Ano ba yan! Ang dami namang gagawin! Pano ko ba matatapos lahat ng to? Thus is our dialogue whenever we’re faced with piling works and deadlines. Seems like our everyday lives are all about finishing things and solving problems. Seems like life brings us nothing but troubles to be acted on. But in reality, life is not all bad. Life can be lived happily and positively if we just ask the right questions, and find the right answers.
How can asking the right questions develop a good and happy life for us? Asking the right questions lead us to the things we can do to curtail or even prevent a problem. If we ask the right questions, we hit the bull’s eye of our situation and cope with it more effectively. What works? What can I amplify to reach greater heights and eventually attain success? These are the right questions, the core of appreciative inquiry (AI).
When we say appreciate, it means to value. It means to increase something’s or someone’s worth. We can increase the worth of something or someone via searching the positive side to that something or someone (through our inquiries) and improving the positive side. Anyway, according to the AI theory, every living system or person there is a hidden core of strengths that can be tapped to its fullest form.
Given that we have a hidden core of strengths, we can always do good and as we do good, we can improve the universes we are in – our homes, our schools, and our organizations. We can construct our realities. By asking the question what else to improve and finding out the answers, we can develop the future we desire be the future the near future or the far future.
In my case for example, I found good use for AI in attaining the near future I envisioned – doing my requirements as excellently as possible. Being a student, life had always been busy. Projects here, there, and everywhere that at times I just couldn’t understand what to do. Problematic huh! Then, l learned of AI and I asked what is positive in this busy schedule? I answered: “Its potential to train me cope in stressful situations. Work work work is stress. But stress stress stress because of a lot of work would lead to stress immunity. The more I am exposed to stress, the more I can understand it and find ways to combat it. When I can already combat stress, I would not have to work any day of my life because my tasks would just seem to be a natural part of me.” The problem disappeared, a plan of action to do things efficiently ensued.
Had I seen the busy schedule a problem, I would solve it. And just when I finish solving the busy schedule dilemma for a day, I will have to solve it again the following day. So work will be work, therefore maybe done in a mediocre way. We excel only in the things we love to do. We do not get to showcase our full abilities when we just do our responsibilities or works. I am glad to have learned of the AI technique.
Because of this paradigm (AI), I even developed a way to handle group works. Instead of finding ways simply to finish a project, I learned to determine what I can do in every project I had been given so as not to be a burden to my groupmates. I learned to ask: What gives life? What might be? What should be ideal? How could we be empowered? These questions correspond to the four D’s of AI. Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny.
Here is one instance that showed my application of the 4 D’s. The task was to make a PR plan. I analyzed, and this was what came about. Survival is life. How can our group survive our tight schedule? What can give life to us? Well, thank God that almost all my groupmates are hardworking people. They finish on time what they have to do and collaborate with me well. These are what are giving in us. So I created situations where we could do tasks individually while we collaborated. When our PR plan assignment came, I did the outline for it. Then, I asked my groupmates to elaborate specific parts of the plan, and I requested us to meet as a group and work together. Why? What could be? We could get high grades that we dream of if we just work together and fix our plan until it is perfect. We did work together. What would be ideal? We should get a four for what we worked hard for. But to get four would be hard because of high expectations from OCM students. So I asked how we could be empowered to finish the job and be confident of it. I told myself and my groupmates that if we get four here, we would not worry much about repeating it. Anyway, only mediocre works are asked to be repeated. We did complete the task.
Again as I said earlier, life can be happy and good; we just have to make it so by asking positive questions and providing positive answers through daily actions and decisions.
References:
Appreciative Inquiry lecture
What is appreciative inquiry? Retrieved August 8, 2010 from: http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/intro/whatisai.cfm
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