Questions
We often look for answers, but in reality, it’s the questions that teach us the most.
I too, bear the same affection towards good questions - they bear the assumptions of the minds who ask, but do not offend the minds who need to find the answers. The video from @dailystoic brought back my love of pondering a good ol’ dose of questioning, and I too have my personal interpretations of the questions Ryan Holiday mentioned. In this newsletter exclusive article, I’ll go through all 13 of them and let you know what I think :)
Who are you spending time with?
I’m 100% with him on this one - similar to a popular quote that says “Show me who you spend time with and I will tell you who you are”.
Every single interaction, every word being said, every actions carried out can show you a great deal of the person in front of you. The more time we spend with someone, the more we become similar to that person, hence spouses act alike after years spent being together, or best friends bear the same interests and hobbies and it even gets deeper than that with similarities in their habits, vocabulary or even their thoughts. It’s important to spend time with the people whose averaging toward the kind of person you want to become - if you want to be successful, you can find those who are more successful than yourself at this moment to be around, to learn from them, to see what kind of actions and thoughts they have in mind, and all of those minutes interacting with them shall become a part of you.
This question is also the most difficult one for many of us to ask, as we have to make some tough choices toward the people whom we choose to spend time with, and this counts toward family members as well. Some of us may not have the best upbringing, and we should be grateful to our guardians as they have raised us with the best of their capabilities, yet they are still human beings with flaws and mistakes, and there would be a time when we could “graduate” from being with them, that is not to say you should totally cut ties with your parents if they were bad people.
Nevertheless, ask yourself: Who am I going to see after work? Whose books am I reading? Who am I talking to the most frequent?
Is this in my control?
So much of our time and energy are habitually spent worrying about the things that are yet to happen and are not up to us. It would lead us to a state of paralysis, without the choice of action and who knows, we would get stuck in a loop of endless anxiety and constant negativity. It’s best to learn how to tune out of what’s not in our control and focus on what is in our control.
A thing I often do when something unpleasant happen is to put that into a SWOT analysis - yeah you read that right - SWOT thinking would eventually set your mind up for a habit of separating what can be done and what can’t throughout the course of your day, to let go of the things which are not up to us and to see what we can do to improve the situation. By the end of the day, if all should be done were done, and the results remained a not so pleasant one, we could breathe out without beating ourselves up as we had done everything in our power, and there should be no regrets left behind.
What does my ideal day look like?
A life is made up of days.
Every moment of decision matters - should I pick up my phone first thing when my eyes open, or should I pick myself up and make my bed instead?
A series of good actions make a good day, and thus your ideal day should be one contain the greatest number of good actions you can make. Is it getting you closer to your goals and dreams, or is your day pulling you away from what you want? Your abilities can never grow out of your vision, hence your ideal day should be something concrete that you can envision and ingrain within your mind every single moment when you wake up and go after what you want from life.
To be or to do?
“It’s amazing how much you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
Do you care about the impact, or do you care about whose names get printed on the plaque?
Humanity isn’t dumb, they will recognize who put in the hours and the work, and who slither their way into the top. It’s important that we actually get our hands dirty by doing the heavy lifting, and experience the process for ourselves, to one day when we personally receive the recognition for what we do, it’s going to be worthwhile.
If I’m not for me, who is? If I am only for me, who am I?
This one really harkens back to the previous question, on what is the purpose of why you come to this world. Essentially, life has no meaning but the meaning we give it. If you are still in your mid-twenties or getting close to your thirties similar to myself and yet to find out what you want in life, please do yourself a favor and get out there to experience the world with the attitude of “I’m doing this for myself”. Staying where you are for the sole purpose of protecting your little ego is not going to do much for you in the long run - who are you then?
What am I missing by choosing to worry or to be afraid?
The worst habit of man I think is the habit of preservation - we tend to take the path of least resistance, but inadvertently it would lead us to a state of inaction and stagnancy, while spending your energy worrying about the current state of affairs. When you worry, ask yourself “What am I choosing not to see right now?” - the things we choose not to face head on are the ones that hold us down.
We only have so much brain cells to use throughout the day, and if we spent it being anxious, afraid or worrying, we would just stare at the problems without acting on them.
Are you doing your job?
In a sense, the tasks that you set out to yourself. School never taught us that we have to decide what our homework is for the day after graduation, and thus we are thrown out of the world not knowing what to do with our lives. Coincidentally, this would also lead us down the path of least resistance by wandering around, doing the mundanely unproductive things that the world throws at us, like scrolling through the endless videos for a little boost of dopamine, or grinding away at a job that we do not find meaningful or constructive for our purposes in life.
If you aren’t doing the things needed to go after what you want, then why?
What is the most important thing?
If you don’t know whether something is important, how do you know when to put it first?
It might be a good idea to spend the first five years in your twenties to figure out what you want out of life, what you think is the most important to you, that you want it so bad you could die for it. Ask this before anything else, and it would be your drive to send you on a magnificent journey. Some might think fortune and fame are the most crucial, yet those who have them would change their minds, turn back to some sort of balance between their work and family. It’s totally up to you, and your choice matters only to you and you only.
Here are some of the things I would propose to make your top priorities:
* Health (both mental and physical)
* Financial Independence
* Freedom of time
* Self-Development
* Familial happiness
* Seeing the world
Who is this for?
So many entrepreneurs start their business without thinking about who their audience is. It’s not about the money, and if you want to start a business just for the sake of money, you would never make it big. The key is to provide value to a certain group of people, and you yourself have to know that group of people the best. That’s why empathy is so important in pretty much everything we do in life. Do something to provide value for others, not for yourself, and you will reap your rewards.
Does this actually matter?
Is this essential? Because most of what we do in a day is not.
Is this going to be alive time or dead time?
Can you use this time? Is it your time spending your real life energy working toward your dream, or is it just you grinding mindlessly through the tasks given to you by others.
It’s not that life is too short, it’s that we just waste a lot of it.
Is this who I want to be?
This one is closely related to the ideal days you want to live. Every single action and choice we make shape who we are, and it should align with what you think is valuable to you.
How we do anything is how we do everything.
Things add up, and before you know it, the difficult choices you make each day compound you into a person that can handle the hardship of life.
What is the meaning of life?
Meaning is something arbitrary, an idea we decide to give to our lives - and even the meanings we decide not to give to life. Many of us may be in a tight pinch right now, but things shall pass, and hardship will eventually go away, and what is left should be the meaning you chose for the life you will have lived.
Thank you for your time reading my mindless rant,
Regards and godspeed,
An @awritingguy
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