Over the past five years, I’ve transformed my life in more ways than I can count.
Who I thought I wanted to spend my life with, I couldn’t.
The life I thought I wanted to live, I didn’t.
Who I thought I was, I wasn’t.
Sometimes your hand is forced – you are a victim of your situation. And rather than be a slave to outside forces, you make a course correction.
Other times you make a choice – you realize that you have to change. If you don’t, you’re stuck in a prison of your own making.
And you may come to a point that if you don’t change your life for the better, you may as well be dead.
Because you’re sure not living.
How to Change Your Life for the Better
If you want to change your life significantly, have a sometimes ruthless, sometimes painful, but always stimulating conversation with the most important person in your life – YOU.
It can be challenging, especially when it dawns on you how little you know yourself. It’s dark and devastating, yet spectacular – that moment you realize that you’re a stranger to yourself.
But do it right, and it can be life changing.
But you have to be ready to put in the work, to be vulnerable and completely honest with yourself.
And you have to be ready to use the information you find to take action.
Do that, and you can take your life to the next level.
Are you ready? Then read on, my friends – below, I have ten provocative questions that can change your life.
Questions to Change Your Life
Block off a chunk of time, grab a pen, and be ready to put in the work, and you’ll learn more about yourself than you thought possible.
Some will be a little scary, some may be fun, but it will all be enlightening and could just be life changing.
But the questions are just half the battle – and they may be the easiest part.
Because, remember, the hard part comes after you ask the questions that can change your life:
- Being brutally honest with yourself about your answers.
- Taking action where you have to make changes.
1. What are The Most Important Things I Need to Accomplish Tomorrow?
We’ll start with an easy one.
But it’s powerful just the same.
How many times have you started your day only to spend the first 40 minutes hashing out a plan of action?
Then you get another cup of coffee, talk to a coworker, and before you know it, it’s almost lunchtime.
Avoid starting a new day without a plan of action to avoid wasting unnecessary time.
I’ve found taking a little time to go through your to-do list so you can map out the most important things you have to accomplish can help you avoid the pitfalls of wasted time.
When you focus on making the most of each day, you can make the most of your life.
Start that process the night before to help you get out of bed with a plan of action.
2. Which Activities are a Waste of My Time?
How often do you get to the end of your day only to realize you didn’t accomplish what you wanted?
How many times, when going back over your day, do you realize that you spent more of your time being distracted than productive?
We all fall into the distraction trap more often than we’d like to admit. And in doing so, we fail to make the most of our time.
Some situations are out of your control, and yet others are very in your control.
And unfortunately, a hard and long look at your day will shine a light on many activities that do little more than serve as distractions:
- Continually checking email
- Responding to every social media alert
- Addictively checking your phone for text messages.
So think about the people and activities that are costing you more than you’re worth.
Then do something about it.
Shut off alerts, schedule a time to respond to emails and texts, and work to get out of meetings that are little more than a waste of your time.
And focus your time on the things that make a difference. The things that will change your life for the better.
3. Which People are a Waste of My Time?
We all have people in our lives that are just distractions – or worse.
Some consistently bring us down, others put us down, and some…well, their values just no longer align with yours.
You change.
Your friends change.
Situations change.
And sometimes, we just outgrow a relationship.
Think hard about the people that are costing you more than you’re worth.
Then do something about it.
Because while it may be challenging, it can have a very positive impact on your life.
Further, if you want to change your life, you may need it more than you think. Motivational speaker Jim Rohn said that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with.
Focus on surrounding yourself with people who support you and your life and encourage you to do something special.
4. What are My Long-Term Plans?
Do you have overall goals in your life?
Do you have somewhere you want to be in one year? How about five or ten years?
If you don’t know, then you’ll struggle to plan your time appropriately.
But if you know what you’re trying to do now and what you’re trying to accomplish long term, you’ll make wiser decisions that’ll play a large role in your success.
Did you know – where you are today directly results from the decisions you made three to five years ago?
And where you’re going to be three to five years from now is a direct result of the decisions you’re making today.
Make sure you’re making good ones.
Clarify your goals and where you want to be in ten years. Write it down, create a plan, and refer to it often. Let your goals help you drive your decisions.
5. What Did I Do Well Today?
It’s always important to identify what you did well, so you can pat yourself on the back and do it again.
Identifying your victories and feeling good about yourself builds your confidence, self-esteem, and encourages you to keep stepping towards your goals. It also helps you build an optimistic view of your future, which will make that bright future you dream about more likely to happen.
6. What Did I Do Poorly Today and How Can I Get Better Tomorrow?
Just as important is to identify what went wrong.
Spanx founder Sara Blakely once said that when she was growing up, her father often asked her how she failed today and what she learned from that.
He knew two things that helped her become ultimately successful.
- Failures happen, and you shouldn’t fear them; you should seek them out. But make sure you learn from them.
- If you’re not failing, you’re not trying. You’re not pushing yourself. You’re not getting outside your comfort zone. You’re not growing.
So what went poorly recently?
Have you failed?
How can you learn from those mistakes? Were they poor decisions? Internal mistakes? External mistakes?
Identify what went wrong and how to avoid that pitfall next time.
Making a mistake once is part of life.
Making the same mistake more than once because you didn’t take the time to learn from it is tragic.
7. How Does the Rest of the World View Me?
It’s hard to look in the mirror and see our faults.
But it’s essential.
Most of us are clueless about how we appear to others. We have our own vision of ourselves in our mind, but it’s often far from the truth.
If you can see yourself as others see you, you’ll be able to identify a few simple tweaks that can improve your results dramatically.
Start taking notice of how others view you. And if you have the opportunity to see the critiques of others, as hard as they may be to hear, take advantage.
The things you will learn from this are invaluable.
8. What Are My Values? Am I Living Them?
Having values and living your life within those values is critical to a happy and good life.
And yet, most people have a fuzzy idea of their values.
Once you identify your values, it’s easier to make value-based decisions and build your self-esteem as you live the life you want to.
And if you live through your values, it also helps you create a life that you find fulfilling.
Do you know what your values are?
Are you holding them up high and living them?
9. What are My Greatest Flaws? What Can I Do to Correct Them?
We all have flaws that hold us back.
But few are aware of their most critical flaws.
Spend some time thinking about your flaws; even ask honest friends (that aren’t afraid to have frank discussions with you) for their advice.
But if you ask good friends, make sure you’re not harsh towards them based on their honest feedback. Their role in this isn’t easy – they’re going out on a limb for you.
10. What Can I Do to Enhance My Most Important Relationships?
We all have vital relationships, whether it’s a friend, relative, or significant other.
But we all seem to take some of those meaningful relationships for granted.
All of our relationships need work, so spend some time thinking about how you can nurture them from good to great, and take them to the next level.
After all, the better a relationship, the more everyone benefits from it.
11. Who and What am I Grateful For?
This is a tremendous question to ask each day, but it’s even more crucial when you’re feeling frustrated or down in the dumps.
So take a little time to be grateful for the things around you.
Be grateful for the good of today instead of the bad.
Be grateful for the things you have instead of focusing on what you don’t.
Thinking this way will begin to change everything. It will lift your spirits, give you a more optimistic view of life, and make more good things likely to happen.
You Can Change Your Life
Do you want to create more success and happiness in your life?
Do you want to stop living the life you just fell into and start living the life you were put here to live? To start living your life on your own terms?
Take your life back by asking yourself the questions above.
Sure, some of them are tough, but that’s all the more reason to ask them.
Something as simple as these questions could steer your life in a new and incredible direction.
But, make sure you’re not just doing a simple Q&A with yourself.
Be boldly honest with yourself, and once you are, make sure you take action where appropriate too.
Follow those steps, then sit back and be amazed at how it can change your life.
You’ll be glad you did!