A Reflection As The Year Draws To An End

How I Came to Create A Collection of Good Questions…

Curiosity has always mattered to me. Not the busy kind that looks for answers, or the clever kind that tries to impress, but the quieter curiosity that notices when something doesn’t quite sit right and is willing to stay with that feeling a little longer.

This collection started there.

I was clearing space in my office and came across an old deck of coaching cards from At My Best, a set I’ve returned to over the years. I picked one up, then another, and felt the familiar shift that a good question can create.

Not urgency. Not solutions. Just space.

The questions slowed me down. They invited me to notice what was present, rather than rush to change it. They surfaced things I hadn’t yet named, but already sensed. Over time, I’ve learned that change tends to follow a pattern. It begins with curiosity, grows through a willingness to accept what’s really there, and is sustained by the resilience to stay with the work when it’s uncomfortable or slow.

The questions in this collection come from that place. They’re drawn from the tools, books, and conversations I return to in my work. They’re shaped by coaching, but they’re not instructions. They’re invitations.

You’ll notice there are no reflections alongside each question here. That’s intentional.

In the weekly posts, I often add a few thoughts of my own, but for this collection, I wanted to leave more space. In my experience, good questions don’t need much guidance. They ask for attention, not instruction.

Christmas Gift

As the year draws to a close, it felt right to gather these questions together and offer them as a small Christmas gift. Not something to complete, but something to return to. A few lines of inquiry you might carry with you into quieter moments, or into the year ahead. You don’t need to read them all at once. Just notice which one you’re curious about. That’s usually where the work begins.

How to use these questions:

You don’t need to work through these in order.

You might read them slowly and notice which one lingers. You might return to the same question more than once, in different moods or moments. You might jot something down, take a walk with one in mind, or simply let it sit quietly.

Good questions don’t demand immediate answers.They create space. And often, that space is where clarity begins.

A closing reflection

You might not answer any of these questions. Or you might find that one of them follows you around for a while.

Turning up on a walk. In the quiet of an early morning. In a moment you hadn’t planned to reflect. That’s usually how it works.

Good questions don’t demand decisions. They ask for attention. They invite a different quality of listening, to yourself, to others, to what’s changing beneath the surface.

If one of these questions stays with you, that’s enough. You don’t need to rush it. Clarity tends to arrive when it’s ready, often after curiosity has had time to do its work. And if, at some point, you decide you’d rather not explore alone, that’s where my work usually begins, walking alongside people as they make sense of what they’re noticing and decide what comes next.

For now, I hope these questions offer a little space, and a quieter way of ending the year.

Anthony O’Mara