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10 Practical Answers To 10 Powerful Questions
The other day I received an email from a reader with 10 powerful questions she wanted me to answer. No introduction. No small talk.
Just a list of questions and “Thanks for your time” at the bottom.
Naturally, my first response was, “What?!”
But as I read the questions more carefully, I thought, “I can turn this into an article.” I was truly impressed by the quality of the questions of my reader, Mary.
So I wrote back to thank her for the inspiration. Here are my answers:
Journaling Prompts: 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Every Day
I’m not really a fan of journaling prompts because it’s turned into a gimmick. Every journaling app or article about the topic uses them. And people come up with the weirdest prompts.
It almost seems like they think you need to trick people into writing more. But a person who believes in the power of writing doesn’t need to be seduced to write more.
However, writing doesn’t always happen by itself. Sometimes we need to give ourselves a little push to get started. And that’s how I use journaling prompts.
I stick to prompts that trigger self-reflection—and I stick to a small list of questions that I keep repeating to myself. That’s the secret of journaling. It’s useless to journal once or twice a year. The purpose of journaling is to track your progress over a period.
Four Books That Will Turn You Into A Practical Thinker
Life is complicated. And I find it fascinating that people tend to make it even more complicated by not thinking practically.
One of the things that we never think about is the way we think. We waste a lot of time trying to solve problems that are not even problems.
Have you ever considered that?
For instance, one of the questions that I get asked often is: “I don’t know how to distribute my time. There are a lot of things I want to do in life. What’s the best way to do everything?”
I think: Why do you even want to do everything? By wanting that, you’re fabricating a problem.
From a practical point of view, you can only do a few things with your time, and that also means you can only do a few things in a lifetime.
The mind and you: The biggest illusion of your life
In January 2015, I don’t think I got a single good night of sleep.
My grandmother had been in the hospital while I was away on a New Year’s vacation with my girlfriend at the time. My family back home hadn’t told me how serious the situation was. After my grandmother passed away, my mind kept going back to the same question:
What if I hadn’t gone on that vacation?
The relationship wasn’t in a good place either. So that created a new set of questions. What if I had ended it earlier? What if I stayed? What if I ended up alone?
My job also felt wrong. I was dealing with a teammate who was backstabbing me, and I kept thinking: What if I had seen it earlier? What if I quit? What would a hole in my résumé do to my career?