You’d think I’d do this automatically by now, and go unerringly to the best possible question to get the clearest and most direct answer. It ain’t necessarily so… 😕
Someone ordered a reading with the question,
‘What would be the difference between taking option a or option b?’
(I can’t give more details about options a and b because of customer confidentiality, but hopefully that won’t get in the way of the story.)
Oh, bother, I thought. Here’s someone who’s bought one reading when he really needs two. If I ask the question he’s given me, then of course I won’t know whether the answer is talking about ‘a’ or ‘b’, and I won’t be able to give him an intelligent reading.
Ah well. Two quick readings –
‘What would it be like for him to take option a?’
and
‘What would it be like for him to take option b?’
I was planning on summarising these two for him and talking about the differences – and I might well have done just that, if I’d only had some clue what they were talking about. My two readings were clearly giving in-depth pictures of the man’s complete psychic experience under conditions ‘a’ and ‘b’. Not only was this really not what he’d asked for, but I had no background knowledge at all to tell me what issues these vivid pictures might correspond to in his life, and it wasn’t my business in any case. I could tell that option ‘a’ was the better one – that much was quite clear – but I couldn’t begin to tell him why it was better in practical terms.
I slept on it. And in the morning, managed to reconnect with the original question, and asked:
‘How would taking option ‘a’ be different from taking option ‘b’ ?’
And got a crystal-clear, practical, to-the-point answer. I’ll admit I did double-check, and asked for the distinguishing characteristics of option ‘b’. More good, clear sense, fitting in with the previous readings: if it were my decision, I’d definitely go for option ‘a’.
So I’m thinking (if anything this slow still merits the name…) that this could be a useful question to use for decision-making. It’s especially handy when reading for others, as it avoids at least some of the perils of not knowing the whole picture. But I think it could also be good for personal readings – not asking in broad terms ‘What would this be like?’, but instead, ‘What exactly would be different about this?’
So many good suggestions…so helpful…thanks so much for posting these things! 🙂
The angst served a purpose here, but if it was me, my goodness, I hope you’d just email me about it – the question(s), the background, whatever…
🙂 right back!
Normally I do just email people to ask for more background, or confirmation of which is the best question to ask, etc, and we correspond as long as need be. But this was a) someone asking about a very simple, practical question and b) someone with a deadline for the answer. So as soon as I twigged there was a better question to ask, I just went ahead.
After doing some readings in public last week, I started to realise once again the importance of asking the right question. A lot of the answers I got were a bit vague apart from the ones that were concerned with important issues, choices and dilemmas etc. I was wondering wether i could find out more really useful questions or at least a better way of phrasing them. Best wishes, Morgan.
Ideally you need to allow a good half hour to talk with (or rather listen to) your querent and arrive at the right question for them. The client I was talking about above is actually very unusual in that he is already quite clear about what decision he has to make and what information he needs to make it. Most aren’t nearly so sure.
If you don’t have the luxury of that long conversation first, there are time-honoured question ‘templates’ to fall back on. Get your querent to fill in the blanks in something like ‘What if I…?’ or ‘How can I…?’
“Ideally you need to allow a good half hour to talk with (or rather listen to) your querent and arrive at the right question for them.”
Any chance you could do a post (y’know, sometime) that walks through an example of that process? Or, if you’ve already written about it and I’m forgetting, just point in the right direction. Thanks!