Hi, this is Wayne Brown from Life Back On Track. Welcome back to the latest episode.

I help people with many aspects of life, and one that I help people with a lot is their dating. So single people that want to get out there and want to meet someone who they can have a good relationship with. Of course, the big obstacle with any relationship, regardless of how much you want it, is you have to go out there and first of all, meet people, and then you have to be able to get them on a date, and then you have to make sure the date goes well enough that they enjoy your company, and then you can get into a relationship with them.

The one challenge that always seems to come up when I'm coaching people is what do I talk about on a date? Regardless of how comfortable and social you may feel, you are generally going to have moments when the conversation gets awkward, or it stalls. You might be on a subject that's a bit iffy, and you don't know if they're going to be comfortable answering it. So it's always one of these, how do we navigate this and ask questions where I'm going to be able to find out about them and figure out if they're a good fit for me, and if I should be in a relationship with them,

That's a really good place to start, is what do I talk about when I'm on a date with someone? Now there are a few things I would highly recommend. First of all, avoid vanilla conversation. Okay, A lot of people they go with what's comfortable. They go with what's easy, which is they talk about their job, and a lot of people when they're outside of their job and socialising, they don't want to talk about their job because then they start whinging and moaning about the things that they find challenging at work, and when you first meet someone you don't want to be whinging and griping about the people that you work with.

They also talk about things that are not really relevant to who the person is, so they'll talk about things that are superficial and don't really matter much, they don't reveal much of the true person, so what you want to do is be avoiding those vanilla questions, the ones that are boring and typical and generally will make you look boring because you like everyone else, you want to be able to stand out and be a little bit different.

This makes you a little more memorable, and if you deliver questions correctly, regardless of what the subject matter is, people are going to be far more likely to engage with you and enjoy engaging with you. So first of all, you want to be asking questions that find out about the person. A really good way, and I'll use this one as an example because it's a little bit intense, a little bit confrontational, very revealing and worth asking. The problem is, a lot of people get told, "Don't ask this sort of question", for myself, I believe you absolutely should ask this question. Now you're probably wondering, What's this question? The question is about the subject matter of their ex partner.

What you want to do is be asking them some questions based around their partner, their ex partners. Sorry, so about their last relationship, or maybe all their relationships. So you want to be asking things like "Why do you think your last relationship failed?" "What was something good that you enjoyed about your last relationship?" "What is something you learned about it?" And these sorts of questions will reveal a number of things to you and reveal to you their emotional maturity.

So if they start blaming the other person, they start calling them names. If they start basically denigrating them, you know that they're probably not that emotionally mature. If they are able to clearly, and respectfully, articulate why they broke up, That is a really good thing, because then they have the emotional maturity. If they are saying "Well, at first we thought we'd be a good, really good fit, but as time progressed, we found we weren't really that much of a fit, and even though we still had respect and connection, we felt it's probably better that we weren't together so that we could find people who were a better fit. I still keep in contact with them occasionally because I want to make sure that they're okay. We don't hang out. However, you know, we just a few times a year just check in and see how the others doing so Yeah, they were really nice person who just didn't really work for us".

So if they're saying something like that, you know they're pretty cool. If they start down the negative path, you might know it's probably not going to be good. And also it shows you, if you were dating them or in a relationship with them and it didn't work, that's how they may be behaving with you, which is something you want to be avoiding because you don't want to have someone that's going around slandering you. You also want to ask them what was something good about it, because if they've got balance within them, they will know that there were good parts about the relationship and there were challenging parts.

So even with my most challenging relationship, there were still good things about it. There were things that we enjoyed. There were things that we experienced together that were good. So even though it wasn't a particularly pleasant relationship overall, there were still aspects where it was good where we had really pleasant moments where we actually enjoyed each other's company. So you might want to ask them. You know, what's something really good about your last relationship or about your relationships in general, so these sorts of questions will reveal a lot to you and save you a lot of time.

Now, when you're delivering the questions, you always want to have a curious tone, which means at the end of your statement, you want to go up. So any sentence where you go up at the end is a question. So conversely, if you ask something and it goes down at the end, it's a command. It becomes definite, always be going up at the end of your sentences. And you also want to have that energy of I'd really like to know. I'm curious. So if you want and you are comfortable, please tell me because I'm all ears. So you want to have that energy as well. This means, and it shows them that you're respectful and you do genuinely want an answer.

Now what else should you ask? Well, there are literally hundreds of questions. Thousands of questions you can ask. There are three questions that I've been using for years. Long before I even started coaching people, I came across these questions and I like them and they tended to reveal a lot about people.

These questions were, "if I gave you an open check, open amount to buy any vehicle you want, what would you go and buy?" So originally, I used to ask, "What car would you buy?" but then I started meeting people that, like motorbikes and some like planes and some like helicopters. And so I now say "vehicles", "mode of transport", "If I offered to buy you any mode of transport you wanted. What would you get?" So this can reveal a lot about people. So if they say I would have a Volvo station wagon, you know that they're very practical and pragmatic and probably family orientated and safety orientated. So ask them what sort of vehicle they would have or mode of transport can reveal a lot about them. Also, if you want to dig further, asked them to describe it, So would they customise it? Would they have it a particular colour? Would they, you know ,what would they use it for? Would it be a regular car? Would it be a special car, explore and have fun with it? So that was always a question that I enjoyed asking.

Another one that I enjoyed asking is "if I could wave a magic wand and magically grant you any skill, qualification, ability, that you needed to do any job in the world, and you didn't have to worry about money. so you can literally do anything, what would you do?" And this always spins me out, the vast majority, and I mean 98% of people will say a job that's very different to what they're actually doing for their occupation or their trade or their craft. I've only had one person that I can recall that actually said the job that they were doing, which blew me out the water. But it does reveal a lot about people and their goals, what they would like in their life, what they enjoy, what gives them satisfaction. And it also also can show you where they've set up barriers for themselves that stopped them from achieving what they want.

A really good question to ask, another one I used to really enjoy asking was, and this is a deeper one, and it takes a little bit of time to answer and explore. So have your answer for this ready so that you can give them examples as to what to aim for. And it is this. "You're hosting a dinner party, for yourself and five other people. These five other people can be real. They can be fictional. They can be living, they can be dead. It doesn't matter. Which five people would you invite and why?" So while they're thinking about who they are, who they'd invite, explain to them who you would. Now this reveals a lot about people. It shows you how philosophical they might be. It might show you how empathetic, humanitarian based, how comedy based, how intellectual based.

They are based off the people that they invite. So I tried this question many years ago to a young English lad, and he rattled off these five names of these women and I'd never heard any of them. And I'm thinking, you know, maybe they're singers or actresses or scientists or could have been anything, really. And I said to him, Very confused, said, "Who are these women? I've never heard of them". And he goes "they're soccer players wives" and I suddenly thought, "Oh my God, you are such a shallow git, and it amazed me. How quickly it revealed how shallow he was. So a question like that can reveal a lot about people.

So there are three questions that can very quickly show you about people, what they're about. And there's heaps of others as well. Here's just a couple of thinking off the top of my head from the hundreds that I know "You go to bed tonight, you lay your head down at a magical pillow. When you wake up in the morning, you can wake up anywhere in the world, literally, anywhere in the world. Where would you wake up and why?" So this will reveal to you they have romantic inclinations. If they like getting away from it all and just getting off grid, it shows you whether they like to go and get pampered. So again it can show you a fair bit about the person.

So the questions you ask on a date need to be ones that reveal who they are. And just about any question can be delivered in the right way and answered because if you deliver it in the right way, they'll answer and might be offended because they'll see, you are genuinely curious. You want to know you're not trying to wind them up. You're trying to get an answer. So having yourself a nice little collection of non vanilla questions, which is what I like to call them so you can use one of the ones I've just used. And the really cool thing about a good question is you can explore that one subject for hours.

So, for example, if I asked someone the pillow question, "you go to bed. Magical pillow, you wake up anywhere in the world" they could answer, whatever, and I say, "Why? What is it about that destination that appeals to you?" "What is it that sings to you?" "Does it speak to your heart?" "What do you get out of it?" "What particular things would you do while you were there?" "What sort of things would hold your interest?" So there's lots of different directions. You can take it and explore who this person is.

All you need to do is ask a good question to get started. So what do you talk about on a date? Anything and everything except vanilla questions. Stay away from the vanilla questions. If you stick with the non vanilla questions. You can have some amazing conversations. I've had amazing conversations with people exploring these sorts of questions, and it's good fun. You can have a good laugh. And the good thing is, it shows that you're not like anyone else, that you actually care, you're willing to listen.

There are so many positives to using these sorts of questions, so get out there, practise them with friends and family or work colleagues or anyone. So, people you're comfortable with, explore with them first, get used to them with people, you know, using these questions. Then when you go on a date, you can actually use these questions and explore them and have real fun with them. So get out there, practise enjoy them. And remember, practise makes perfect with this. Okay, that's really, really important. The more you practise, the easier they get, the more you'll think of them.

So I'm really good at thinking of questions now. Took a while to get there, had to practise a lot, so get out there, practise them, have fun with them and remember, Here's to a good life

You can listen to the Life Back On Track podcast on your favourite platform by visiting our podcast website. Click HERE to check it out. 

You can also listen to my radio show “All About Relationships” which has its own podcast on your favourite platform by clicking HERE 

Thanks for listening.