Positive steering

I am used to meeting with friends and talking and moaning about our problems over drinks or whatever. To be honest, I do not really know why we even do it; it’s like it’s just the default thing that you talk about when you do not know what to talk about.

Over the last few months, I had the luck to spend a lot of time with a very interesting person with some weird habits. Every time we would meet, this person would ask me questions like, “What good thing did you do today?”, “What do you like the most about this thing or the other?”, “What good thing happened to you recently?”, “What are you thankful for?”, “What would be your dream whatever?”. At first, it just felt like an awkward but inoffensive interrogation. But after the awkwardness faded away, I started to see a sense and a pattern to it, and I would generally be happier after every conversation.

Suddenly, I had an “Aha!” moment, and I realized this person was purposely doing this in order to create a more positive conversation. So I started doing it, too; I interrogated the fuck out of this person. It felt very awkward at first, but after a while it just became normal. I started learning a lot about the person, and we would both be happier after every conversation.

There is a general concept in pretty much every self-help or life-improvement philosophy that revolves around focusing your attention on the good things, as that will actually make you more enthusiastic and energetic about life, which in turn will generally help you find more pleasure and success in it.

I like to call this positive steering. The idea is to blatantly steer conversations and thoughts and actions toward positive things, and asking positive questions seems to be a very simple and effective way to do this.