Petraeus, Crocker and Questions

I read a lot of stuff besides political topics to attempt to keep my mind oriented to the positive and what is possible, rather than the negative and what can’t be done.

Dan Kennedy had a bit in one of his weekly emails not long ago talking about the power of questions. Specifically, he wrote, “Quite a few years ago, I worked with a very smart businesswoman, speaker, author, cancer survivor, actress, really an amazing woman named Dorothy Leeds. (You can undoubtedly find her books at amazon). One of her seminars was all about "smart questions", and Dorothy's premise was:

The quality of life you experience
will be directly related to
the quality of the questions you ask.”

In the Bible, it says, (I’m an amateur on the Bible, but I think this applies) “Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you.” (New Testament, Matthew, vii, 7 and quoted in my book, page 64. Some people think that means if you ask God for a winning Lottery Ticket, then God will provide. I was taught the meaning of the passage is the better the questions you ask yourself, the better will be the solutions you find for your problems. If you ask lousy questions, then you’ll get lousy answers.

Accordingly, I have been very interested in the questions asked the last couple of days.

Of course, one of the differences between asking yourself questions regarding your problems and watching people testifying in a setting like we have now is the capability to answer the question.

If you’re answering your own questions, little good comes from withholding information from yourself. Garbage in, garbage out.

In the case of the hearings, Petraeus and Crocker are doubtless under guidance as to what they may and may not say. In addition, theirs is an unclassified presentation being listened to by not only the American public, but by the Iraqis, our allies and our enemies.

Nevertheless, the questions I’m not hearing enough of are these:

 “What if” questions about various courses of action.
 “What is the cost?” of the various courses of action.
 “What are the probabilities of success?”

So maybe we should be asking, “What if you had all the troops you needed? How many would that be? How long would it take to build up to that level of a force without diverting troops from our other commitments? How much would that cost? What would be the probability of success if we did that?”

That said; maybe there’s another type of discourse that takes place behind closed doors away from the public view. One can only hope.

I’m sure you have some good questions, too. Tell me what they are.

A Positive Source for You

One of the positive people I like to listen to is David Deford. One of his books is titled, Ordinary People Can Win. Similarly, his web site is www.OrdinaryPeopleCanWin.com. Certainly one of the things ordinary people need nowadays is the reminder they can take charge of their destiny (be it relationships, economic or political) and achieve what they want with their lives.

David is also an expert at networking using LinkedIn and offers webinars to raise your skill level in that important regard. From the testimonials I’ve seen, I know they’re really useful.

Go to www.DavidDeford.com/webinars if you’re interested.

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