32 Short Simple Powerful Questions to Ask Yourself To Bring Out Your Inner Coach

By Theresa Ho

January 6, 2015   •   Fact checked by Dumb Little Man

The majority of us who are not suffering from clinical or mental disorders have the power to control our thoughts and our feelings.

It is a matter of whether we choose to focus our attention to deliberately direct our own mind to support our well-being and drive our inspired actions.

How do you do this?

By asking powerful questions. When you catch yourself operating from a negative, restricted head space, turn your attention to focus on what you do want and how you want to feel instead. This helps your mind shift gears to ask better questions to help guide you out of your head space and into your heart space. You’ll not only get a better answer that is aligned with who you are and what you want to be and do, you’ll also attract more of what it is you do want in your life.

Asking yourself powerful questions can be a scary experience, as it often brings out more than a yes or a no response, where it enhances your self-awareness and pushes you out of your comfort zone. It drills down to the core that’s keeping you numb or stuck and brings out the pain and fears you’ve tucked away.

However as the old saying goes, without pain there is no gain, and the questions are essential to help you gain clarity and commitment in moving you forward in creating the life you want.

Below you will find 32 short and simple powerful questions followed by a brief commentary on what it can do for you. My hope is from a simple question, it will elicit your inner coach to come up with more powerful questions to ask yourself in the process to help you gain the insight you need to motivate you to step into your greatness, live out your purpose and be the best you.

1. What do I want? Helps you get clear on what it is YOU desire.

2. How do I feel? This creates space for awareness of what it is your feeling and allows you to choose deliberately what thoughts will help you shift to a better feeling place, to a place you want to feel.

3. Why is it important? Why do anything at all if it is not important to you?

4. What if _______? We often get stuck in the ‘what if’ negative scenarios. Instead of marinating your thoughts in negative outcome, try flipping the ‘What if’ outcome to a positive, i.e. “What if I succeed?”

5. What else? This is a goodie to use to dig deeper and get more depth and information and specifics in you answers, so that you don’t hide in the ambiguity of generality.

6. If not now, when? This puts time into perspective.

7. What is stopping you? This usually brings your fear and what it is you are avoiding to the surface.

8. What am I avoiding? See Question 7.

9. What is draining me? This helps pinpoint what is making you feel tired and unenergetic.

10. Who is draining me? This helps pinpoint who is making you feel tired and unenergetic.

11. How can I improve? To help you reflect on your actions and results, and what needs to be tweaked to attain a better outcome or get you to your next milestone.

12.What is the challenge? To get clarity on what you need to overcome.

13. What is my edge? To identify your comfort zone.

14. What is missing? To identify what is needed to complete _________.

15.What am I ignoring? To help you see your blindspot or what is missing.

16. What are my options? To see potential and possibilities.

17. What am I tolerating? To see what you have been putting up with and what’s been holding you back causing a bottleneck in your life.

18. What gets me excited? To get in the good feeling space and reminds you of what makes you happy.

19. What is the impact? To see and think about the overall picture, and take into consideration of how it will affect you, the people who may be involved and the circumstance at hand.

20. Who am I? To create self-awareness and help you own who you are.

21. What do I value? To create self awareness and help you understand why you do what you do.

22. Who do I love? Often by identifying who you love or whose love we crave for it helps us motivate us to change.

23. What would I change? See question 11.

24. What scares me? To help identify your fear.

25. What have I tried? To reflect on the actions you have taken to help generate new ideas and inspired actions.

26. What is possible? The sky is the limit. It helps ignite your imagination.

27. So what? There may be negative connotations to this question but if you stand true to yourself and is taking responsibility for your actions, then this simple question is fair game to use as other’s opinion of you does not matter, so move on.

28. Now what? This simple question helps you plan your next step(s).

29. What can I do? Puts the onus on you to put forth your best effort and attitude to respond and attain the result you seek.

30. What have I learned? Reflects on the lessons learned so efforts can be tweaked and improved next time.

31. What’s working? To focus on the positive and what has worked to boost your confidence and feeling of positivity and possibility.

32. What’s going right? See question 31.

What other short simple powerful questions popped up for you? Let me know!

Theresa Ho

Theresa Ho is the Founder of Happy Free Lifestyle. She's a free-spirited, freedom lovin', income diversifying, travel junkie sent to help apprehensive go-getters reclaim their lives and grow into their most authentic self. For more inspiration, follow her on Instagram @happyfreelifestyle and Facebook.

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