Lisa Nichols learned that prayer works better when you ask better questions. She struggled with sleep apnea and anemia that made stillness impossible, but once she shifted from "Why do I suck?" to "What am I supposed to learn?" the answers became concrete and actionable instead of vague whispers.
Bulletproof radio, a state of high performance.
I'm really curious when you are praying, right, and you're asking, you know, what's this? How does that, how does that appear to you? I mean, you're a leader in personal development. So do you hear a booming voice? Does a burning bush talk to you? Like, how does the message land?
I learned very, very well not very early on. I won't say that I learned very clearly for me that I used to pray and ask the universe, ask God questions. And then I get super busy and I complain that I'm not finding the answers. And number one, an answer isn't something to find. An answer is something to allow to uncover itself.
I love that.
So we're in. So we're in such steady pursuit, and you don't pursue the answer, you allow the answer to uncover itself. And so to me, pray, asking the universe for what you need and want. Stillness is being quiet long enough to hear the answer. And so for me, I wouldn't hear a lot of responses because I was always busy being busy being busy. And whenever I would sit down to meditate, I would fall asleep. I would feel bad. I'm like, I suck at this. I keep falling asleep every time. Or like when I'd read a book, I'd fall asleep like, every, every time. I just got stuck still, I'd fall asleep. Well, a lot of that had to do with number one, I had significantly really bad sleep apnea and didn't know it. Wow. Yeah, I had really bad sleep apnea. And at the time I was over £215. I had sleep apnea. I was severely anemic. So of course, every time I'm still I go to sleep. But I was blaming my practice as if I just wasn't disciplined enough. And so when I began to sit and still stillness and ask a question and invite in the answer. And the other part, Dave, was recognizing how I asked the question. So the quality of my answers, the quality of your answers are directly determined by the quality of your question. This is a really great lesson for me to learn that when I asked a question and it started with why, like, why is it so hard? God, why is it? I am immediately asking for the most disempowering answer I could possibly ever find.
Like, why do I suck?
Right?
I still suck, right?
Exactly. Well, let me give you the top five reasons why you suck, right? So I begin to screen my questions. Like, I begin to mind my question. So I only ask forward moving questions. And so instead of saying, God, why Is this happening to me? I would say, God, what's the lesson that I get to learn because I'm going through this? That became my question.
That is such powerful, such powerful stuff. Thank you for saying that on the show. Everyone, if you're listening to this, like, rewind 15 seconds and hear that again.
It changed everything. It changed everything in my life. All of a sudden, all of my answers were substantive things that I can actually do something with every single answer. Because I'd ask the question, God, what am I supposed to learn? What lesson am I learning right now? While, you know, I'm going through this breakup, God, tell me the areas that I get to strengthen in in order to move through this challenging time. Like, I just started asking forward pulling questions. And when I got the answer, the answer gave me things that I could be doing. And so I would do it in stillness. It's always been very challenging for me to sit still. It's just, it's been. But it's also when I could hear, when I could hear my heart, when I can hear the universe, when I can hear my God speak to me. It's a whisper. Always say my head screams, but my God whispers.
That's beautiful.
And so often I don't hear the God in me because my head is chattering so loud and I'm allowing my head to take over the conversation. So my job is to quiet my head so that my heart and my God and my internal GPS system, my God placement system, my GPS God placement system can navigate.
