right Question.

1. To gain|get understanding, you need to ask the right questions. Pro.3:5, one of the scriptures I quoted last week says “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and LEAN NOT on thine own understanding” (KJV).
One of the biggest mistakes people make is to lean on their limited understanding of things|issues|assignments to get it done. Without asking the right question(s), it is almost impossible to get understanding.

An Igbo adage says “onye ajuju anaghi efu uzo” meaning “he that asks questions does not miss his way” and it’s true. But emphasis is on asking the RIGHT question! You will get MISunderstanding when you ask the wrong questions. There is no better way to gain understanding than to ask the right question.

2. Ask the right people – It is not enough to ask the right questions if you’re not asking the right person|people. It will be unwise to ask an engineer the right medicine to take for your illness or to ask an architect the best way to invest your money. To gain understanding, you need to tender your right question(s) to the right person. The place of God in this issue can not be over emphasised for God is God of ALL understanding (Daniel 1:17). Joseph, Daniel, David and other great men in the bible including our saviour Jesus, received understanding and insights to issues of life by inquiring of God. After God, there is nothing new under the sun, hence, you’ll always have people in that area you need understanding who you can ask your questions. As a matter of fact, you don’t need to have personal connect|access with the right people before you can ask your questions, just make google and other search engines your friend and you’ll access the right information at your fingertips. That’s where asking the right question comes in again, if you don’t phrase your questions right, google will not give you the right feedback. Asking the right people is as important as asking the right question.

3. Be Observant – There are times you will not have the luxury of asking google or someone else to gain understanding. At such points. you need to use your senses at their peak because your instincts and God are all you have left. When you observe or pay close attention to a thing, you will realise that it is not as complex as you initially thought. Close observation de-mystifies things|issues – Be observant! Watch how other people are doing it and learn from them. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, it helps your understanding of how not to do it.

4. Right Association – Sometimes what you need to gain understanding is simply associating yourself with the right people. A fool that habitually dwells in the company of the wise will gain understanding just by association, the reverse is also true. “The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead” – Proverbs 21:16, KJV

5. Desire – You can not gain understanding if you do not desire understanding. You can follow all the steps above and still not get understanding simply because you do not desire it. Desire for understanding is fundamental.

That’s it from me this Monday morning,

PS: I love your feedback, please say something in the comment box.

Do you have other suggestions on how we can gain understanding? Please share in the comment box!

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Thank you for reading to the end (I know today’s post is lengthy). Wishing you the very best of the new week.

I love you all
ChinyereDistinguished

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