5 Uncommon Questions to Live A Better Life
Discover and address your blind spots
Let’s face it, there’s a lot of sh*tty self-help content out there.
It’s good that personal development has become more mainstream, but when you’re catering to the masses the quality inevitably goes down.
Finding real, useful self-help once you’ve read all the standard stuff is hard.
There’s a million pop psychology lists of “X Questions to Find Your Values” and “Y Ways to Live a Better Life”. You’ve read it all and are tired of it. It’s become superficial.
You want something deeper. Not necessarily new — you’re wise enough to know that all that can be said has been — but something that isn’t the common self-help that even your grandma has been trying.
This is just that sort of uncommon post.
These questions will make you think. They will raise powerful and challenging ideas. They will grant you new perspectives that, if applied, will improve your life.
So if you’re ready for something a little different, this post is for you. Read on.
Question 1. How much of my life revolves around survival?
“It never occurs to the squirrel that it is an oak-murdering machine.” — Leo Gura
If you’re reading this, then you’re alive… I hope. And being alive takes a lot of work.
The art of staying alive is called survival. Yet survival means so much more than what we initially think.
Survival is everything.
Sure there’s the act of physically surviving by breathing, eating and drinking. But you’re also constantly surviving socially, spiritually, psychologically, and in many other ways.
Why did you buy designer clothes in high school? Why did you go to university? Why do you speak the way you do at work? Why do you care about what other people think? Why do you wipe your ass after you’ve taken a sh*t?
Survival.
Good luck keeping your social and personal images intact while walking around with dirty cheeks. I’m sure that can’t be good for you spiritually, either.
Joking aside, survival is literally all that most of us do.
When was the last time you did anything that wasn’t directly linked to your survival? Even bingeing Netflix keeps you alive by allowing you to relax so you don’t die of stress.
The opposite of survival is being. Being is when you allow things to be exactly as they are, regardless of how they affect you — almost like you’re not there or don’t exist.
Moments of being are how you truly improve your life. Counterintuitively, the more you live from being (as opposed to doing), the easier you’ll find life.
Some simple examples of being are: taking a walk in nature, getting lost in a good book, or finding your groove in a workout. You know how easy and pleasurable all of these feel. Imagine if more of your life felt like that.
Analyse how much of your life revolves purely around survival and try to carve out 5 or 10 minutes a day to just be.
Question 2. How can I know anything for certain?
“To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” — Copernicus
This question is vital if you ever want to become independent.
The ability to think independently is stamped out of us as children. To a degree, this is necessary: it’s useful to know how to fit in and be a functioning member of society. But the mistake most people make is never questioning what they’ve been conditioned into, once they’re old enough.
If you don’t want to get trapped following the mindless norms of society, toiling away until 75 at a job you hate with a 50% chance of being divorced and almost never seeing your family, you need to think differently.
The best way to do this is to go right to square one and ask how you know anything at all.
This type of questioning is called epistemology. In philosophy, epistemology deals with the theory of knowledge, which basically means questioning how we know what we know and evaluating if the methods we use to know things are valid.
Questioning the f*ck out of everything will let you realise a few things:
- Everything is made up
- Nobody knows what they’re doing
- Literally everything is made up
- 99.9% of people don’t know anything about the universe (and they don’t know this, so don’t judge them)
Practically speaking, realising this for yourself puts you at a massive advantage. If you can deconstruct the obstacles that hold the majority of people back, you’ll be well ahead of the curve.
Imagine how much easier life would be if you were never afraid to pursue the things you wanted and no longer felt any pressure to conform. You could so much more easily achieve the things you want.
From a more spiritual standpoint, the key to a good life is truth. You can’t find truth if you’re conditioned to ignore it (such as being busy surviving!). And by definition, you can’t find truth if you’re deluded about being deluded. This is sadly most of us, myself included — I’m still figuring all this out.
Fortunately, you don’t need to become a philosopher or a renunciant yogi to bring more Truth into your life. Here are three questions to give you a starting point:
- How honest am I with myself? Is it even possible for me to be 100% self-honest?
- How much do I really know about the world? How can I be sure I’m right?
- Do I care about Truth (note the capital ‘T’)?
Regardless of if you care about the spiritual side or just want the practical benefits, you have to contemplate the above questions in order to gain any benefit.
As soon as you do, you’ll find out that there’s knowing something and then there’s knowing something.
Direct experience is king.
Question 3. How do people see me differently from how I see myself?
“Oh my god, do I really sound like that?” — Me hearing a recording of my voice
It’s very common to ask “Do I worry too much about what other people think?”, and it’s a valid question.
But flipping this query on its head can be an equally fruitful exercise. Why? Because it shows you the power of projection.
You have to put yourself in others’ shoes and objectively judge yourself from their subjective perspective. You have to notice your own projections and delusions.
This not only requires a great deal of self-awareness, but also empathy and the willingness to hold differing ideas.
Asking how other people might view you differently to how you view yourself, and how you think they view you, reveals a lot about the world you create with your mind.
Question 4. Who am I becoming?
A few minutes on the previous question should give you a pretty good starting point for this one.
To paraphrase a great quote, you already know who you’ll be in a year — exactly the same boring, unfulfilled person. (If you know the quote I’m referring to, please let me know in the comments!)
You are already the person you’re becoming. The actions you do or don’t take today are determining who you’ll be tomorrow. And the mistake most people make is to never question where what they’re doing today will take them in 5 years.
The sad truth is, once most people leave university, they stop growing.
I guarantee you know a friend who’s done this
Your friend was pretty normal during college. He liked going out and drinking, he watched football, and he somehow managed to find himself a girlfriend. When you guys graduated, he fell into some corporate job and then quickly moved out with his girlfriend. He still did all the same things he did at university: drinking, socialising, watching football, just now only on the weekend. Fast forward a few years and he’s never left his hometown and has been at that same job with that same partner for nearly a decade. He knows who he is and there’s no need to question that.
Now, there’s nothing explicitly wrong with such a life. However, I know that if you’ve read this far you’d rather perish now than endure 50 drawn-out years of beer, marital squabbles, and boredom.
So what are you doing in life? What are you building? Where will your current behaviours take you?
Small increments over a long enough time frame make massive differences. Make sure yours are taking you where you want to go.
5. How do I feel?
““When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.” — Eckhart Tolle
“How are you?” This classic conversation starter is rarely more than a superficial greeting.
You’d get funny looks if you said “Well actually, Steve, I’m terrible. This job drains my soul, I don’t have time to pursue love or my passions, and I’m worried about my ever-increasing pile of debt.”
We just smile and say “I’m alright, how’re you?”
When was the last time you stopped and just tuned in to how you felt? I don’t mean when you’re forced to because you stubbed your toe or got bored. I mean intentionally pausing to feel how you are.
Are you tired? How does your head feel? Does your back hurt or your neck ache?
Our bodies are very clever; they often give us clear signs when something’s wrong. However, we drown this out with work and Netflix and thinking, not allowing ourselves a single moment to feel how we actually are.
Perhaps it’s because we’re scared of what we’ll find.
And you know what, I don’t blame us. But the more you pay attention to yourself, the easier it becomes.
The stillness becomes quite pleasant when you get used to it.
And you can really feel how you are and which parts of your body you need to take more care of.
It certainly feels a lot better than another episode of Netflix slumped on the couch.
Recap for memory
- How much of my life revolves around survival?
- How can I know anything for certain?
- How do people see me differently from how I see myself?
- Who am I becoming?
- How do I feel?