7 Questions That Can Help You Figure Out What You Actually Want From Life
· Vice
Most of us will spend hours researching the new air fryer we want or comparing flights for a four-day vacation. Meanwhile, huge chunks of our actual lives are decided because we’ve been doing the same thing for years and haven’t really questioned it.
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A recent piece in Psychology Today by therapist Robert Taibbi, L.C.S.W., looks at what happens when you stop running on autopilot and actually ask what you want your life to look like. Stanford professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans explore a similar idea through Designing Your Life. These seven questions are a good place to start.
1. What Does a Good Day Look Like?
Forget the dream house and the five-year plan for a minute. Think about a regular day and what you’d do with your time if it was completely up to you.
What activities would you do? Who would you want around? If that day looks nothing like the life you’re currently living, you might want to ask yourself why.
2. What Are You Willing to Give Up?
We can all name the million things we want and wish for in life. The harder part is admitting that something else usually has to give.
There are only so many hours in a day. More time for one thing means less time somewhere else, and that trade can tell you how badly you actually want what you say you want.
3. Who Do You Want to Become?
Jobs change. So do relationships, priorities, and the version of yourself you thought you’d be by now.
Bill Burnett of the Stanford Life Design Lab put it this way: “You really are not a static thing; you’re a becoming.” That’s beautiful if you really stop and think about it. You can change at any time.
4. How Do You Want to Treat People?
This probably won’t be the first thing that comes to mind when you picture the life you want, but it definitely holds a place in the conversation.
How you treat the people around you ends up taking up a huge amount of your life. That includes the people you love and the stranger behind the airline counter when your flight gets canceled.
5. What Do You Actually Want to Do With Your Time?
Lots of us chose a direction when we were pretty young and then kept moving because that was the plan. Some of us even had parents or coaches pushing in that direction, making it harder to veer off course.
But the answer you had at 22 might make very little sense at 38 or 45. Asking the question again gives you a chance to notice what you still care about and what you’re only doing because you’ve already invested years in it.
6. What Do You Believe It’s All For?
At some point, you’re going to run into the giant, ominous question of “what am I here for?”
People have been arguing about that forever, so it’s not really an absolute thing. But you likely already have some idea of what gives your life meaning, even if you’ve never realized it. Take a mental inventory of your deepest values and ask if you’re practicing that in your life.
7. What Do You Want Said When You’re Gone?
The funeral question sounds morbid because, well, it is.
Still, imagining what you’d want people to remember about you can make certain priorities look very different. The first things that come to mind are probably the ones to pay attention to while you’re actually still here to do something about them.
Your answers to these questions will probably change. That’s normal. Asking them once in a while is still better than waking up years from now and realizing you never really chose where you were going.
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