29 Sept 2026 · 5 min
George Kao explains how to ask yourself meaningful questions during routine activities like walking or showering. Your subconscious works on the answer in the background, surfacing insights later. He walks through the process: pose the question, let it marinate, revisit it, then evaluate what emerges.
Hi, this is George Kao, and in this short video I want to share with you a way for you to get smarter, solve more problems in your life, and really in any area of your life. And the method is simple: it's to ask more questions. Or I should say, ask questions that matter to you more frequently. So whenever you find yourself doing something where you don't have to be thinking, like you're not working on a project, you're not talking with someone, you're not watching something, but you're maybe taking a walk, or you're on the bus, you're on a train, you're on a plane, or you're on— you're in the car and someone else is driving, or you're washing the dishes or doing some other chores where you don't have to be really engaging the mind because you're so used to doing it that you're just engaging with your hands. These are great times to be asking yourselves questions that matter. It could be questions about anything that's important to you. So if you are trying to figure out your life purpose, you could ask yourself the question, what is my life purpose? Or if you want to ask it in a more possibility-generating way, you could say, one possibility for my life purpose is... And then you let yourself kind of fill in the blank. Now here's the key. The answer usually doesn't come right away. So you have to practice being okay with not having the answer for the time being and just continuing to sit with the question or to keep doing whatever you're doing physically, but just to let the question be kind of marinating in your consciousness, in your subconsciousness. And Answers will pop up at the strangest times because what the brain is doing is when you pose a question, the brain starts to get to work to find the answers. Now, there's 2 modes, right? There's one mode, it's kind of conscious problem-solving, and that's when you are, you know, like thinking hard and trying to figure out, maybe you're even talking to yourself, trying to figure out the problem or the answer to something. And then the second mode is subconscious, which is when you're not— particularly when you're not thinking hard. Oftentimes happens when you're doing some physical activity. Have you ever noticed that you get ideas when you're taking a shower? Or you get ideas when you're walking or something like that. So that's when the subconscious problem-solving kicks in and offers you ideas when your conscious mind is not engaged. Okay, so that's the key, is to ask yourself the question and then wait. And then, you know, if you if you lose track of thinking about something else, come back. And like meditation, you come back and you pose the question again. And then just keep doing, you know, take taking your walk or doing the dishes or whatever. And then if you get lost in some other train of thought, come back. And ask yourself the question again. And a couple of questions that you might ask include, you know, one possible— one possibility for my life purpose at this time is fill in the blank. Another question that I ask myself is, one way that I can better serve my clients is, right? Or what's something my ideal client needs from me right now? You can even ask questions to help improve your personal relationships. So you can say, one thing I can do to make my spouse happier, one thing I can do to make my friend happier is... and then you kind of let the answer come to you, let the possibilities come to you. Not every answer that comes to you is from God or from your higher guidance, but you let the answers come to you. And then you can then use your conscious mind, your logical mind, to evaluate whether it makes sense to continue with that answer or to apply that guidance. Does that make sense? So I really encourage you to try this. There are so many times in our daily life that we could be allowing our subconscious mind to work on our behalf when we don't have to be consciously thinking about something. Let your subconscious mind work on your behalf by asking yourself the question that matters. Make sense? All right, so until the next video, I wish you well, and I'm always open to your suggestions for what questions matter to you and what times in your day or in your week make sense to ask questions. Be well. Bye.
"Be of good cheer. Think not of today's failures, but of tomorrow's successes...”
