The Answer to How is Yes Part 3

In The Answer to How is Yes, Peter Block suggests six questions that will take us in a much different direction than the usual How? questions. Before we get to the questions, here are a few introductory comments from Block.

“The alternative to asking How? is saying Yes–not literally, but as a symbol of our stance towards the possibility of more meaningful change. . . The right questions are about values, purpose, aesthetics, human connection, and deeper philosophical inquiry.”

“Yes expresses our willingness to claim our freedom and use it to discover the real meaning of commitment, which is to say Yes to causes that make no clear offer of a return, to say Yes when we do not have the mastery, or the methodology, to know how to get where we want to go.”

“To commit to the course of acting on what matters, we postpone the How? questions and precede them with others that lead us to more questions that perhaps lead us to more questions. So much for answers. In fact, the most useful questions are ones that entail paradox, questions that recognize that every answer creates its own set of problems.”

Here are Block’s Yes questions.

1. What refusal have I been postponing?

“If we cannot say no, then our yes means nothing”

“I can live without getting my way, but I cannot live without believing that I have a right to refuse what makes no sense to me. The inversion of ‘What refusal have I been postponing?’ is ‘What have I said yes to that I really did not mean?'”

2. What commitment am I willing to make?

“Every project of consequence or personal calling will require more of us than we originally imagined.”

“The question of commitment declares that the essential investment needed is personal commitment, not money, not the agreement of others, not the alignment of converging forces supportive of a favorable outcome. For anything that matters, the timing is never quite right, the resources are always a little short, and the people who affect the outcome are always ambivalent.”

3. What is the price I am willing to pay?

“There is a cost to pursue what matters, and money is the least of it.”

“Asking what price we are willing to pay also means that if we fail, we expect there to be negative consequences.”

4. What is my contribution to the problem I am concerned with?

“This question is the antidote to our helplessness. It affirms that we have a role in creating the world we live in.”

“When we get stuck, and are not acting on what matters, it is usually because we have defined ourselves out of the problem. What keeps us stuck is the belief that someone or something else needs to change before we can move forward.”

5. What is the crossroad at which I find myself at this point in my life/work?

“This question affirms that it is the challenge and complexity of life and work that gives it meaning.”

“Our crossroad represents an as yet unfulfilled desire to change our focus, our purpose, what we want to pursue.”

6. What do we want to create together?

“This question recognizes that we live in an interdependent world, that we create nothing alone.”

“Just having a conversation about this questions brings people’s deeper side into the room. As soon as I begin to discuss what I want to create, I am in the position of cause, not effect.”

The bonus question: What is the question that, if you had the answer, would set you free?

“This is the mother of all questions. It is a question that can only be meditated upon. Each time you answer it, you begin a different conversation.”