AtQ – What do you want to be free from?

Exploring Powerful Questions

In this week’s talking note [LINK] I explored a definition of freedom. Within the exploration a particular way of specifying freedoms was presented. Instead of saying that I want to be free to do whatever I want, we can articulate specific freedoms, and begin to turn those into actionable pursuits. There are two questions to this, and both can provide powerful insight on where our motivations lie.

We can begin from the positive side.

What do you want to be free to do?

Sometimes we encounter desires, goals, aims, even dreams, that seem unreasonable, unreachable, even untouchable. Asking this question is akin to asking, “If you could do whatever you want, what would you do?” But without directing our attention to desires. Focusing on the freedom circumvents any past baggage from limiting our thinking. Sometimes our desires come with baggage – past failures, for example – that distort the desire. For example, I would like a relationship, but every past attempt has failed. I don’t want the feeling of that kind of failure, so I choose not to pursue a relationship. This approach undermines my own deeply held desire – something that I’ve always wanted.

Instead, thinking that I want to be free to have a significant relationship leads to a completely different set of follow-up questions. Questions like, “What might that look like?” and “If you were free, what would you be doing?” are powerful questions that help envision the new life. Another question, “So, what’s stopping you?” might be used to surface the things that we need to be free from in order to be free to do the thing we want. This leads us to our second question.