by ken winston caine

The questions you ask and choose to explore shape the outcomes you achieve. The trick is to ask powerful questions.

They cut to the chase. They move you forward quickly and smartly.

Asking powerful questions is at the heart of “coaching” as it was developed by Thomas Leonard. And I’ve been collecting lists of powerful questions, or coaching questions, for 11 years — ever since I was first exposed to Leonard’s approach.

But simply being armed with a mile-long list of powerful questions does not make one a good coach. Or guarantee you magnificent, rapid, sustainable personal success. The good coach and the smart achiever know how to ask the right type of question at exactly the right moment.

Better, I think, to understand what a powerful question is, so that you can instinctively pose one when it is needed, than to have a long list of questions to sort through. (Though a list is valuable.)

So what is a powerful question?

The best explanation I have come across comes not from the world of life coaching or business coaching or corporate coaching, but from pioneers of The World Cafe process, Juanita Brown and David Isaacs.

They write, on their website, that a powerful question has eight defining characteristics: (more…)

by ken winston caine

What if love is all there really is, and everything else is an illusion?

What if love is the only thing that is real, and everything else is a distracting illusion?

What if love is the glue that binds the universe together… Has no beginning, has no end… No alpha, No omega, Simply is, always has been and always will be?

And what if your single highest purpose — and most difficult challenge — is to find love, connect with love, express love, be love, resonate at the frequency of love in every situation you encounter?

Ask yourself:

If I knew this was true, how would it change things?

Even if you don’t believe this is true, pretend for a moment that it is.

And ask yourself: (more…)

Mr. President:

Three years ago you declared “Mission Accomplished.”

Two years ago we were in “the final throes of the insurgency.”

Last year we “re-deployed to secure Baghdad.”

None of these proclamations proved to be true. None of these efforts proved to be effective.

Now, we are told, you are proposing we escalate this war that you committed us to enter under the false (more…)