8 Questions I Ask Myself Daily

How I identify and nurture my needs every day in a noisy world

We spend our hours surrounded by voices and narratives. They tell us what we should want, what fulfillment looks like, and what milestones we should hit before we dare to slow down. They push us to strive for constant growth, to crave fame, to create this, to travel there. And, somehow, these voices and narratives drown out our own. Even when we are asked about our choices, we know there’s a playbook to go by. The pressure is on to stick to the trend, to fit in, to do something well or not at all.

Paying attention to my intuition and emotions saved my life in no uncertain terms. Living with an illness that requires self-advocacy for survival, I am my own best ally in health, work, and love. My quality of life depends on the quality of my choices. With an exhausting condition that affects the whole body and mind the way endometriosis does, every decision I make requires a constant negotiation of energy — a careful tango between pushing and pacing, resilience and recovery.

Yet, in every season, I feel the weight of our ableist reality: do more, be better, grow faster. I felt this weight growing up as the daughter and granddaughter of immigrants who began their life from scratch and fought so hard to belong. I felt it as a young PhD graduate at the brink of a promising career. I feel it now, as an entrepreneur and a writer in a world where suddenly everyone has a brand and a story to tell.

To live well in this noisy world (especially when I don’t feel well), I have to look inwards as often as I look around.

These 8 questions allow me to identify my needs and to recalibrate my daily thoughts and actions.

1. If I could do anything right now, what would I want to do?

Underlying my anxiety is usually a feeling of conflict: I am not where I truly want to be. Often, it takes some digging to find out exactly why. If I had the day to myself, what do I see myself doing? Do I need to sleep? Play? Make something with my hands? Spend time with loved ones? Stare at trees? Leave? Stay? Get sun on my face? What part of my day would I feel relieved to cancel?

I don’t always have the luxury of granting myself my wish, but it definitely helps to understand what I am craving so I can try to make it happen as soon as possible.

2. Why am I procrastinating?

I have a bit of an odd brain; it’s freakishly good at focusing, remembering, even multitasking. It rarely ever procrastinates. So, when it does, I know something’s up! When I give in to every distraction and have trouble seeing something through, it’s usually because I’m lacking clarity about my purpose or direction. If I’m stuck in my writing or a creative project, it’s because it’s not fleshed out enough or has some kind of flaw I haven’t worked out, and I need to take a step back and rethink it. If I’m delaying making plans with someone or accepting a collaboration request, I‘m clearly not in the mood to say yes and I have to own up to that feeling.

I try not to accept procrastination. It’s a stagnant state that drains my precious energy and steals my time. I try to get out of it as quickly as I can by figuring out exactly why I’m procrastinating and making different choices, even if that means saying “no” instead of “later”.

3. If I manage to do only two things today, what would those be?

I am a pathological list-maker. Having a to-do list (but also a to-be list!) helps me manage my anxiety about time. It also helps me concretely balance my priorities to ensure I’m contributing more to my wellness than to my work. Managing a lifelong health condition means being surprised (yet not so surprised) when fatigue and pain slams the breaks on your day. Not only do I write my to-do lists in pencil, but I also give myself grace to do just two (or even one) thing on that list when life gets in the way. If you have the energy for only one (or two) things today, what’s your priority?

4. Am I really listening?

As my grandmother used to say in her nineties, “The earth seems to be spinning faster than before.” Everything is urgent and we’re more distracted than ever before. We interrupt each other, change lanes without signaling, enter without knocking, and let aimless scrolling steal our attention from the sights and people in front of our eyes. Mindfulness is truly an artform and is arguably easier to achieve at a retreat or on a yoga mat than in the mad motion of daily life. But that’s precisely when we need to cling to mindfulness the most. Am I really listening to my husband tell me about his day or am I thinking about my own? Am I listening to the birds, the lyrics, the subway stops, my body?

5. Where does it hurt?

The body keeps score of our ups and downs, no matter our age or ability. Though endometriosis is often wrongly assumed to impact only the pelvis, inflammation and nerve symptoms can create pain anywhere in the body. Under stress, our nervous system flares and fires in a way that amplifies our agony, telling our brain that our bodies are under threat. This doesn’t mean the pain is imaginary and that we don’t require medical treatment, but it does mean that our nervous system plays a part in its regulation.

When work is stressful, when my writing gets rejected too many times in a row (sigh), when I run into unjust barriers, my muscles clench up. I feel it in my jaw, my pelvic floor, my fists. I have to peel my shoulders away from my ears and remind myself to breathe, because I actually forget. Several times a day, I stop to check where it hurts. Where am I holding tension? How can I release it? I even do it in my sleep, my teeth clenched and my hands balled up under my pillow.

6. Do I really need this?

Decisions are funny creatures. Sometimes they require deep thought, careful pro-con lists, discussions with trusted sources. Other times, they are made on impulse or even on auto-pilot, without more than a “but this is what I’ve always done.” When I’m about to eat something, buy something, or commit to something, I try to check whether I can live without it. If I can, but really want it anyway, I concede (I’m looking at you, pretty ceramics piled on my kitchen shelves!) If I am ambivalent, I take that as a big fat nope.

7. Is this really how I want to be using my time right now?

When I rabbit-hole into a task or mindless action, I try to locate the exit sign. I know it’s a privilege to be in control of one’s own time, and responsibilities often get in the way of that privilege, but before I try to edit that dang Reel for the fifth time or lose minutes fussing over a pimple or say yes to a project that steers me away from another goal, I ask myself whether my time could be better spent differently.

8. What was the highlight of my day?

I started this practice after my first surgery for endometriosis when I started to keep a gratitude jar to help pull myself out of the depression that had descended as a result of living undiagnosed for two decades. Every day, I’d drop a colorful post-it in the jar with a highlight of my day. Soon the jar was crammed with tiny and big wins. Gratitude is not a cure for everything, and not everything has to be “fixed” to be worthwhile, but gratitude does help turn a rough day around by bedtime. And, because I’m not a fan of toxic positivity, the day’s highlight might even be a dark moment that showed me something I needed to see. This practice has proven to be contagious; over dinner, my husband regularly shares the highlight of his day (and duly practicing point # 4, I really listen).

A happy life is not necessarily an easy life. Living well, especially when not feeling well, requires practiced self-awareness and constant recalibration. And though the pressure is on to follow the playbook, sometimes we need to play by our own rules.

Kristina Kasparian’s writing on identity, wellness, and social justice has been published by Roxane Gay, Newsweek, Catapult, The Globe & Mail, and several magazines. After graduating with a PhD in neurolinguistics, Kristina now works as a consultant, travel photographer and health activist fighting for better standards of healthcare for marginalized populations. Follow her on Instagram or Twitter and subscribe to her newsletter, The Alba Journals. kristinakasparian.com