The Power of Asking Good Questions
All people go through different adversities in life, but not all people know how to get through them. Some are confused and don’t know what to do in life. They don’t know how to survive it.
Moreover, some people need help making decisions. They don’t know what to consider, and they don’t know where to start.
In this episode, Dr. Brad Miller talks about how you can make good decisions by asking questions. He mentioned different questions that you could use in various situations that will help and guide you in your decision-making process.
It is important to ask the right questions and deal with your adversities in life. It will help you break that adversity.
Episode 265 of The Beyond Adversity Podcast is a must-listen for anyone who is looking for guidance and wondering how to make good decisions by asking the right questions.
“The Beyond Adversity Podcast with Dr. Brad Miller is published weekly with the mission of helping people “Grow Through What They Go Through” as they navigate adversity and discover their promised life of peace, prosperity, and purpose.
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Transcript
Hello, good people. Welcome to the Beyond Adversity podcast with Dr. Brad Miller.
Dr. Brad Miller:I'm always humbled that you have chosen to spend some time with me in whatever
Dr. Brad Miller:your daily endeavors are. You might be in the car. You might be doing laundry.
Dr. Brad Miller:You might be hanging out with the kid. You might be doing something around the house.
Dr. Brad Miller:That's the pattern interrupt question that happens here. What do you need to do?
Dr. Brad Miller:You have the follow up questions? Well, I need to talk to him. Okay. Is that all
Dr. Brad Miller:you need to do? Well, maybe and ask the question, what do you need to do
Dr. Brad Miller:about now? Well, I need to get some of his friends to talk to him to me. Okay.
Dr. Brad Miller:Well, maybe the question the answer the question, then what do you need
Dr. Brad Miller:about now do it now, to the woman whose husband was an alcoholic?
Dr. Brad Miller:Maybe I need to organize an intervention. In the intervention include the
Dr. Brad Miller:opening for a treatment plan at a treatment center. That leads to the
Dr. Brad Miller:next questions that can can be the fill out the process of what do you
Dr. Brad Miller:need to do have a now you press the big button? Boom, that's the action.
Dr. Brad Miller:The big button is a big button action, then, okay? If that's the theory, you
Dr. Brad Miller:want to organize an intervention? Who is going? Who do you need to help
Dr. Brad Miller:you do this? What was the team you need? Who and I'm going to get his
Dr. Brad Miller:friends and his brother to help me. But to get them to do that, well, what
Dr. Brad Miller:When do you need to do this? Did you put a deadline and
Dr. Brad Miller:things when the answer could be by the end of the month? Okay, so
Dr. Brad Miller:I appreciate you taking some time with me, as I like to talk about areas that I believe are
Dr. Brad Miller:important. I like to believe that everybody has some adversity in their life, and that they
Dr. Brad Miller:need some direction and some coaching about how to navigate that and get through that.
Dr. Brad Miller:That's what we're here about to help you to get beyond that adversity and achieve your life
Dr. Brad Miller:of peace and prosperity and purpose. You can always go over to my website,
Dr. Brad Miller:drbradmiller.com, where I have over 260 episodes of this podcast to serve you.
Dr. Brad Miller:drbradmiller.com/fortydayway - you can find out more about our coaching, and about our courses.
Dr. Brad Miller:Today, I want to talk to you about making good decisions based on asking
Dr. Brad Miller:good questions. We were privileged in Episode 263 and 264, to have Lori Ann Wood with us.
Dr. Brad Miller:She's the author of the book, The Divine Detour. She outlined how having a massive
Dr. Brad Miller:cardiac problem, a heart problem led her to have a change of pathway in her life.
Dr. Brad Miller:Ask her and lead her to a pathway where she discovered three ultimate questions
Dr. Brad Miller:that she had to deal with, those questions were the question of worry. Is this all
Dr. Brad Miller:there is to life and the question of doubt. Is God always good? The question of control,
Dr. Brad Miller:Is God in control, or am I in control? Well, I want to reflect with you for a few minutes
Dr. Brad Miller:today about my thoughts, about asking good questions to help you deal with things
Dr. Brad Miller:that matter in your life, particularly as you deal with the important questions of life
Dr. Brad Miller:and also dealing with other people. We're also going to talk about a biblical story
Dr. Brad Miller:about where Jesus dealt with questions that had life and death implications for the
Dr. Brad Miller:people around him. Good questions. One of the privileges I've had my life is to study
Dr. Brad Miller:under some great people. I know some of the professors that I had in college,
Dr. Brad Miller:in seminary, and in graduate school. One of their teaching methodologies,
Dr. Brad Miller:some of the great leaders I've read, and in books and so on, have led with
Dr. Brad Miller:good questions. Questions that make you think, reflect, and process things.
Dr. Brad Miller:Jesus was good at that too. I want to reflect with you a process that I think
Dr. Brad Miller:might be helpful to you. One thing is to not be defensive when people ask you
Dr. Brad Miller:a question, because sometimes we want simple kind of 1, 2, 3 answers to our situations.
Dr. Brad Miller:Sometimes people ask us questions that makes us think, I would invite you to take
Dr. Brad Miller:that as an opportunity to process things in your own right. Having said that, one
Dr. Brad Miller:of the processes I learned about good questions and how they can lead us to
Dr. Brad Miller:make good decisions about our life, have to do with a process that I've used
Dr. Brad Miller:in my reflections with people for a long, long time, or my counseling with people for a long,
Dr. Brad Miller:long time. For as well I, sometimes, just call this the big button process of decision making.
Dr. Brad Miller:It goes something like this. Because when we have an adversity in our life, we often want
Dr. Brad Miller:to find a solution. Let's say the adversity is that you have someone in your life who's an
Dr. Brad Miller:alcoholic. I've worked with this kind of situation before, with a woman who had a husband,
Dr. Brad Miller:who was an alcoholic, and it was causing great problems in their marriage, in their household,
Dr. Brad Miller:and there was bad stuff happening. Especially when the husband went on a drinking binge
Dr. Brad Miller:and it was not good. It was not good. Here's how this process the big button, process of
Dr. Brad Miller:asking good questions kind of played out, and how it might play out for you. Perhaps
Dr. Brad Miller:the idea is, I would ask this woman in the process of our counseling and our processing,
Dr. Brad Miller:the question is, okay, what do you want? So that's the first question. That's the
Dr. Brad Miller:cognitive question. That's your brain. Reading question, what is it that you want?
Dr. Brad Miller:I invite you to ask a question of yourself regarding any adversity that you're in, and
Dr. Brad Miller:one answer to the question that she might have that she did have was she
Dr. Brad Miller:just want my husband to stop drinking? Then you might ask that question again,
Dr. Brad Miller:but ask for a different answer. What do you want? You know, I want my husband to
Dr. Brad Miller:stop drinking, and I want him to stop yelling and cursing at me. I might ask the question,
Dr. Brad Miller:what do you want? I want my husband to stop drinking, and to treat me right, because
Dr. Brad Miller:this could break up our marriage. That's the first question. What do you want?
Dr. Brad Miller:The second question, the second good question is the affective question or
Dr. Brad Miller:the feeling of the emotive question, which is simply how are you feeling about this?
Dr. Brad Miller:How are you feeling? Well, I'm out of control, I'm out. I feel like my life is out of control.
Dr. Brad Miller:I'm miserable. I'm scared all the time. I'm scared of what he's going to do to himself
Dr. Brad Miller:or to me or to others, or the whole drunk driving thing concerns me. I'm scared.
Dr. Brad Miller:That's the emotion. I'm scared and I'm miserable. You can see if you ask that
Dr. Brad Miller:question, even multiple times you can get the different levels. Maybe desperation
Dr. Brad Miller:is one of the answers. So we've got the head piece, the cognitive piece, we get the
Dr. Brad Miller:feeling the effective piece. The first question is, what do you want?
Dr. Brad Miller:The second question is, how are you feeling about this? The third question is the
Dr. Brad Miller:behavioral question. Okay, what are you doing about it right now? What are you
Dr. Brad Miller:doing about it right now? So, she might say something about? Well, I'm nagging him
Dr. Brad Miller:every night. Our response might be how's that working for another response
Dr. Brad Miller:might be, I've been trying to hide the alcohol while you find it. Another response
Dr. Brad Miller:might be that I've been complained about it to my family and friends. The question
Dr. Brad Miller:we might response to that might be you. How's that all working for you? It's really not,
Dr. Brad Miller:or you wouldn't be asking me about it. When it gets clear about this, you need to
Dr. Brad Miller:ask these questions, and sometimes, multiple times, the head question, the cognitive
Dr. Brad Miller:question, what do you want the affective, the emotional question, how are you feeling?
Dr. Brad Miller:And the behavioral question, or the active question, which is the action question,
Dr. Brad Miller:what do you do about it? What do you do about it now.The important thing is to
Dr. Brad Miller:ask smart questions that lead you someplace to make a decision. So that's the
Dr. Brad Miller:type of systematic question process. These are those three questions that can lead
Dr. Brad Miller:you just going round and round. People who have had what they call, sometimes
Dr. Brad Miller:circular arguments, or circular conversations that don't really lead anywhere.
Dr. Brad Miller:The idea is, you have to hit the big button in order to break that pattern.
Dr. Brad Miller:The big button is the button of change. That's what Beyond Adversity is all
Dr. Brad Miller:about because people can get stuck on their adversity all the time. Maybe
Dr. Brad Miller:you are stuck in your adversity, maybe you are in a place where you're stuck,
Dr. Brad Miller:and you need some help. I'm here to help. Maybe this process can be helpful
Dr. Brad Miller:because the big button question is this, what do you need to do about it now?
Dr. Brad Miller:Get the idea. Not what are you doing about it? What do you need to do about it
Dr. Brad Miller:in order to break the pattern to change this? That is the pattern change here?
Dr. Brad Miller:you gotta have yourself a reasonable deadline to do this, and how will
Dr. Brad Miller:you do it? How will you do it? Well, we're gonna have a cookout at
Dr. Brad Miller:our house on our back patio. And then after the cookouts over with, we're
Dr. Brad Miller:going to have not only is we're gonna have the people there, who is his
Dr. Brad Miller:friends, and are they his brother, and we're just going to talk to him right
Dr. Brad Miller:then and there, because he will be at the cookout. And we're going to take
Dr. Brad Miller:away all the alcohol, and we're going to have this conversation, we're gonna
Dr. Brad Miller:have this intervention. Now, that's one way that you could ask good questions
Dr. Brad Miller:that lead you to a process of decision making. It's not easy, don't get me wrong.
Dr. Brad Miller:It's not easy, but you can't do this. It is important to ask and to deal with the
Dr. Brad Miller:hard questions if you really want to break patterns of adversity in your life.
Dr. Brad Miller:That's what Jesus did. You know, I'm a pastor, and I am a faith based purpose
Dr. Brad Miller:person. So a lot of what I get everybody is from the Bible, and from great
Dr. Brad Miller:teachers of faith. It's all a lot of great questions. I remember in John 8, Jesus
Dr. Brad Miller:had a situation where there's three scenario here that involve questions. I thought
Dr. Brad Miller:it was so important. Jesus was out in this place, called them out of olives. He was
Dr. Brad Miller:praying, and he was doing some teaching there. Some of the Pharisees were kinda
Dr. Brad Miller:like the church police of the day, they found a woman who's caught in adultery.
Dr. Brad Miller:In that time, the day and age, a woman caught in adultery could be stoned to death.
Dr. Brad Miller:That was what they said they brought her to Jesus. They were trying to catch him,
Dr. Brad Miller:because they wanted him to say something that they could get him on a
Dr. Brad Miller:charge of blasphemy, which be going against and breaking the law, and the
Dr. Brad Miller:laws about adultery, They said, okay. This woman was caught in the act of
Dr. Brad Miller:adultery, the law of Moses says that we should stone her. But what do you say
Dr. Brad Miller:they are? They're asking her the question. So the scenario here is, Jesus knew they
Dr. Brad Miller:were trying to catch him in this question. So your motives of your
Dr. Brad Miller:questions are important here as part of what the message here is, you
Dr. Brad Miller:ask questions correct, come to resolution, not to condemn or to frustrate
Dr. Brad Miller:someone else, or yourself. You want to get to a resolution. Jesus knew that
Dr. Brad Miller:was going on. The Pharisees were trying to get in by asking, Okay, Who?
Dr. Brad Miller:Who? What do you want us to do? What do you think should be done? Jesus
Dr. Brad Miller:confused everybody by getting down on the ground. He wrote something,
Dr. Brad Miller:no one really knows what, with his finger in the ground in the dirt there.
Dr. Brad Miller:And he did his question, he answered the question by saying, If anyone
Dr. Brad Miller:the ground again. See, he broke the pattern. He wasn't going to say yes or no
Dr. Brad Miller:who was without sin, be the first to throw a stone at her. He went and rode
Dr. Brad Miller:to get caught. He turned the question around on them. If you're without sin,
Dr. Brad Miller:then you can cast a stone because everyone is guilty of some sin and they walked away.
Dr. Brad Miller:So that's the two parts I want you to get there, trying to catch somebody in this turn.
Dr. Brad Miller:The question around what Jesus said they did. Then Jesus asked a woman a question,
Dr. Brad Miller:he said, A Woman, where are the people who accuse you? Where are those who
Dr. Brad Miller:condemn you? She looked around and she said, No one's here, sir. He said, the
Dr. Brad Miller:other two I condemn you, she went on our way. So Jesus turned her life around,
Dr. Brad Miller:and he had an impact on everybody's life there. Why? By dealing with and
Dr. Brad Miller:asking good questions, good questions, which led to a life change. That's just one story.
Dr. Brad Miller:There's many others. I hope that you will keep in mind, ask good questions,
Dr. Brad Miller:and think about good questions that can be a part of a transformational process
Dr. Brad Miller:for you. I'm here to help. My name is Dr. Brad Miller. I'm a Doctor of Ministry. My
Dr. Brad Miller:doctoral degree is a transformational leadership, which may jive. I work with
Dr. Brad Miller:people who want to change their lives. That's what I'm all about. I come to
Dr. Brad Miller:you with 42 years of ministry experience, but I've been with a lot of
Dr. Brad Miller:people who have dealt with a lot of adversity in their life. And that's
Dr. Brad Miller:what Beyond Adversity is all about helping people to navigate this muddy water area.
Dr. Brad Miller:To get to a better place a place, I like to call the place of peace, prosperity, and
Dr. Brad Miller:purpose. If I can help I want to do just that. You could find drbradmiller.com. You
Dr. Brad Miller:could email me at brad@drbradmiller.com. You can also go to
Dr. Brad Miller:drbradmiller.com/fortydayaway from information about our courses and
Dr. Brad Miller:our coaching. We're here to be helpful to you. We love you and we care about
Dr. Brad Miller:you. We want you to have a pathway to a better life and part of that
Dr. Brad Miller:process is asking good questions. We'll see you next time good people here
Dr. Brad Miller:on the Beyond Adversity podcast. Until then, remember to always do all the good that you can.