The questions worth bringing to your session

Your list of questions shapes the whole session. It is the single most useful piece of preparation you can do, and most people do it in five minutes without much thought.

Bring five to ten, in priority order

Fewer than five and we run out of ground to cover. More than ten and we skim. Put the one that matters most to you at the top, because if we only get through part of the list, we should get through the part you came for.

Ask about the mechanism, not just the wish

Weak: "Why am I always tired?" Stronger: "What is it in my current life that is draining me, and what would it look like to stop it?"

Weak: "I want to be happier." Stronger: "What belief am I carrying that keeps me bracing against my own life?"

The first version asks for a verdict. The second asks for information you can act on. Sessions tend to answer the second kind far more generously.

Ask about the root, not the symptom

Patterns repeat because something underneath them is still running. If the question is "how do I stop doing this?", the answer is often a technique that lasts a few weeks. If the question is "what is this behaviour protecting me from?", you get the thing that makes the behaviour unnecessary.

Include the questions you are slightly embarrassed by

Your most useful question is often the one you would not say out loud at a dinner table. Write it down anyway. Nothing about the session process requires you to justify why you want to know.

Write it down before the day

Handwritten, on paper, brought with you. Writing it a week in advance gives the question time to settle and often refines itself. Do not agonise over the wording — say it roughly and I will ask it well.

A last useful instruction

Do not go looking for a particular answer. Prepare the questions carefully, then let go of what you expect the response to be. The sessions that land hardest are consistently the ones where people arrived open about the outcome.