"What do you see for yourself here?"

Eight year ago, this simple question - during a routine performance eval - was the catalyst for a major career change.

Why? Because I realized the answer was "nothing."

Asking the same old questions gets us the same old life. For example, back at that time I was mostly asking myself "how am I going to get through this day?" - day after day, week after week. Ouch.

When I was asked a new question that forced me to envision my future, clarity came instantly.

Since that moment, I've been increasingly aware of the power of questions to help me shift my perspective, change my mood, and even transform my life.

Here are my top five transformational questions:

What else could this mean? We get so married to our first, often mistaken, interpretation of events. This question helps you quickly imagine alternative explanations.

What if this never changed? This one is good for breaking out of stuck patterns in life, work, and relationships by remembering the accumulating costs of a life where you never broke out of this rut.

What is going well here? It's so easy to focus on what's going wrong, this question forces you to notice and appreciate what is working.

What if this were easy? When everything feels impossibly hard, this question can help access a place of ease. It often brings a smile and release of tension.

What can I learn here? We often just want our difficulties to just go away as fast as possible. Instead, use this question to search inside the hardship for a lesson to carry forward.

Whether we know it or not, unhelpful questions often run in the background in our minds and shape the course of our lives. Thankfully, with a little creativity, new questions also have the power to elicit big and rapid change.