At Project Spaces, we’re proud to provide the headquarters for a diverse range of talented people in a wide variety of industries. One is these industries is mental health advocacy, and one of these talented people is Scott Ste Marie.

Scott is the Founder of Depression to Expression, a forum that provides a safe space for discussions about mental health. Scott recently gave an incredible presentation at TedxYouth here in Toronto entitled “Why You Should Question Everything” about the value of always asking questions. If you were unable to attend the conference, here is a summary of the valuable lessons he imparted on the crowd:

“I know nothing. These are the most beautiful words in the English language.”

This is the mantra Scott introduced to the attendees, encouraging them (and us) to embrace curiosity and never to stop learning because questioning everything has the following three benefits:

1. Feeling Grateful

By asking questions, you garner more knowledge that allows you to feel grateful for everything around you. Scott used examples of things that privileged city dwellers often take for granted like living in a condo, flying on airplanes and even grocery shopping. By asking questions about the behind-the-scenes of these everyday actions, you can understand the complexities of how they work and feel gratitude every time you enter your home, fly from point a to point b or buy bananas in January. Understanding how things work also leads you to be less frustrated when things don’t go according to plan, like when a flight gets delayed. If you’re able to express gratitude that we as humans are even able to fly, you’re less likely to get angry about delays.

2. Solving Problems

Sometimes questions don’t necessarily bring us gratitude, but they often solve problems. Throughout history, the best minds have asked questions to learn more about the world around us. From a young age we use questions to solve problems in our day to day lives from “How do I tie my shoes?” to “How do I do my clean my clothes?” When Scott was diagnosed with clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder, he was able to ask questions to help come up with coping mechanisms.

“Big life problems need great questions,” he said.

Questions like, “Does anyone else feel like this?” and “Who can I talk to about the way that I’m feeling?” led him to start Depression to Expression which in turn brought him to the stage at TedXYouth.

3. Connecting with Others

You’re more able to empathize and understand other cultures, other religions and even other languages when you ask valuable questions like "How do you say this in your dialect?" or "Why is the belief system particularly important to you?". Thanks to the internet, we’re able to connect with people around the world with a few clicks on a keyboard or touches on a screen. Social media has opened up a discussion which wasn’t previously possible. Asking questions is a great way to widen our horizons and learn more about not just the people around us, but people on a global scale.

We can become better people every day by feeling grateful, solving problems and connecting with others and above all, questioning everything. If you want to be surrounded by inspirational folks like Scott Ste Marie while you work, book a tour of Project Spaces today - and feel free to ask as many questions as you like.