4 Gripping Questions That Can Change Your Life
And get you focused on what matters
The inward journey is about finding your own fullness, something that no one else can take away. — Deepak Chopra
Somehow we’re so busy that if we were asked to search our soul for what we want, we’d be hard-pressed to truly access it without some outside help or inner work.
You can meditate every day.
You can do the appropriate amount of self-care.
But if you don’t periodically revisit some fundamental questions in your life, you may be gradually getting off-center without even realizing it.
Being busy can’t be the reason you lose yourself
It’s really easy to fall into life’s patterns and adapt to your daily grind. It’s how we’re wired.
But if you’re not careful, it can be at the expense of your lovely spirit.
You can’t let your job, family, obligations, or daily pressures dim that little light inside your soul and crush your inspiration.
Here are some questions that might help you get recentered and why they matter.
Are you living in your personal core values?
This is the perfect place to start. Maybe you’ve never actually thought of these enough to write them down, but you should.
Think of things that are the most important to you in your personal and professional life. The things that drive you to pursue your dreams and impact how you make decisions.
Everyone has a unique and wide-ranging list of core values. You can’t get this wrong.
Here are some examples to help get you started:
Life Values:
- Maintaining a work-life balance
- Committing to having healthy boundaries
- Make decisions of integrity
Behavior Values:
- Empathy
- Loyalty
- Perseverance
Professional Values
- Being productive
- Holding myself accountable
- Being open and honest in communication with others
The list can be endless and include other values about rights and causes as well.
If you can identify your core values, then prioritize them, they can help you define what’s important to you.
The order and values themselves can adapt over time as well. The professional values that drive you when you enter the workforce as a young adult are different than those as you approach retirement.
Why it’s important: If your personal core values are clearly defined and prioritized periodically, you’ll be better able to make decisions that are grounded in who you are, not products of external pressures or status-quo.
When you lean into your core values, you’ll influence your own mental wellness as well as have a positive impact on those around you.
What do you really want?
Such a simple question, yet it can paralyze at times. When you don’t revisit this question often, you can easily get off track.
Much like core values, you can break the answer to this into different areas. For example, what do want with regard to your personal, professional, and family/relational life?
- What are you passionate about?
- What are your health goals?
- What does your ideal relationship look like?
- If money were no object, what would you do?
- How committed are you to getting what you want?
The Gestalt Theory comes into play when figuring out what you really want. It states that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
The theory applies because often, changing one small thing in our lives doesn’t have the large and sustained impacts that we desire. For example, if we are someone who wants love then we find it, we may still not be happy if we do not yet love ourselves.
Getting to the life you want may involve layers of actions. Being aware that it will be a collective process will keep you from getting discouraged.
Why it’s important: Setting goals or pursuing a better life is nearly impossible unless you’re crystal clear on what you want. Without the clarity of knowing exactly what you want, you can make a move, but it may be the wrong one, or worse yet, you may decide not to make one at all because you’re unclear.
Who is your ride or die?
Everyone needs this person. They are vital to your life because they will push you to be your best, tell you the hard truth when they need to, and hold you accountable, always.
A ride or die doesn’t burden themselves with having to spare your feelings because they know the truth will always set you free.
They are there for you no matter what, thick and thin, hell or high water.
If you don’t have one of these, get one. Whether it’s making an effort to deepen a friendship or reconnecting with someone from the past that used to be that for you, do it.
Why it’s important: Life is inevitably going to hand you challenges, hardships, failures, and pain. Sometimes it will come at you in waves. Only your ride or die will stick with you during those tumultuous times, listening, advising, offering support, and holding you up.
What don’t you want?
In the quest to get centered and clear on what you want in life and how to prioritize your values, it may help to start with what you don’t want.
To get centered, you may need to do things like meditate, exercise, spend time in nature, or focus on getting some quality alone time.
Then, list the things you feel you need to keep out of your life, whether personally, professionally, or in your relationships.
Think of things like:
- A stressful job
- Living in a cold place
- Toxic friendships
- Being over-committed
Then ask yourself what needs to change to make sure these things are not part of your life and what will it take to get you there?
Then you can start on what you do want.
Why it’s important: “The good news is if you can identify what you don’t want, knowing what you do want is definitely within your reach. To perceive anything, there must be a contrast between the two states. To know that something is unwanted, we must know that something else is wanted instead. One serves as the reference point for the other”
There are likely other gripping questions that can help you get your life on track, but these are a great place to start.
Take your time and immerse yourself in this process and you’ll come out of it with a much better understanding of how to live the life you truly want.
More midlife fun and convos?: 🔥 🎧 The Badass Midlife Podcast 🎧 🔥
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