When I was in school, a couple of teachers tried to draw me out. They asked questions with no right answer waiting at the back of the book. “What do you think?” they’d ask. And I froze.

I was too afraid of being wrong, looking stupid, too afraid of criticism. So I memorized, repeated it back, got good grades, and moved on. I complied.

What those teachers were offering has a name: Socratic tutoring.

Instead of handing you answers, a Socratic tutor asks questions that help you find your own. Socrates didn’t put ideas into people. He helped them bring out what was already there.

The value is in what happens inside you. When you reach an answer yourself, it belongs to you. You remember it because you built it. You learn to question assumptions, including your own. You become comfortable not knowing yet, which is where curiosity and creativity live. Memorizing teaches you what to think. Socratic questions teach you how to think.

A good tutor doesn’t ask, “What’s the answer?” They ask, “What makes you think so?” – “What would change your mind?” – “Please tell me more about that.”

What I was missing was trust. I needed to trust myself, to believe my way of seeing the world was worth saying out loud. And I needed to trust the teacher, to know their purpose was to bring out the best in me, not to belittle or humiliate me.

That trust grew slowly, through creativity. In acting and singing, I learned there are no mistakes, only opportunities to try something and see what works. I also took classes where I could see and say what I felt and thought without being talked down to.

Then I became a coach, and I found myself asking others similar questions I once ran from. I know now that the answers a person is looking for are already inside them. Only they can discover them. It happens when we search together, not when someone hands them a solution.

Then there’s age. At 75, I have decades of evidence that I can be wrong, recover, and keep going. That’s Sagerism: we are not declining; we are deepening. Confident. At ease with knowing and not knowing. Time became my Socratic tutor.

When I sat down to write this post, I wasn’t sure what a Socratic tutor was. So I did what that frightened student never would. I got curious, asked questions, researched, and followed my thinking wherever it led. This Daily is what I discovered.

You can become your own tutor. Ask yourself one question with no right answer:

What would you ask and say if you weren’t afraid of being wrong?

Speak it out loud. You own the right to think for yourself.

Thanks – Michael (he, him)

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This matters too – The Choice and Change Risk.

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