One of the biggest problems most people have is that they ask the wrong questions about their life. Guess what happens when you ask the wrong questions? You spend a lot of time trying to figure out the answers to things that don’t matter or that you shouldn’t be thinking about in the first place. That’s because if you try to ask your brain a question, it will try to come up with an answer, and some of those answers may be irrelevant, very damaging, or even put you in a no-win situation.
For example, should you be asking yourself, “Why am I always such a loser?” No, because even if you’re the most successful person on earth, when you ask yourself a question like that, your brain will try to ANSWER YOUR QUESTION.
You want your brain to focus on questions that will help you build a better life for yourself, not questions that will tear you down or keep you mired in place. Over the years, there are a number of questions I’ve heard posed by Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins, and other successful people that can help people become everything they want to be.
Here is a list of the best of those questions. Try answering them some time (or maybe even frequently), and it will change your life for the better.
1) If you were given 10 billion dollars and your family was tied up for the next year (assume the kids are in fancy boarding schools and your spouse is away at a job), after you took a nice vacation and gave away gifts to your family, friends, and charity, what would you do then? You’d have no obligations, infinite money, and infinite free time. What would you like to do with your time? What would you want to do most with your life? What would excite you?
2) If you died tomorrow, what do you wish you’d spent more time doing, and what do you wish you hadn’t wasted so much time on?
3) What people, activities, or things are lowering the quality of your life, and could you improve your life by cutting them out?
4) If you don’t change anything, what are you going to regret not doing five years from now?
5) Will this thing that I’m upset over matter in 5 years, and if the answer is, “No,” how much time should I spend getting upset about it now?
6) When you’re upset about something that has happened, are you sure that you’re reading the situation correctly? If you were charitable to yourself or the other person, how else could you interpret this?
7) If you could only spend two hours per week on your work, your health, and your relationships, what would you do in each area to get the best results?
8) What new belief, habit, or behavior would most improve your life?
9) What are the people who are competing with you doing that you aren’t doing?
10) What is working in your life? What is not working in your life?
11) What small action, repeated daily, would completely change your future?
12) What are you spending the most time on that provides neither a significant short-term benefit nor a meaningful long-term payoff?
13) What promise have you made to yourself that you keep breaking?
14) What 20% of your efforts produce 80% of your results?
15) What can you automate, delegate, or pay someone else to do in your life to free up time for you to do more important things?
16) If you could only accomplish one thing this year, what should it be?
17) What standards are you determined to live by, even when it’s difficult?
18) If you continue living exactly like this, where will you end up?
19) If you were 99 years old and you were on your deathbed and you had a chance to come back to right now: what would you do?
20) If someone had been watching you for the last month, what would they say your priorities actually are?
I’ve been reading my journals that go back 2 decades. Very tough times. I wish I’d had this list and the wisdom to answer all those questions back then. Would have save me a lot of future regrets.
Good questions, John. Imagine if our school system taught things like to our kids instead of, oh, I don’t know, the intersectionality of peace studies or crap like that.