"The true power of a question lies not in the answer it seeks, but in the connection it creates."
— Lee Brower
"In the right moment, a single question can be more powerful than a thousand answers."
— Lee Brower
"Great questions make great answers."
— Oscar Wilde
"Questions can be like a lever you use to pry open the stuck lid on a paint can."
— Fran Peavey
Good morning, everybody. Lee Brouwer here. Welcome to this week's edition of Meaningful Monday. I am grateful to be here. I am glad to be here. I'm thinking of one question. And this one question has done more for me and helping me and many other people. It's a single question that is so powerful that I've watched it turn tension into tenderness. I've watched it transition conflict into connection and distance into closeness. I'm going to tell you a story. I was the experience that I had several years ago. Contacted by a law firm said we have a unique situation here. We have a multi-generational trust that's been around forever. It's about ready to be distributed. However, over the last several generations, that trust has been depleted by embezzlement, left, infidelity, all kinds of things. There's only one remaining beneficiary. He happens to be 29 years old, and he also happens to have had a past of dealing with addictions. Because the bank has had it for so long, and they don't want to give up the money. So they don't want to release it because of his addictions, and they feel that they can do that. My mom is the only guardian, and she receives a money to make sure that to take care of him and to kind of guide him, and of course, she does it with love, but she's worried about too, that if it ends, he's going to run off with the money. She won't have any money left over to do anything, and so there's this conflict. I don't know why they called me, but here I am in the middle of it, and I thought, "Okay, is it possible to put the mom and the son together?" And they said, "Yes, so that's what we did." Now you can imagine, I had no idea exactly, I'm not a therapist, I'm not trained in that. But I walked in there, and as I met with him, I just one question came to me, and I looked at the son, and I said, and the tension was high, right? I looked at the son, and I said, "If you could have one quality or characteristic of your mom's and make it your own, what one quality or characteristic would you take?" And he sat there quiet, and his head down, and he goes, "Courage," and his mom goes, "Courage," and I could see her eyes tear up. I said, "It sounds like a story," he said, "Yes," so he shared not only one story, but several stories about how she had used courage to get through everything that she had been through, and all the things in her life, and how she had been an example to him. So then I asked her the same question, I was a little bit nervous, I didn't know what she would say, and she said, "Humor," and he goes, "Humor," and she goes, "Yes," and then the stories came out again, how his humor had been able to, instead of react with anger, they were able to respond with humor and be able to work through several issues in the past. By the time we were done, they were crying, they were hugging. They went on, distributions were made, the bank wasn't happy about it necessarily, they went with it to a different bank, but they managed it together going forward, and the relationship blossomed. Worked so well, I decided I was going to try it with my family, as my children get older and become young adults, I felt that they were pulling apart from each other, so I brought them all together, and we each answered that question, "If you could have one quality or characteristic of your sibling, what would that one quality or characteristic be?" And stories came up, and when we left, we were hugging and we were crying, and we were so grateful for this unity that we had. I've used the question in business between partners, if you could have one quality characteristic of your partner, make it your own, what would that one quality or characteristic be? And what it does is it takes the arrows from be pointing in and points them out, and as you point the arrows out and you become not so caught up in yourself and your own challenges, you're able to see others, and all of a sudden, you can turn tension into tenderness. You can change conflict into connection, and you can change distance into closeness. So look into your own relationships, professionally, personally, ask yourself, "Where can you use this question?" I'd love to hear the stories from this, share this, let other people know about this, don't keep it to yourself. Have a meaningful week, I look forward to joining you next week. We'll talk next week. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]
