10 Important Questions You Should Ask Yourself To Figure Out If You’re On The Right Track
The most important conversations in life can be the one's you have with yourself.
I am a big believer in introspective thinking. The most important conversations in life can be the one’s you have with yourself. This internal dialogue can be used to as a compass to navigate your direction. When moving forward on your path, always take some time for deep thinking. According to Pascal “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit in a quiet room alone.” So take some time to sit alone and ask yourself some pertinent questions. Here are some examples of pertinent questions that you should ask yourself:
- How do you feel when you wake up? – Are you the type of person who cannot wait to begin the day? Or are you repeatedly hitting the snooze button, dreading having to prepare for another monotonous work week? If your answer to the latter is yes, then you may have to do some soul searching. Life should be exciting and rewarding, not boring and painful. Figure out what you need to do so that you look forward to your days.
- What are you good at? – “Many people think they know what they’re good at, and they’re usually wrong.” – Peter F. Drucker. It’s imperative to discover your strengths and innate talents so that you can build upon them. Many people fixate on correcting their weaknesses. While it is okay to sure up some of your weak spots, it is a futile effort to attempt to build on them. If you are a faithful TC reader you most likely know your Myers-Briggs personality type, but go even deeper than that. Take aptitude tests to pinpoint the things you are naturally talented in and align your path to those qualities.
- Who do you spend your time with? – The company you keep is a crucial element to the levels of success, happiness, and fulfillment in your life. I believe it is important to stay far away from negative and insecure types of people, because they will undermine your success. The people around us influence our habits and decision-making. Make sure people who will elevate you, not pull you down surround you.
- Are you moving forwards or backwards? – We are either moving closer towards our goals, or further away from them. Life is not stagnant. The decisions we make each and every day point us toward a certain direction. What will be the likely result of you continuing to live your life the way are living it currently? The good news is that you get unlimited opportunities to change the direction of your life, so if you are heading the wrong way, choose today to make a U-turn.
- Are you being honest with yourself? – Are you viewing your life through an accurate lens or are you in denial? If you’re with the wrong partner, admit it. If you’re broke, admit it. If you hate your job, admit it. You cannot go forward until you are able to accurately assess the situation. Be blunt with yourself in order to formulate a plan to change things.
- What have you learned? – Have you been accumulating new and useful information that will help further you towards your goals? What are you reading? Are you reading at all? A continual learning process is key to living the life you want to live, regardless of who you are or what you want to do.
- Do you have a plan? – What are your goals for this year? Do you have any? Where do you want to be 5 years from now? Do you even know? A designed life is much more fulfilling than an unintentional and directionless one. Realize that perhaps the reason your life isn’t the way you’d like it to be is because you haven’t taken the time to map it out. Without a plan you will arrive at a destination dictated by circumstance, and although you can’t control every aspect of your life, it is foolhardy to leave it completely to chance.
- Have you been doing everything that you can? – Are you striving to reach the edges of your comfort zone? Have you made a conscious decision to dedicate yourself to improving your life? How motivated are you? What steps have you been making to progress? It’s easy to blame everyone else but yourself for being unsuccessful. If you’ve put in a massive amount of time, effort, and consistent focus towards a goal and fallen short, perhaps you have earned the right to complain (you still probably shouldn’t). If you’ve simply been settling, however, you have no one to blame but yourself.
- What do you want to contribute? – What kind of impact do you want to make in the world? What problems can you solve? What can you do to help others? What do you want people to say about you in your obituary? Begin with the end in mind. Think about the impression you want to leave on this planet when it’s all said and done; use that framework for your decision-making.
- Why? – It’s always a good practice to ask yourself why things are they way they are. Why do you work where you work? Why are you doing the way you’re doing financially? Why are you happy or unhappy? Think deeply using the question of why for everything in your life. Ask yourself why at least three times. The “why” is the key to discovering what needs to take place going forward. You will never be able to maximize your achievement and fulfillment until you can answer the question why.
