You can learn a lot when you ask the right questions. Especially when you are honest with yourself about the answers. But it’s not enough to answer the questions. The big question is what you will do with the answers.
Once you answer these questions, you will have an opportunity to take the next step. Remember, to change your life, you must change your priorities and habits. These questions will get you started on that journey and help you to identify areas of your life that you can adjust or modify.
There is no time limit and you may want to take a break. But, write down your answers, then write down the list of things you would like to change. Writing down your thoughts is critical to changing your priorities.
Michael Lopp puts it succinctly: “The rule is simple: If you don’t write it down, it didn’t happen.”
Okay, ready? Here are your 20 questions.
- If time, money, resources, people and circumstances were not an issue, what decision would you make today?
- Imagine your life is perfect in every respect. What would it look like?
- If you could choose one person in all of history to have dinner with tonight, who would it be? What would be the first question you would ask them?
- What makes you come alive?
- Are you living life to its fullest, or merely existing?
- If you knew you would die tomorrow, what would the rest of this day look like for you?
- Mark Twain says that “twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” What is one thing you don’t want to be on that list 20 years from now?
- What are you busy with today? Will this matter a year from now?
- Where do you want to be and what do you want to be doing in five years?
- If you could offer one piece of advice to people your age, what would it be?
- Who is your mentor? Who are you mentoring?
- If 100 people in your age group were selected randomly, how many of them would be leading a happier life than you?
- What have you put off doing because you fear failure, or what other people will think?
- If you were asked to write your epitaph, what would it be?
- You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. Who are your Fab Five?
- Are those five people a positive influence or a negative influence?
- What is one habit that, if you changed it today, would change your life?
- What is your goal in life? Is there a deadline for it? (If there is no deadline, it is not real.)
- When are you going to start _________________.
- What are you going to do with the answers to these questions?
Spend time reviewing each question and your answer. How are this question and your answer influencing your life now? Is it something that should change or adjust?
“Do not wait: the time will never be ‘just right’. Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.”
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