Binge Thinking

Ask Better Questions - Ros Palmer

Well, at 4.28 am today I tried to speak more kindly to myself. One of the things I remembered to do was ask better questions.

Speaking of which my background is PR and in the 80s I would watch Ken Livingstone, then leader of the GLC, with delight. He was just such a good media manipulator. He was being interviewed by Brian Waldron and totally avoiding all his questions and Brian said, in an exasperated spitting kind of way: “Mr Livingstone, I am asking you a lot of questions and you are not answering any of them!” To which Ken replied: “Well Brian that is because I am asking myself much much better ones and I’m answering those.” Pure genius (regardless of your political view of London’s former major).

So, my early question today was quickly changed from: “Why didn’t you tell him how you thought you wimp?” to “What would be the best way to let him know how you feel without causing conflict and letting you remain in control?” I am still working on the answer but the new questioning approach automatically made me feel better and able to fall back to sleep without having to mentally queue up at Sainsbury’s to take a deli ticket (see previous blog if confused). The other trick was to imagine our meeting going really well. I had forgotten how powerful visualisation was and yet I used to use it all the time. When I ran a PR company we would mock up the front page of our trade publication PR Week with a news story about any big account we were pitching for then post the ‘cutting’ up around the office. It worked a trick. Mind you the fact that we were great and up to our necks in Feng Shui may have helped. Not sure really.

Anyway, if I’m up with the dawn chorus tomorrow I’m trying to work some more positive ‘grooves in my mind’ and have altogether better conversations with myself. At this rate I will be waking up on purpose as the dialogue is so good!