“What do you mean?”, “Why?”, “How?”, “When?”, “Where?”, ”What are your responsibilities in your line of work?”, “How did you get to where you are today?” - These have got to be some of my favourite question to ask of all time when I want to find things online because they challange the best of the best. There are two reasons why I like asking people these questions.
The first one is obvious. I want to know the answer. Secondly by asking one or more of these questions I am able to determine whether the person I am asking is knowledgable enough to explain further. In other words it differentiates between those that know what they are talking about and those think or even pretend to know. Pretend? I hear you say. Yes, saddly there really are people who pretend about their qualifications and knowledge.
Some will be able to elaborate and many will not. The ‘elaborators’ (as I like to call them) tend to have the ability to debate and discuss varied amount of topics. They will also have the courage to ask you about your concerns about whether you understood what they meant.
The ‘elaborators’ will not:
- avoid the questions
- change the subject
- lose patience
- fail to responding atall
- humour the person asking the question.
- feel threatened for any reason
It is from these people that your are likely to find out the answers to what you are looking for. If they do respond to your questions in any of the ways mentioned above it is probably a good idea to find someone who will respond better with your needs in mind rather than their own.
I have asked so much people for advice and only some people have the real knowledge or guts to back up every word they speak. I wander if this is just a statistic that I was unaware of? So rather than get annoyed at others for not giving you the right answers look upon it as a sifting through process untill you do find the right information.
I’m fascinated by people who have amazing stories to tell. I’m talking about rags to riches stories and inspirational ones of great achievements not necessarily money related. I’m inspired by people who start with nothing and create something amazing. I’m fascinated by the idea that it all starts with a simple thought. The idea of putting something on paper in the form of a diagram or a few words and turning it into something creative. It could be an amazing painting, a business idea, a product, a service, a blog, a movie, song or music, a personal journey of overcoming hurdles or just a different approaching to reaching a goal.
I love giving people credit
I love giving people credit but only when it is deserved. I’m a newbie at blogging which means I want to know everything about blogging there is to know but what does that really mean ? What about the ‘fake it ’till you make it’ approach? I don’t agree with this at all because if you claim to know something or to have achieved something then someone like me might be about to grill the living daylights out of you with questions. I did this when I wanted to know how artists manage to create amazing colour pencil shading. Realising after asking alot of questions, reading a few books, watching video tutorials and, ofcourse, having a go I managed to do it realising that I just needed to look at things with a diferrent angle or approach. It ended up being just a simple combination of carefully drawn lines, shapes, colours and tones so I made my very first attempt of colouring pencil shading and sketched a robin. The advice I took were from people who knew what they were talking about. People who I refer to as professionals or experienced.
Don’t ruin it for people looking for inspiration
There are thousands of people in need of inspiration who are not expecting to be mislead and sometimes in the desperation of looking they can become quite vulnerable which can lead to a distorted approach. So I would like to say this: Don’t say you are experienced at something when you are clearly not. I would have thought that would be obvious. Isn’t it obvious? I think it is. What is going through your mind when you pretend to know something or pretend to have experience in something that you have clearly have no clue about? You must know in your mind that you are about to make a fool of yourself whether it is now, tommorrow, in a weeks time, a month or years from now.
What are your thoughts on this? Have you attempted to ask someone for information and got a bad, distorted or no response? I beleive it is about taking responsibility and having the guts to ask the right questions.
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