f you haven’t achieved the success and happiness you want in life then it might be because you aren’t asking yourself the right questions to help you get there.
Einstein said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, then I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask”.
To experience the alternative is to wander through life from one experience to the other hoping for the best, which is essentially what you do unless you check in with yourself on a regular basis to help you to develop as a person, and to connect with what is meaningful in life.
Here are six questions to ask yourself every day to help you to lead a happier and more successful life.
#1. How can I make a difference to someone’s life today?
When you constantly look inwards to yourself you can get lost as you lose sight of what’s important.
Nothing is more important in life than human connection, the ability to connect and help another human being; so focusing each day on how you can best do this can have a huge impact on your life.
Ask yourself every day “how can I make a difference to someone” then what you’re doing is giving yourself an opportunity to connect to someone and to improve their lives in some way.
This might be a stranger or it might be your family, it doesn’t matter. What matters is looking outwards beyond yourself and making someone’s life better after you, than before you.
#2. What do I need to make right?
There’s a relationship between your integrity and your happiness, so the more you can stay in integrity the happier you’ll be. Staying in integrity is to be true to your values so that what you think is the same as what you say, and what you say is the same as what you do.
The more you can keep these aligned the more you will be in integrity, and the happier you’ll be.
Who do you need to speak to?
Who do you need to thank?
What are you avoiding?
Who do you need to forgive?
Ask yourself questions like these and then make one thing right every day.
#3. How can I scare myself?
When you’re on your deathbed you aren’t going to be telling stories about the clothes you bought or the programmes you watched. It’ll be the chances you took, the moments when you were at your edge, and when you risked something for the greater good.
Steve Harvey says:
“Everyone who is successful at some point in their life has jumped”.
They’ve taken the chance and gone for it. He’s right. Success is outside your comfort zone and for that you have to scare yourself and in Steve’s words, “You have to jump”.
Start small and ask yourself what will scare me today, if only a little bit, and before you know it you’ll be handing in your notice and doing everything you’ve been threatening to do for years.
#4. What am I grateful for?
Gratitude is one of the simplest and most effective methods of increasing happiness and well-being.
In my experience, saying it out loud is good but writing it is better (especially as it allows you to read them back to yourself weeks or months later which is a very humbling experience).
It helps you get perspective on life, makes you realise what’s important and how fortunate you are.
#5. Who am I?
This might sound a strange one but if you don’t know who you are how can you be yourself? You’ve heard people say “Just be yourself” a million times but some of us have no idea what this really means, and if you can’t be yourself then you certainly aren’t going to be happy.
Self-reflection and increasing self-awareness is so important.
Who are you?
What do you love?
What makes you angry?
Why does that make you angry?
What have you learnt about yourself today that you didn’t know yesterday?
Asking simple questions and noticing your behaviour will help to increase your self-awareness so you can get the most out of yourself and others.
And when you get to the big questions in life you’ll be asking as the real you instead of the version of you that you want the world to see.
#6. What can I say no to?
Whenever I ask someone how they are, they invariably respond “Busy, yeah reeeaaallly busy” as if this is a good thing, hoping I’ll respond similarly so we can slap each other on the back.
Warren Buffet said:
“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything”.
What are you doing that you need to say no to?
Saying no creates space, space that you need.
I hope this post was helpful. Do you have any other questions you would add? Let me know in the comments and please share this post with a friend if you enjoyed it. For regular content like this just fill in the box below.