My name is Ken Knoechel. I’m so glad you are taking the time to review this information. I believe you will find this information to be a wonderful way to design your desires around God’s plan for your life. I am going to introduce you to a powerful technique called Directional Questions. It is extremely useful for expanding your understanding of God’s plan for your life and begin moving closer to your desires that He promises to give you. (Psalms 37:4). This technique works to automatically focus your mind on opportunities for growing your relationship with God, your relationship with others, and your relationship with yourself. Life becomes an adventure when you ask the right questions, helping you to easily overcome obstacles, make decisions, and find creative solutions. Using the Directional Questions Technique presses you closer to hear the Spirit’s voice as you observe people, places, and situations throughout your day. You will begin focusing your mind in a very intentional way. Using Directional Questions will create in you a curious mind, enriched with optimism and hope. You will begin to notice a shift in your thinking and realize a more faithful, fulfilling, and abundant life.
Even in challenging circumstances that escalate you to an extreme stress response, I imagine you attempt to make the best decision from the choices available to you. I want to grow your belief in God through this text. When you believe there are solutions beyond the apparent choices in front of you, you can look and see an alternative solution that would likely be frantically overlooked if you were desperately scanning for immediate solutions. When people are desperate, frantic, or any other fear-based emotion, they focus acutely on the seeming cause of distress and are unable to see how God is working to bring about resolution.
Believing alternative solutions do exist, despite your human limitations, encourages you to begin looking beyond your conscious awareness and realize you are not limited to just that which you observe in the present. When faced with tough decisions that escalate you, you instinctively tend to narrow your focus to a few possibilities, sweating out the pros and cons. However, one of the most powerful mindsets you can adopt is recognizing God is faithful to provide a creative solution that lies beyond your initial scope of vision. We can say that we understand that God is faithful, but we are often drawn back to our insecure internal dialog that tells us seeing is believing. The thing is, most of the time when our merciful God is working out an alternative solution, it is outside our line of sight. When trials come, asking Directional Questions and then looking for the answer to come allows you to continue performing with poise and dignity under pressure.
By beginning to question your automatic acceptance of limited choices and becoming more curious about what solutions might exist beyond your current understanding, you begin developing a clearer understanding of how God works. This will create in your mind a new framework for thinking. This text aims to guide you through a process that encourages a shift towards a mindset that naturally seeks to see God working in your life and the lives of others. By asking Directional Questions, you invite God’s Spirit to commune with your subconscious mind, helping you to grow your faith and connect with Omniscience. After you begin to resolve even years-old problems, your mind will strengthen the skill of believing, and you will easily begin to notice alternative solutions when you look for them. Your innate propensities will be subdued as you become acquainted with how the Spirit provides you with answers to your questions.
I believe adopting this thought process for finding alternative solutions will not only help you solve immediate problems but also orient you towards discovering simple ways of experiencing better health, success, and love, naturally creating a more fulfilling and abundant life. While understanding that God designed a grand architecture that is equipped with endless possibilities, you can imagine, realize, and expect to tap into the potential for excellent outcomes for each decision.
The concept of Directional Questions is rooted in brain science and is supported by the Word of God. When we begin seeing this world through the lens of asking Directional Questions and looking for the answer expectantly, this conditions and shapes how we view ourselves, others, and what God asks us to be to others. This lens is usually not just switched out. It takes exercise and practice to adapt your neural circuitry. A very practical and simple, yet effective exercise is called “Good & New.” This exercise, practiced daily, prompts you to identify something good and new in your life, challenging you to expand your awareness and notice the blessings all around you, and even to “…count it all joy when you fall into various trials…” (James 1:2). If something is wrong or stressful, the question should never be, “Why is this happening to me?” but rather, “What tool does God want me to practice using right now?” This mindset will naturally lead to an increase in optimism, contentment, and satisfaction in your life. As days pass, continue searching for what is Good and New, never identifying what you have already identified previously. The exercise will reveal a deeper truth: your brain, when engaged in this process, begins to dig deeper, moving beyond surface-level observations to find new positive aspects of your daily experience.
While you are searching, scanning for something Good and New, it is extremely helpful to recognize the Source of all that is good, appreciating even the ability to train your mind in this way is a legitimate blessing that warrants gratitude (James 1:17). God assumes the role of the provider of all that is good for every individual. When you recognize Him for His provisions, you will begin seeing how even less than desirable situations are working to land you in a place you desire to be.
Imagine your brain as a control tower on a battleship with an array of radars, each tuned to specific aspects of life like happiness, gratitude, misery, problems, or beauty. The concept of the Gratitude Radar highlights our ability to choose which mental radars to activate or deactivate. Activating the Gratitude Radar is surprisingly simple, requiring only the repetition of Directional Questions to shift your focus toward joy and contentment in the present moment. Problems and challenges will come, yes, but allowing your feelings of insecurity to envelop how you manage them will surely prolong their presence in your life, impacting you with greater ferocity. By asking questions like “What are some more blessings that I can be thankful for right now?” or “How many blessings can I find to be thankful about now?”, we instruct our brains to scan our environment for reasons to feel confident, content and satisfied, effectively rewiring our neural circuitry through consistent directional questioning.
Neuroscience and the concept of Neuroplasticity offers implications of Quantum Physics on our understanding of reality. Many Christians are skeptical of science as they presuppose the field of science is oppositional to the reality of a Creator God. While this oftentimes may be true, we need to understand that true science reveals the creative omnipotence of God. Colossians 1:17 says, “And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” God is the life force that hangs the planets in their orbit, while He also animates the movements and properties of electrons in their subatomic orbit. Imagine with me for a moment, the wonder of tracking atoms through the universe with an ultra-powerful microscope, revealing how subatomic particles change direction simply by being observed. This discovery naturally leads us to question if our thoughts, intentions, and perceptions can directly influence our environment, taking your awareness beyond the traditional belief that action alone dictates results.
Going even deeper, we realize that our brains possess a remarkable ability, proven through the lens of science, to design reality based on our thoughts. This encourages us to imagine the possibilities of reprogramming the unhelpful patterns that are set to default in our minds. These patterns have worn deep grooves of insecurity and doubt into our subconscious mind. After the fall, Adam and Eve felt insecure when they noticed they were naked. This insecurity is used by Satan to sabotage our subconscious minds and get us to focus on self.
By intentionally directing your attention and focusing on the desires of your heart, you unlock the ability to move towards them more efficiently, demonstrating the incredible influence of intention when coupled with desire. Through understanding and applying these Bible-based scientific principles, you can begin realizing the latent potential in your mind for shaping your reality in God’s grand architecture.
God gave us so many tools to use to help us design our lives. It is amazing to understand how the mind amalgamates the cognitive, emotional, physical, and spiritual domains! In seeking to demystify the effectiveness of the Directional Questions Technique, it’s helpful to understand the fundamentals of how our brains operate, especially when it comes to the Reticular Activator System (RAS). I want to simplify this for you into actionable insights that can be applied to enrich your life right now. I imagine your brain at times produces thoughts that feel like a stampede of wild horses, running out of control and causing you to feel helpless to tame under pressure. This is because your RAS is fragmented by all the high alert data it tries to synthesize and organize.
The RAS functions like a telephone switchboard, meticulously filtering the information that reaches your conscious mind, the CEO of your mental operations. This internal system ensures that only data deemed critical, based on your past experiences, is allowed to capture your attention. By understanding this, you can begin to intentionally reprogram your RAS to prioritize information you choose to feed it, effectively taming and refocusing your attention towards what you truly desire.
The RAS assumes a key role as the brain’s attention center, filtering essential information from the noise of our busy environments. This system enables you to stay focused while effectively processing and learning information. In the case of a person experiencing PTSD symptoms, the RAS has been hijacked by previous traumatic experiences, so fear is the message that is being fed to the conscious mind whenever there’s a hint of anything resembling the trauma they experienced. Experiences are consciously just experiences, but when a strong emotion is associated with them, an acute focus drives the emotional experience into the subconscious mind with an exclamation mark. Memories lined with vivid emotions are indexed in the RAS like road signs. The efficacy of the Directional Questions Technique is further amplified by the unique response your RAS has to auditory commands. A repeated spoken Directional Question every day pierces through the RAS filter with renewed urgency, commanding your brain’s attention and facilitating a neurological shift into realizing pathways towards that which we desire.
To elucidate the concept of directing one’s mind towards positivity and solutions, I’m going to share a story about a guy I will call Terrified Tim. Terrified Tim exemplifies a mindset entirely focused on problems, lacking any awareness of his RAS and thus, engulfed continually in negativity. His mental radar is finely tuned to detect anything wrong or anything that could go wrong at any given time. Terrified Tim highlights the enormous impact that your internal questions have on your perception of others, your self-perception, and the world around you.
Terrified Tim’s incessant complaints and negative outlook were not just a personal quirk but a reflection of a deeply ingrained psychological habit, one that scanned for and magnified problems. This made him exceedingly unhappy and quite a chore to be around. Terrified Tim, and others like him, underscore the importance of being proactive and very intentional about the instructions you feed into your brain. Your mind is adept at scanning for information, so you must be careful about the nature of the questions you pose to yourself.
Terrified Tim illustrates how important it is to ask quality Directional Questions. By using mechanisms that God designed into the mind’s architecture, you invite God to move on your heart in a way that dislodges even the most entrenched negative psychological habits, effectively removing the desperate internal dialog that interferes with you performing well in life. For instance, if one’s childhood was ingrained with a “scarcity mentality,” this is likely to design beliefs lined with hypervigilance and desperation. This learned scarcity mentality is likely to subconsciously influence their behavior into adulthood, where they expect only that which they have already experienced in their life. Yet, shifting the questions you ask can begin breaking up those limiting beliefs of desperation, allowing you to engage your life with autonomy from your past.
By practicing the Directional Questions Technique several times daily, once written down and more than a few times verbalized, I’m confident that you will experience a significant increase in your contentment and satisfaction with life after 30 days, but I imagine just by reviewing this information right now, the wheels are turning, and the shift has already begun. It is good to keep a primary focus by writing down two or three questions and contemplating them as you go through your day, but this instrument can also be used to connect with the Holy Spirit as you come to crossroads in life, pressure points in your day, or you if just want to learn more about how life works. When you adapt the habit of looking at things in a more directional way, asking Directional Questions in the moment when you need understanding, invites the Holy Spirit to impress new insight and perspective. For instance, your boss calls you into the office and on your way there, you might say, “How can I be calm and provide my boss with the answers they are looking for?” Just asking this question will give you an extra portion of poise and dignity needed to engage your boss in the most effective way. But hold on, “I’M FIRED? WHAT? But Ken, you said Directional Questions would improve my life!” Situations that cause fear responses will not just subside, but I’m confident you will minimize their frequency and respond with greater resilience when they do occur. When encountering stress points in your life, changing your question from “Why is this happening to me?” to “What can I do to be more effective?” or “How can I navigate this situation successfully?” changes your perception of reality from oppressive to managerial. Changing your perception of reality into a more directional orientation will preemptively reduce the number of times you encounter situations that elicit an escalated stress response, like your boss calling you into the office.
When you commit to writing down two or three Directional Questions for at least a week, this will give you enough evidence to motivate you to continue, not only for the remainder of the 30 days, but for the remainder of your life. I want you to use this information to become more comfortable with yourself as you deepen your relationship with others and your relationship with God. When you are comfortable with yourself, you invite others to be comfortable with you as well.
Continually practicing this mindset, your life will change for the better, building momentum as you move closer to the Desirable Life you and God are designing. Directional Questions will invigorate you, gently pulling you beyond your comfort zone to stimulate action and growth across all life domains. Jeremiah 33:3 says, “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.” This is God’s invitation to come to Him and ask, so He can impart knowledge. The essence of intentional change resides in collaborating with God as you begin taking an active role in shaping your patterns of thinking, interrupting the disparaging internal dialog, and being humble to accept even some of the toughest of truths about yourself.
The Directional Questions Technique is a powerful tool for redirecting unhelpful thoughts and moving you towards your desires by transforming internal criticism into constructive inquiries. Questions like “What can I eat today that is nutritious?” or “How much fun will it be to exercise today?” serve as catalysts for positive change, encouraging actions and communication that aligns with the person you desire becoming. Verbally asking the Holy Spirit things you want to know will yield better search results than Google ever could. While there is a lot of good, accurate information for solving problems, tapping in and connecting to the Source of Truth will point you in the direction for asking the right questions.
To give some clarity on timeframes, content, and frequency, this is simply your choice. Some of my clients will write the same questions, corresponding to specific desires, for one week or one month or one year. Some clients have chosen to write the same Directional Questions for the rest of their life. The objective is to keep your mind seeking, searching for a better understanding of life and the missions God has planned for you. The content of the questions will be discussed later on in detail, but I recommend looking over the list of your desires and creating Directional Questions where you anticipate the answers will move you closer to the object of your desires. Do not try to consciously answer your Directional Questions after writing them down. You want the questions to marinate, affecting the way you think subconsciously. I believe the subconscious mind is the medium through which God intended to continually commune with us, and that is what Satan targeted to disrupt in the Garden. I believe the subconscious mind is still the Holy Spirit’s medium through which He communicates with each individual seeking His voice.
I recommend creating or following a morning devotional routine that includes the Desirable Mind Technique and the Directional Questions Technique. Writing down the same daily desires fires up the engines, and then writing down the same two or three Directional Questions connects you with Air Traffic Control. As you launch into your day, these two techniques will affect your thinking to effectually provide clarity, resilience, and objectivity to your conversations with yourself and with others throughout your day.
After you have written down your desires and Directional Questions in blue or black ink, have a conversation with God, vocally asking Him the questions and telling Him your desires exactly as they are written down. Writing in blue or black ink sends a clear message of permanency to your subconscious mind, commanding your RAS to keep its radar honed in on any information that will help to answer your Directional Questions. As you engage directly with your brain’s sophisticated filtering system in this way, you command its full attention and intentionally begin steering your focus towards your desires.
Designing a well-structured question is essential to creating a positive internal dialogue and focusing on solutions rather than problems. Avoid framing questions that lead to internal criticism or reinforce negative beliefs, such as “How come I’m fat?” or “Why am I broke?” These types of inquiries tend to yield disempowering responses that erode your confidence and stop progress by focusing on the issue rather than potential solutions. The devil is quick to provide a mountain of evidence to answer the question “Why”. I’m not suggesting that you never ask God “Why”, He welcomes inquiry of all kinds. I am suggesting, however, that asking the question “Why” makes it easy for us to jump in God’s way and begin answering the question “Why” with our disparaging internal dialog that the devil is so quick to reaffirm.
I want to help you begin recognizing and formulating Directional Questions that lead to the knowledge that can only be found at the Well of Living Water. God can impart wisdom at any point, but He seeks a personal relationship with us more than anything; God desires to work in tandem with you as you traverse life. He values your freedom of choice! He wants you to choose what direction you want to go and promises to be a Powerful Source, providing wisdom and strength when we seek them. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7,8).
God is like a Life Coach, offering instruction and collaborating with you to design your Desirable Life. Truly conceptualizing this idea will create a momentum and enthusiasm in your spirit; asking The Coach Directional Questions gives Him permission to create experiences in your life that provide the answers you seek. Evaluating the specificity of your Directional Questions is key, not to help God understand what you desire, but to help you stay consciously and subconsciously focused on the desires He puts in your heart.
In terms of personal growth, success, and desire, the emphasis shifts from the mere formulation of goals to the active restructuring of your neural pathways, enabling you to perceive opportunities and solutions that previously may have gone unnoticed. This process is likened to a neuro-training exercise, designed to enhance your cognitive flexibility and enrich your perception of the world, including its myriad nuances and possibilities. God created this world with such complexity, but not to overwhelm or frustrate you, but to develop and refine you. There are inanimate elements of God’s architecture He wants to grow you up into. Many of these inanimate elements make up the Communication System that God created for you to use to connect with Him. Cutting communications and manipulating communications are common tactics of war in this world. The devil targeted the Communication System in the Garden of Eden, attempting to isolate you from communing with God, thus sending your vulnerable subconscious mind searching incessantly for the safety and security of a Savior.
Through asking the Holy Spirit pivotal Directional Questions, I want you to find the safety and security that you seek from a Savior. The Directional Questions you verbally pose to the Holy Spirit will create a resilience in you to significantly influence the trajectory of your life, steering you towards solutions that align with your values and desires. You can expect your life to change, so with this expectation, you can begin looking for evidence of that change in your life. It’s like learning a skill; you might struggle with the operations at first as it might feel awkward, but with the practice of using Directional Questions, you will begin to realize you are living a life you designed in collaboration with the Divine One.
You are designing your life with your thoughts whether you realize it or not. When the mind is engulfed with negativity and insecurity, this is what inevitably designs the life. When you ask God to give you the desires of your heart, and then asking for the directions to move towards those desires, this will focus your mind to begin designing a Desirable Life that you want to live in.
This comprehensive approach to Directional Questions, coupled with a keen understanding of your cognitive processes and values, lays a foundation for a life enriched with wisdom and understanding. God wishes to grow a resilient character in all His children, and invites us to seek Him, asking for guidance as we navigate our daily experience. It encourages you to engage with your mind in a very intentional way, inviting the Holy Spirit to be involved as you carefully begin considering the thoughts that come throughout the day.
I want to express this next point with deep humility. The techniques I have designed work. In my journey towards this point in my life, I have sought a clear and truthful understanding of psychology and how it is to be understood in light of the Gospel. I am not claiming I have reached a pinnacle of understanding that supplements the Bible or any other gifts God has given for our salvation. I designed these techniques to help get my-self out of the way of my own salvation. I began sharing them with clients and have had incredible success. Getting self out of the way is counterintuitive to mainstream psychology as the primary goal there is to elevate self. My techniques use psychological principles to help you let go of unhelpful pursuits and begin developing methods for living a wonderful life that aligns with the Wonderful Creator’s plan. Below, I am going to be getting into some semantics for crafting, what I believe to be, the most effective Directional Questions. I understand that I have been presenting a lot of information, but trust me, implementing this technique is so simple.
we are going to take a look into the linguistic structure of questions, emphasizing the important role of wording in directing the brain’s search for information. Just as a misdirected bicycle messenger cannot deliver a packet if given the wrong address, so too can poorly structured questions lead the brain astray. The essence of crafting effective Directional Questions lies in choosing the correct words.
The concept of pre-supposition is fundamental to Directional Questions, emphasizing the importance of embedding positive assumptions within questions. Questions that inherently carry negative presuppositions are rife in life.
An example of a question with a negative presupposition embedded in it is: “Why do I always fail in my attempts?”
This question presupposes that failure is a consistent outcome for the person asking it, thereby focusing the mind on past negative experiences rather than the potential for future success or learning opportunities. It inherently confirms and reinforces the belief in one’s inability to succeed, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy of continued failure rather than setting the stage for a mindset geared towards growth and improvement.
Conversely, constructing questions such as ideal Directional Questions, with positive presuppositions encourages the mind to seek out affirming and empowering answers that the Holy Spirit will impart.
Questions framed negatively tend to elicit responses from our subconscious mind that reinforce limitations and fears that the devil would have us practice believing. The emphasis here is on avoiding language that inherently looks for reasons why the Holy Spirit will not work in your life; removing negative language from our inquiries offers God the space for more creating in you a more constructive and solution-oriented mindset.
Directional Questions should orient you towards the present and future, guiding you towards desired outcomes rather than dwelling on past failures or missteps. Proverbs 24:16 says, “For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again…” When you fall, you must get up and keep moving in the direction that you and God have chosen to go. Keeping a present and future focus keeps you hopeful as you commit to practicing how to engage life, moving forward with a focus on presenting with poise and dignity, thus steering the cognitive processes towards envisioning and realizing your potential.
The advice to avoid questions starting with “Why” is rooted in their tendency to prompt negative introspection. Fix your sight on the nuances of your situation that provide evidence for how a frustrating situation is not only manageable, but how it is entirely possible that everything will work together for good (Romans 8:28). This guideline encourages a shift towards Directional Questions that are more likely to generate positive, actionable insights, thus growing and reinforcing a solid momentum in the direction of your desires.
Each principle highlights some helpful guidelines for designing Directional Questions that can change your approach to overcoming challenges and achieving your desires. By applying these principles, you can effectively rewire your thinking patterns, strengthening neural pathways that are attuned to recognize that Still Small Voice that guides you through your day. This approach not only illuminates the power of language in shaping your perception of reality but also offers practical strategies for personal development and achieving a Desirable life.
To create Directional Questions, begin with the fundamental structure of QUESTION WORD + PRONOUN + PUZZLE. This formula lays the groundwork for designing questions aimed at addressing specific problems or moving toward your desires. The process of formulating your questions involves a few key steps: first, what is the puzzle you would like to solve? For example, “increasing intimacy with my spouse despite challenges.” Oftentimes, there are many pieces to solving your puzzles that are beyond your control. Fitting together the pieces of your puzzle that you have to work with allows you to use your creative vision to imagine a picture of what God is doing in your life and the lives of those connected to you. Next, select an appropriate question word that aligns with your query (what and how are commonly used most). Then, add a pronoun. This typically will be ‘I’, to personalize the question. Finally, combine these elements to formulate your Directional Question. Building on our previous example, the question would be: “What can I do to begin increasing intimacy with my spouse despite challenges?” This is a perfect Directional Question! This process enables you to design questions that not only concentrate on finding solutions but also linguistically captivate the subconscious mind and emotionally inspire you. The audio will end in a few seconds, but below this point on the webpage, you’ll find examples of well-crafted Directional Questions that provide practical illustrations of how to apply this technique in your daily life. This guide aims to inspire you to integrate this straightforward yet impactful approach for inviting the Holy Spirit to help you solve your puzzles. Should you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.
By following these steps, you can craft questions that not only direct their focus towards solutions but also do so in a way that is linguistically engaging and emotionally motivating. Below, I am providing some well-structured Directional Questions for each of the recommended Question Words. The are listed in order of least used to the most to least:
WHAT (I want to know the thing)
HOW (I want to know the way)
How Much (uncountable nouns)
How Many (countable nouns)
How Often (refers to frequency)
How Far (refers to distance)
WHEN (I want to know the time)
WHO (I want to know the person)
WHERE (I want to know the place)
WHICH (I want to know the alternatives)
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