What are the three toughest questions that you can ever ask yourself?
I was recently at a high level workshop for experts and teachers and there were 60 of us there. We were all working on creating our next level product and service to help our clients. I spoke with many other experts in the field of health, nutrition, fitness, anti-aging, DNA restructuring, grief & anxiety counselling to name a few. We are all talking about a lot of great concepts designed to help people like you live a stronger and healthier life.
As I spoke with the other experts, I noticed that they all struggled with answering one of the three toughest questions I will give you in a minute. I'm curious to see if you currently struggle with one of these three questions. Are you ready to test yourself?
First question: Who are you?
This is a very important question that really forms the basis of a deep inner knowing of who you are, why you were sent here and what is your life purpose. Your life purpose doesn't have to be a very grand esoteric one. Over time I have found that people generally fall into one of two buckets regarding life purpose:
Forest People vs. Goal People
The forest person is a person that is born and walks a specific life pathway. It's like walking in a forest of a specific area of study or industry. While the path may turn and twist and they can go from left to right, they never leave the forest. For example, musicians are in the forest of music. Movie actors are in the forest of acting. Chartered Accountants stay in the forest of accounting whether they are in public or private practice.
These people serve one industry their whole life. You are a forest person if you have a passion for one, life consuming area of expertise or interest.
The second type of person in life is a goal person. This is a person that has never really been beholden to one particular life purpose or forest. Instead, they go after project by project. If you're a goal person, you set your mind on a project and launch out to pursue it.
You want to become something or you want to do get something specific accomplished. You go get the project done. If you're a goal person you are always moving onto the next goal or project. It could be a similar goal to the one you last achieved or could be something completely a 180° different change of direction. This is good. The world needs accomplished goal getters who connect ideas with fanatical implementation.
The choice is really yours in knowing whether you're a forest person or goal person. Knowing who you are will really make a difference for you in how you accomplish your life mission and goals.
The next thing that you need to do in order to answer the question of who are you, is to devise out your own personal mission statement. Try to develop your mission statement that can be very eternal. Imagine it being written on your tombstone when you leave this earth.
Okay, so that's knowing who you are and knowing about your purpose or your life pathway.
The next question is: What do you want from life?
What do you want to do today?
What do you want tomorrow?
What do you want a month from? Three months from now? Six months or in six years from now, what do you want?
What are you striving so hard for? What are you working for?
This question often really stops a lot of my clients from achieving their deepest desires and goals. How would you answer this question today?
I bet that if I were to work with you one-on-one, we might uncover a different answer than what you wrote down five minutes ago. It's natural to want one thing because of an external motivation, but then really long for an internally driven need or desire to accomplish a specific thing.
The next and third toughest question is: Why do you want what you want?
Why do you want to do that one particular thing that you're striving for?
At this point, I urge you to really think about this.
Sometimes you go after finding training and education to become something only to realize that it did make you happy. I can't tell you how many clients and friends who went through their first undergraduate degree to become a pharmacist or lawyer and then only realize after a few years in the profession that this was not what they imagined. One day they finally came clean with themselves.
The truth they later discovered is that being a pharmacist or lawyer was never their dream. It was their mother's or some other well-meaning person's dream for them. Some people bear down and feel that they have to prove to their father that they could accomplish something meaningful.
Before you commit and invest the time into something, it's really critical to ask "why do I want this" and if your motive is pure because it's something you feel would be worthy of your time, energy and resources, then I say congratulations. Make a plan and go for it.
So there you have it. Those are the three toughest questions that anybody can ask of themselves. If you can answer all three of them today, you are well off to being in the top 5% of all people in the world. It really does put you in the upper echelon of people set out to accomplish amazing things. You should be proud of this.
If you struggled with some of these questions...
Then I say, rejoice, because you are at a place where you are struggling a little bit. That's okay and you get to choose the course of your life. You need to get comfortable with choosing what's right for you and struggling now on these three questions. The process will save you a lot of heart ache, pain and agony later on because you will have the clarity to advance forward with that calmness and confidence. Clarity of who you are, what you want and why you want it is what will save you a lot of time, money, aggravation and regret.
Congratulations if you're either certain of the answer to the three toughest questions or you're still figuring it out.
I have good news for you…
We have something that we're going to be launching here in the next little while. It's actually a movement starter.
I welcome your feedback in the comments below. I look forward to having a discussion with you. If you feel your questions or comments might be of a very personal nature. Feel free to send me an email at Shane[at]samuraiinnovation.com.
Domo Arigato
