Important questions to ask.

Four questions

In our last blog post we explored some thoughts on mindset last week, we will take this further and answer some questions.

1. Who am I? (Identity)

2. Where am I now. (Currently)

3. What do I do? (Purpose)

4. Where am I going?  (Direction)

The most important thing that you need to do is to examine your life and these questions are needful in order for you to do that.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living.

The one thing needful for this exercise is to be brutally honest in trying to answer these questions.

If you already have a sense of direction, (where are you going) this exercise will help you to determine if you are still on track.

1. Who am I?

Preparing for this thought, I realized that one FB post definitely will not be enough for such a huge concept.

Eric Micha'el Leventhal said the following.

"The closer you come to knowing that you alone create the world of your experience, the more vital it becomes for you to discover, just who is doing the creating.

Since ancient times people are encouraged to "know themselves"

It was inscribed on the doorway of the Temple at Delphi.

• Pythagoras used it.
• Socrates said it.
• Plato used it.

We all picked up a version or perception of "who we think we are" along with the pathways of life through the mistakes, the downfalls, and the perceptions of other people.

The key to re-creating or re-inventing yourself is in knowing exactly who you are, and your likes and dislikes. What annoys you, what makes you sad, happy, and be brutally honest about it.

Sometimes we are not honest with ourselves in our attempts to please others or survive in life. And we become who others want us to become and not who we truly and authentically want to be.

As the old sages of wisdom would say, "go within" then look at yourself, look at the results of your life, and ask yourself the question.

2. Where am I now (Currently)

The fifth point of the compass.

Have you ever thought it possible to have a compass and still be hopelessly lost?

A compass usually has four points, indicating the four wind directions.

North, South, East, and West.

The fifth point of the compass is in the center of the compass and it indicates where are you now.

If you do not know where you are now in terms of your goals, your finances, your relationships, your career, etc, you will never be able to determine where you are going.

Where are you now?

You can’t be a big dreamer if you don’t know where you are going. You can’t know where you are going unless you first know where you are.

- Israelmore Ayivor, Dream Big! See Your Bigger Picture!

It is easy to plot where you are using the wheel of life. It is divided into the different sectors of life like spiritual, financial, career, personal, emotional, and physical. You use a scale from 1-to 10 in order to plot where you are at this point in time.

From there you can easily determine what area you need to work on.

3. What you do (Your career)

Poem: Slates of Grey

Sullen faces like slates of grey—

What I’d seen on a walk today.

Bodies rushing bodies bolting

Time for life a disregarding.

Money to make and to grow old

What about the hands to hold?

Deadlines, projects, people to meet

What about our own two feet.

Sullen faces like slates of grey...

What I’d see most any day.

Jess C Scott, Trouble

This poem is about the mundane, the working life and it so

easily defines us as human beings. We spend most of our adult life working,

making money, and paying bills.

The average employee will spend roughly 3,515 days working

in their lifetime - this may not account for the time spent working overtime.

In terms of time spent, the average is 35 hours per week which adds up to 1,795 hours per year and over 84,365 hours in a lifetime.

The idea of this post is, that if you are in a career that

makes you frustrated agitated and unhappy most of the time you will spend  80 000 hours of your life being frustrated, unhappy, and agitated.

In the times that we are living in work is scarce and we

cannot go job-hopping at a flip of a coin and if you have a job or career, you

need to protect it.

On the other hand, your career or job is simply a vehicle

that you use to get you to your destination. (Retirement and rest.) Your job should be important but it should not define who you are, but sometimes it inadvertently does.

Ask yourself this simple question, if I did not have the career that I am doing now, will I be a totally different person, or am I what I am today because of my career?

Your career does not only give you money to pay your bills

but it also changes, your habits, and your personality and it can also make you 

a difficult person to live with. And then you need to look at the feedback that you get from your family and the relationship that you have with them. Did you give them materially everything they needed but not the most important commodity - your presence and time?

Jordan Peterson once said that you will always sacrifice one

thing on the account of another. Are you spending too much time on your career

and too little time with your family, or can you balance it?

With proper goal setting and time management exercises you can easily find a balance between your working life and family life.

4. Where are you going (Direction)

Satnav will get us quickly and all-too-predictably from A to B, but the path of life is more interesting when we’re allowed to explore the side streets.

Fennel Hudson, A Waterside Year - Fennel's Journal - No. 2

Life is a journey, a path that we walk, and for each one of us, it looks different.

Sometimes we are headed in a certain direction and all of a sudden, an event occurs that'll take your life in a completely different, sometimes opposite direction.

Sometimes we run into cross winds that force us into a direction that we have never planned, and other times we find ourselves at crossroads and we haven't a clue whether we should go left or right or continue in the direction that our life has taken us thus far.

There are 4 things to remember.

1. Find your inner compass. Meditate, pray, or do what comes instinctively, you have an inner compass to guide you. Everything that you need to be successful in life is already within you.
2. Trust yourself. You can do this, the same inner wisdom that brought you thus far will guide you in the right direction. Like they say "Trust your gut, it never lies."
3. Get a mentor or coach. Somebody that you can trust, that will inspire you, and who has your interest at heart. Read books and educate yourself.
4. Do not be afraid of change. One thing that is constant is change, embrace it. Do not be scared if your life takes you in a totally different direction. Do not be afraid to explore the side streets in life, you might end up in an exciting place.