Questions are a powerful and underutilized tool for exploration. Every serious adventurer is also good at asking themselves thought-provoking questions.

Unfortunately, there is no ‘truth turnstile’ in the brain that thoughts have to pass through before they are allowed to enter. Wouldn’t that be wonderful⏤a gatekeeper to keep the garbage thoughts out of your mind? But no, the sorting has to happen afterwards as true, untrue, and half-true thoughts mingle together, each vying for primacy and for your attention. 

It’s a great exercise to look at your thoughts like a semi-skeptical detective would, peering past the camouflage to see which thoughts are clearly suspect. These types of thoughts are often called assumptions, meaning they are based on poor evidence and/or less-than-perfect reasoning, yet they seem perfectly true if you don’t look closely enough. 

Here are some questions you can ask yourself when you want to look more closely at a thought:

  • If someone else told me this, would I believe it?
  • Is there something I am overlooking?
  • What am I basing this belief on?
  • Do I have enough information?
  • Does my information come from a reliable source?
  • Is the source of my information a primary source or a secondary source?
  • Am I jumping to a conclusion?
  • Is there a way I could verify this?
  • Is there a different way to think about this?
  • Is there someone I could ask who knows more about this?
  • Could part of this be true and part be not true?
  • Could this be true while something else is also true?
  • Am I making an excuse for myself or someone else?
  • Is it possible that I am wrong about this?
  • Is this a feeling or a fact?
  • Does this thought serve me?
  • Is this just my own fear lying to me?
  • Am I afraid of letting go of this belief?

There are dozens of similar questions you can ask yourself, none of them right or wrong to consider. The idea is simply to form a habit of using questions as a means of exploration. The mind is a beautiful place to explore if you are curious enough.

Copyright 2023 Kesel Wilson (entirely, 100% human-created)

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