The Question That Ruined Your Life: How Two Simple Words Created Your Personal Hell

November 27, 2022
By Ed Dale

Picture this: You're four years old, feeling big feelings you don't quite understand. Maybe your favorite toy broke, or another kid pushed you at daycare, or you just had one of those moments kids have where everything feels overwhelming. 

You're crying, or maybe just quiet and withdrawn. That's when it happens - the moment that will unconsciously shape the next several decades of your life.

An adult, probably someone who loves you, towers over you. Their finger points down like the sword of Damocles, and with what Level 5 mentor Brian D. Ridgway calls "the bony finger of doom," they ask those two seemingly innocent words: "What's wrong?"

It sounds harmless enough, right? Maybe even caring. But according to Ridgway, this moment is ground zero for a psychological pattern so profound and pervasive that it shapes nearly every aspect of our adult lives - from our relationships and careers to our health and happiness.

"This isn't just a casual question," Ridgway explains during an intensive workshop in Hawaii, his voice carrying both compassion and urgency. "This is a traumatized adult, someone who's terrified of emotion, demanding that a child explain and justify their feelings. And here's the kicker - they're asking this question because your emotions are triggering their unprocessed trauma."

The room falls silent as this lands. You can almost hear the collective penny dropping as participants connect their own dots. That's when Ridgway drops the bomb that makes this more than just another self-help insight:

"And you know what's really fucked up? The child can't answer the question. They don't know what's wrong - nothing's wrong. They're just feeling feelings. But they learn really quickly that 'I don't know' isn't an acceptable answer when you're looking up that bony finger of doom."

This is where the spell, as Ridgway calls it, takes hold. The child, desperate to avoid punishment or disapproval, starts making shit up. They become little storytellers, weaving narratives about what might be wrong. It's a survival mechanism that becomes a life sentence.

Fast forward twenty, thirty, forty years. You're sitting in your therapist's office, or scrolling through self-help books on Amazon, or signing up for your umpteenth personal development seminar. What are you looking for? What's wrong with you, of course? The search that began under that bony finger of doom has become your life's mission.

"Look at the fucking genius of it," Ridgway says, leaning forward on his floor cushion, eyes sparkling with the dark humor of someone who's seen the cosmic joke. "You created this perfect trap for yourself. One simple question that would have you spending your entire life looking for what's wrong. And the more you look for what's wrong, the more wrong shit you find and create. It's brilliant, really."

But here's where Ridgway's approach takes a sharp left turn from conventional therapy. Instead of diving deeper into what's wrong, he suggests something radical: What if nothing was ever wrong?

During the workshop, Ridgway leads the group through what he calls a "spellbreak" - a process that's part energy work, part time travel, and part consciousness hacking. Participants close their eyes, return to that original moment, and this time, armed with presence and understanding, they face that bony finger of doom with new eyes.

"Look at that adult," he instructs. "Really look. Were they breathing well? Were they present? Were they coming from love, or were they coming from their own fear and trauma?" The answers ripple through the room in waves of recognition and release.

The liberation comes not from finding the right answer to "what's wrong," but from seeing that it was always the wrong question. The real question, Ridgway suggests, is "What would I prefer to experience?"

This shift - from problem-finding to preference-creating - is more than semantic. It's a complete rewiring of how we approach life. Instead of constantly trying to fix what's wrong, we can start creating what we prefer.

One participant, tears streaming down her face, shares: "I just realized I've spent $100,000 on personal development, and it was all just me trying to figure out what's wrong with me. I've been asking the wrong question my entire adult life."

Ridgway's work suggests that the personal development industry itself might be perpetuating this spell, constantly offering new ways to diagnose and fix what's wrong with us. It's a multi-billion dollar industry built on a question asked by traumatized adults to terrified children.

The way out? It starts with breath. Real breath, baby breath - the kind you took before anyone ever asked you what was wrong. It continues with presence, with questioning our assumptions about what's wrong, and with giving ourselves permission to create what we prefer instead of fixing what we think is broken.

"Nothing was ever wrong," Ridgway reminds us. "You were never wrong. You're an infinite being who created this experience, and now you can create something different."

In a world obsessed with finding and fixing what's wrong, this might be the most radical proposition of all: What if nothing needs to be fixed? What if we could simply create what we prefer? What if those two words - "what's wrong" - were just the beginning of a game we can now choose to stop playing?

The next time someone points that bony finger of doom at you - even if it's your own mind - you might want to remember: nothing was ever wrong. You were just breathing wrong.