SELF IMPROVEMENT
Don’t Ask Yourself This Question
Unless you don’t anticipate scarcity in your life
“I have to change my life!”
I was felt empty, listless, powerless, unhappy…
That’s how I felt then. I was trapped. Trapped in my own life. Actually, a good life because
- I had a wonderful friend by my side
- I was successful in everything I did
- I had enough money to live and a little more than that
- I had a scholarship
- I had the best career opportunities
But I wasn’t happy. Until the day my life changed.
Today I am happy. Extremely happy. And I owe it all to just one question:
“Do you want the red or the blue pill?”
No, of course, I’m just kidding. That question changed Neo’s life and got him out of the matrix. However, my “awakening” was similarly redemptive, but without artificial intelligence and superpowers.
Sometimes it even feels like you have superpowers and can fly. But more on that later. Now I’m going to tell you the question that really changed my life:
What do you want?
Yep, that’s all. So simple and yet so effective. The question that changed my life and the question that will change your life if you are willing to do just one thing:
You really have to allow yourself
You have to let this question go very deeply so that it almost hurts. It actually has to hurt. It hurt me. But there is so much power and motivation to this question that it will blow your mind and inevitably change your life if you get involved.
I can understand if you can’t believe me right now. But I have a simple and haunting proof of this…and that’s my own story …
Let me tell you how did this question change my life once and for all.
I did a complete U-turn in 2015 when I had to plan for my life. Until then I lived in a largely remote-controlled mode, which unfortunately is not uncommon nowadays. My world was mostly about things like:
- Career
- Look at
- Money
- Material comforts
- …
I gave everything for that.
Even at school, I was always one of the top candidates and the whole thing got worse later.
After completing my military service, I began to study architecture because I didn’t know what I really wanted to be. I was probably just thrilled by the idea of being celebrated as a famous architect one day, of making a lot of money with it, and of setting monuments to myself all over the world with my style. Bah, sucks, I know… I also always enjoyed drawing and had a creative streak.
I was also one of the best in my studies, but it was around this point that my ordeal began. There were a lot more distractions and other interesting things at school, and when I was a soldier, any serious thought about the future was always a long way off. But now I was forced to deal with it because I tortured myself.
- I tormented myself about being so good at something that actually cared so little.
- I tortured myself with the fact that I still wanted to get better and better at it.
- I tortured myself with the expectations that others had of me because someone like me had to become a successful architect.
- I tortured myself with the fact that I only sat in front of drawings and models and had no more time for the things that really interested me.
- I tortured myself because I didn’t know what I really wanted and forced myself to do something that I didn’t really want…
I wanted out of there…
In the second semester, I pulled the emergency brake and gave up my studies. Now you probably expect me to tell you what I learned from my mistake and what did I do differently afterward. But the answer is far away from your expectations.
I had thought about what I would “prefer” to do professionally than being an architect, but I hadn’t asked myself what I really wanted in my life. My superficial goals, which were not my own but what I had absorbed into my surroundings and society, were still the same.
So I started an apprenticeship in surveying and after a short time, the old pattern was used again. I wanted to become something… Shortened my training to two years, graduated as the best in the country, started studying surveying, got a scholarship, was the best again, was unhappy with my job and studies, tortured me… again…
How the question popped up in me
I completely subordinated my life to my goals and tormented myself with the same problems as before, but one of them got stronger and stronger:
The thought that THAT couldn’t be the meaning and purpose of my life.
I was not the only one among millions and millions of tiny sperm to assert myself under the greatest effort and got this unspeakably rare chance to lead my life only to deal with banal things that didn’t interest me at all in my heart.
That was the moment when a seed was planted in my head. This seed was the question:
“What do I actually want in life?”
Or their variations:
- What do I want to do with my life?
- What do I want to spend my precious life with?
- What do I want to achieve before I die?
- What do I want to live for
- What am I here for?
What this question revealed to me
The seed was growing and these questions tormented me more than anything. However, I did not find an answer. So I started reading books on personal development, psychology, and philosophy and looked for answers in them. I found it, but not in the form I hoped it would be.
I hoped for a guide of the type “X simple steps to find out what you really want in life”. Similar to how I am giving it to you right here. But there was no such thing back then. Unfortunately or fortunately, what I found instead was a great interest in personal development, psychology, and philosophy. For what I believe to be important questions in life, as I asked myself and still ask.
I wanted to deal with it further and because while looking for answers to my questions I found that I simply couldn’t find any satisfactory one, I decided to record my answers for others in the form of a blog.
I built my blog on the side and the seed, which had grown into a stately plant in me, was slowly bearing fruit. I was happy when I dealt with such questions and topics and finally saw something really meaningful for my life.
Unfortunately, despite everything, it was very difficult for me to break free from the bonds of my previous lifestyle. The old patterns and behaviors were deeply anchored in me and I still strived for achievement, recognition, etc…
However, my life now played out between two extremes: A fulfilling activity on the one hand and the usual agonizing grind on the other. In short, I was still suffering.
This specific question lead me on what to do
Until one day I came across something. It was a question again:
“How does the life you lead deviate from the one you want?”
Does it sound familiar to you? That is the initial question, just in a slightly different guise.
I used this other garment. Since I’m a pretty analytical guy, I immediately set about making some kind of comparison.
Basically, I made a list of all the things that played a minor or major role in my life then. These were things like creativity, freedom, recognition, authenticity, health, security, reputation, success, and a few more.
Then I just made two columns next to it with the titles “What I want” and “Where am I”. This is what it looked like:
Basically, the rest was pretty straightforward. It was two easy steps:
- The first step was to give different values in my life, a personal weighting. For example, “How important is independence to you on a scale from 1 to 100?”
- The second step was to assign the respective values to the extent to which they were currently being lived in my own life. For example, “How independently do you currently live on a scale from 1 to 100?”
The result then consisted of a comparison of the “What I want” and “Where am I” values determined in this way. As I’m a pretty visual guy, I still illustrated the whole thing in the form of a graphic. And I was horrified…
What I realized through this question
This is what my life looked like at about this point in time:
Green represents what I really wanted while blue represents what I really lived.
On the one hand, this confirmed to me what I had to laboriously find out over a long detour. Namely, what was really important to me in life (personal development, creativity, self-realization …) and on the other hand, why I was so unhappy in my “usual” life. Because I just lived the complete opposite!
What you see in the picture is the epitome of a dilemma.
This “picture of my life” clearly showed me that I was trying to fill areas in my life in which I hardly had my OWN need for fulfillment and thereby totally neglecting other areas that were much more important to me.
To see this realization of “blue on the green” in front of me was a real wake-up call. At that exact moment, I knew exactly why I felt so unhappy and torn. And that was the cornerstone for a groundbreaking change.
How this realization changed my life
I saw exactly those areas in my life that were drawing my whole energy. I pinned this graphic to my wardrobe in the bedroom (that’s the point I looked first in the morning and last in the evening). I kept reminding myself of this grievance. At some point, I had no choice but to change my life.
First of all, I took a break. In particular, it was a vacation semester during my studies that took up far too much time and, above all, filled the areas in my life that were not so important to me. In addition, because of the constant preoccupation, it took away the opportunity to really objectively reflect on my situation.
During this time I was finally able, for the first time, to devote myself extensively and not just on the side to all the things that were really important to me. The “green” areas in my life, so to speak, that I had always neglected before.
At first, that was a kind of “life change on trial”, but I also needed that to gain clarity. My focus shifted slowly and with the awareness of what was really important to me and where I could shovel more and more resources for it, my life got better and better.
This (off) time was great and only confirmed my decision.
How did this change come about
I noticed that I wasn’t missing anything in which I no longer invested (recognition, success, security …) and I was much happier and more satisfied than before.
With all the time and energy that I had leftover, I was able to invest in my “dream life”:
- I started exercising and meditating regularly
- I dealt more intensively with myself, my questions, and my blog
- A short time later, I gave up my studies and my promising professional career for good
- My interest in money and material things began to shrink by itself, because before these were only things that were supposed to compensate for my misfortune. Now that I was really happy, these things became more and more irrelevant to me.
- My relationship also improved, although it wasn’t bad before, I now had a lot more energy and desire to invest in it.
- It was the same with my friendships and other social areas. All those who cared about me got a permanent and important place in my life and the way I dealt with them became better. All the others, sooner or later, vanished from my life because I realized that they could only harm me.
- As I became honest to myself, I instantly felt free, more genuine, more self-determined, and was less dependent on external influences or the opinion of others, which promoted my serenity.
I no longer had the need to chase things hoping that they could make me happy, but I was happy and could live and enjoy my life to the full.
My life after that
The result of this constant change looked something like this in the following graph:
Yes, there are still minor deviations, but there can and must be. Because if everything were perfect, there would be no more reason to change and then life would standstill. Life is a constant change.
But what matters here is the much better correspondence between “What I want” and “Where am I”. And just as fitting as it looks, it felt to me too! My life finally seemed reasonable to me!
What is missing is you. Your life will not change on its own. You have to do that. Don’t wait for anything or anyone, just start. Now!
Only those who know what they want will recognize it when they get it!
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Below is a great article from Alejandro Betancourt on living our dreams
