Lofty Questions

This object holds several strands at once, and keeps them labelled so you can tell which is which.

• —Creator lens — questions as a perspective-changing tool, an artistic proposition behind both songs.
• —Interrogative self-talk — research comparing question-form and statement-form self-address.
• —Positive versus deficit-oriented attention — adjacent evidence on where a question points.
• —The Lofty Questions technique — associated with Christie Marie Sheldon and popularised through Mindvalley.
• —Question framing and presupposition — wording can carry assumptions into the answer.
• —Open versus closed questions — different structures elicit different responses, in the domains actually studied.
• —Critical reflection — examining the question before searching for a better answer.
• —Confirmation-bias risk — a positively loaded question is still a loaded question.
• —Reflection — what your habitual questions may be training your mind to find.

“Do Lofty Questions work?” is the smaller question. “What does this question invite my mind to look for?” is the larger one.

Declaration

“I am confident.”

Closed question

“Am I confident?”

Positive-premise / lofty question

“Why am I becoming more confident?”

Possibility question

“What if I could become more confident?”

Open exploratory question

“What influences how confident I feel?”

Metacognitive question

“What assumption is hidden inside the question I'm asking?”

The purpose of this map is to show how different wording creates a different search space. It is not a ranking, and no level here is claimed to be psychologically superior to another.