If you want greater success and happiness it is necessary to ask yourself the right questions. This manual asks you thought-provoking questions in each life area to help you with your self-discovery and personal and career growth.
What is your purpose in life? Why are you here? Are you on the right path? What will it take to find true happiness? Are you in the right relationship? Why is your life filled with drama and trauma? Why is this (whatever) happening to you?
These are just a few of the thousands of haunting questions that millions of people ask themselves every day. Answers. Everyone wants answers to their life questions and they want them now.
What is your destiny?
Sooner or later you will ask yourself many of these and more difficult life questions. It may take you more than half of your life to decide to search for the answers or you may begin the search in earnest when you are in your teens or twenties. Regardless, I guarantee that everyone, before they leave this planet, will struggle with many unanswered questions. Most of these life questions are impartial to your gender, financial status, age, career, or any other circumstances.
The basic premise of this book is that there are no right or wrong answers to the many questions of your life. But there are honest and dishonest answers. Answers often come as insights, signs, intuition, and circumstances; they are not always written on a legal pad and placed on your kitchen table every morning at breakfast. Our inability to interpret these signs, signals, experiences, or circumstances correctly is what often leads us to our dishonest answers. It is not an intentional process, but an outcome of all of our previous years of living, decisions, choices, consequences, and outcomes, as well as our perceptions.
Dishonest answers can lead to errors in judgment, negative experiences, high stress, and frustration. Honest answers can lead to inner peace, joy, harmony, success, and happiness.
You can continue to live in conscious denial or you can choose to begin to ask yourself better questions and listen to the answers with integrity, openness, and courage.
If this book is to have any positive impact on your life at all—its past, present or future—you must be willing to confront, consider, answer, and reflect on each and every one of the over 500 questions ahead of you.
Keep in mind that your life is a work in progress. The day will never come when you are not given the opportunity to learn, grow, understand, and change: who you are, what you believe, what you think, and what you do. The sub-title of this book says An On-going Success System. Why must it be ongoing? Why can’t you just spend a few hours simply answering the questions and be done with it? Your answers to many of the questions at age 25 will be different than your answers at age 50. Some may be the same, but those are not the ones to spend time on. The ones that deserve your attention are the questions that, for whatever reason, have a different meaning for you at a different stage of your life. Circumstances change. Knowledge changes. People change. Attitudes change. Everything that is impacting your life is changing—every day.
The answers to your career answers at age 24 may vary greatly when you are 58. Your relationship answers when you are single and dating might change dramatically when you are 35, married, and have three children.
An important thing to consider as you ask yourself many of the questions in each category is that many of your answers will determine your future outcomes and consequences and then their corresponding questions at that new time in your life. Choosing wisely is one of the most important aspects of your life. Choosing: your relationships, your career, your beliefs, your morals, your attitudes, and everything in between. For example:
-How do you feel about yourself right now?
-Can you accept yourself for who you are right now?
-What is your attitude about failure? Adversity? Problems?
If you want better answers to life’s questions, it is important to ask yourself the right questions. It is critical that you listen carefully to the answers and it is vital that you act on what you hear. There are two ways to live your life: you can lead with your mind or intellect and let your heart follow or you can lead with your heart and let your mind and intellect follow. Which do you feel will give your life more peace, harmony, fulfillment, satisfaction and favorable memories? If you said lead with your heart, you are right. Who says so? Deep inside your inner being or soul, you know that when you lead with your mind or intellect, it often leads you astray.
-You may not like some of the answers you get to your questions.
-You may disagree with some of the answers.
-You ego might weave its way into some of your answers.
-You may feel you do not deserve the answer.
-You may be afraid that you can’t comply with some of the answers.
-You may believe that your answers are in conflict with what you believe you want.
In the end you will be the one who either does something with your answer or ignores it completely. You will be the one who takes the action or sits back waiting for a better or more appropriate answer. You will inherit the consequences of whichever road you choose to take.
This is your life. We are not talking here about your parent’s life, your children’s life, your spouse’s life, your boss’s life, or Uncle Billy-Bob’s life. We are talking about YOUR life:
-what you will do with your life,
-what you will get from your life,
-what you will contribute to humankind,
-what your life will ultimately stand for,
-what your legacy will be,
-what you believe,
-what you do with the time you were given,
-what you learn and how you apply what you learn.
Completing many of the following questions will take a great deal of courage. They are perhaps not easy questions, but they are important ones. Life is not easy. Life is not hard. Life is.
Excerpt
There are a number of places where you and I can put our money. They include, but are not limited to:
- stuff,
- toys,
- education,
- travel,
- looking younger,
- looking more successful,
- things that we hope will impress others,
- savings,
- investments,
- bills,
- our kids,
- food, either at home or out.
There are others, but I have made my point. Which ones in the above list will contribute to your ability to improve your lifestyle as you pass from one year to the next? They are: savings, investments, and education. Which one of these three will improve your chances of improving the other two? Education, investing in yourself.
Many people think nothing about spending thousands of dollars a year on clothes, cars, meals, entertainment, their hair, their toys, and so on. Many of these same people would like to be able to afford better restaurants, clothes, and toys, but they fail to realize that the one tool that will permit them to do that is their mind.
Any investment you make in yourself—in your skills, abilities, or attitudes—will return itself 100- or even 1000-fold over time. The ideas you receive that can contribute to your ability to improve your lifestyle—whatever that means to you—are with you forever. Last night’s meal is gone, history. We only get to rent food temporarily. Ideas we get to keep and use again and again.
How much have you invested so far this year on improving yourself vs. going out to dinner or entertainment? Over 35 years ago, when I was fired by a major insurance company, I made a decision. I would invest 10% of my time and 10% of my income every year in personal development. I know that as long as I continue to invest in myself, I will always be able to convert those new or refined skills into cash.
Tim,
This book (excerpt) is extremely thought provoking,and you are right;answering the questions requires gut level honesty, I believe, if we are to get the best from ourselves and life.
So much of what you have written reminds me of my life's journey.
I am glad to say that my life is what it should be because at various stages of it,I asked the right questions,and although the answers were not always what I wanted to accept, doing so has made all the difference.
ebook Version
Too many people attempt or commit suicide while those around them didn't realize they were suicidal. This book will teach you what you need to know so that will never happen to you. It can also give hope to the suicidal person
This book helps you get to the root of imposter syndrome and provides easy to use strategies to uproot it once and for all. Only be getting to the deeper underlying issues can you build sustainable, reliable self-confidence personally and professiona
