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"Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers."
Anthony Robbins
"The one who asks questions doesn't lose his way"
African Proverb
Asking yourself questions is a great way to keep yourself on track in day to day life. Cutting out and letting go of irrelevant stuff can help you to simplify and relaxify your life. It can help you to find more time for the things that are fun and really important to you.
So combining these two things can be very helpful. Here are three quick questions that can help you to cut irrelevant stuff out of your life.
As you use the questions more and more they tend to start to pop up almost automatically at useful points in your everyday life.
1. Who cares?
A very simple but a very powerful question. Whenever you feel like delving into some nitpicking or some pettiness ask yourself this question. Or whenever you feel an overwhelming need to be right in some discussion.
Yes, nitpicking or having to be right can give you sort of high. You feel good. But it's a dirty high. It never lasts for long. And you just create a lot of negativity within yourself and outside of yourself in the long run.
Asking yourself "who cares?" is a way to lighten up, to not take every little thing so seriously. It's way be more open and relaxed with yourself and the people around you. It's simply a way to be cool about stuff.
2. What is the most important thing I can do right now?
If you are lost in what to do next in your day, week or life, ask yourself this question. The answer might not always be what you want to hear because the most important thing is often one of the harder things you want to do too. But it can help you to check your priorities and stop you from getting lost in busy work – or Facebook or checking some inboxes/blog statistics etc. over and over during the day – and instead start tackling the big stuff.
3. Will this matter in 5 years?
This one can really puts things into perspective. It can make just about any difficulty that you are having right now seem a bit trivial and not as important and heavy as you had imagined the last few days, weeks and months. You may discover that you had expanded a problem and made it a lot more terrifying than it actually is. And that you can actually solve it more easily than you thought you while you were in a somewhat panicked state of mind.
It's a bit similar to the first question, so try them both when faced with a appropriate situation and find out what works best for you.
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"Aim for the highest."
"You cannot push anyone up the ladder unless he is willing to climb."
In the late 1800s there lived a very rich man. In fact, he was so rich that he is now considered the second richest man in history. And, at least as I remember it, he became an inspiration for Scrooge McDuck.
His name was Andrew Carnegie. You may have heard this name before if you have read the classic personal development book "Think and Grow Rich". It was Carnegie that gave the author Napoleon Hill the assignment to interview hundreds of wealthy people about success. And those interviews became the foundation for the book.
Here are four of Carnegie's own top tips for massive success.
1. Pay attention to the more important things.
"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do."
This is one of my favourite quotes at the moment. And I have to agree, I pay less and less attention to what people say. Because in the end, what someone does is the most important thing. Talking is easy, but walking your talk is harder. And walking it consistently even though you fall, slip back into old habits and make mistakes is a huge part of success.
Now, talking and discussing what you want to do can be very helpful. But at some point you also follow that up and take action.
And this not just a good way to see people in a clear way. It's also a good way to look at yourself more clearly. Because you can tell yourself and others all kinds of things all day. But what you are actually getting done shows a lot about who you are right now and how you future will look.
2. Make it fun, make it light.
"There is little success where there is little laughter."
If your life and striving for success becomes just a big struggle then it will be very hard to keep it up.
If you want something bad then it it's very easy to overread or overthink that thing. It seems more complicated in your mind and it also becomes "heavier". What may have been pretty straightforward in real life becomes this huge struggle, where you are Rocky Balboa taking slow painstaking steps uphill against horrific odds. Yep, it's a real inspiring thing as you struggle as the heroic underdog.
It's also a great way to make things so much harder for yourself. It's you putting up imaginary obstacles in your own mind that aren't even there in reality. The Rocky way of thinking about these things is very seductive. But life becomes so much lighter and more fun when you just let that stuff go.
Sure, things may be vary in difficulty. But I believe we often make things more difficult and heavier than they really are.
So simplify it, don't overread or overthink it. This makes it a lot easier to relax and have fun while still working towards what you want.
Also, create a habit of simply making it fun. Keep a positive and fun attitude with the friends you are working with. Don't take things too serious. Learn to laugh about them a bit more. This does not only make it easier to consistently keep up the good work. It also makes it easier to handle what would previously be "huge setbacks/problems".
3. Be persistent. Don't spread yourself too thin.
"The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it."
How do you never get much done? Well, one good way is to try everything at once and spread yourself too thin. You get super enthusiastic for month and then you get deflated. You may even get an emotional backlash and start to feel negatively towards what you were so pumped up about since you aren't seeing the results you'd like as you quickly as you'd like to.
But on the other hand you have to get started and take action. Things can seem a certain way in your head when you think about doing them. But you have to actually do them for a while to gain understanding of how they really are. So to find one line that you want to stick with in some area of your life you may have to try a few of them and experiment to find what you love most to do.
I don't have many more tips really on how to find your line. I think you just have to think about some options and then try them to find out for yourself what you like and where there is opportunity.
I have for example been writing on this website for almost three years now. And I still find it fun and fascinating to write about these things. It's fun to be able to share my thoughts and what I have done and perhaps not only gain a clearer understanding for myself but also help out someone out there. I enjoy tinkering with the design and improving that. I enjoy learning more about how to spread the articles on this website to an even wider audience (and taking action on what I learn).
I think those are some good reasons to stick with what you are doing. And so I continue doing this.
4. Motivate yourself. It's your choice.
"People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents."
I wrote about this just a couple of weeks ago. Like Carnegie, I believe you have to rely on yourself to be able to keep taking action patiently and persistently. Sure, help and motivation from others is always good. But they can not always be there to support you.
The only person who is always with you is you. So you have to choose to place the most importance for motivation on yourself and then add help and inspiration from blogs, books, friends and family when you can or feel the need.
Like anything, this takes time and you slip and fail along the way. But over time your can become better and better at motivating yourself (or skipping the need for motivation to get started and instead just springing yourself into action).
Without developing this habit then action and results will go up and down and be very inconsistent. And without consistency over a longer time period it does not matter so much what other talents or gifts you may have inside of you.
Check out the recent article How to Motivate Yourself: 4 Timeless Thoughts for more tips on how to motivate yourself.
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In many situations in life – especially within a company or within a family – co-operation is a much more powerful principle than competition.
We all have a competitive instinct or drive, though, and many games make the most of this to ramp up the level of fun, excitement and involvement. (Sports, multi-player computer games, and board games all have "winners" and "losers".)
As well as enjoying being competitive in game and play situations, we can use our natural competitive bent to give ourselves an edge when we're trying to make gains in our personal life.
I'm going to give just three examples, but I'm sure you can come up with more areas of your life to apply this to (let's hear them in the comments!)
Perhaps you and your partner, or you and your friend, have tried out various healthy eating or weight-loss plans in the past. More likely than not, these haven't lasted too long. One of you feels low on will-power, says "Forget it, I'm having a slice of cake!" – and the other person caves in too.
It could go very differently if you introduced an element of healthy competitiveness. I'd caution against competing on something like actual weight lost, as this is influenced by factors such as metabolism, gender and how overweight you were to begin with. Similarly, don't compete on how far you can both run, or how heavy the weights you can lift are.
Instead, set yourself some competitive goals to reach like:
You get the idea. Compete on things which are under your direct control. You'll be amazed how this can really boost your will-power: knowing that the other person is heading off for their gym session can get you up off the sofa and raring to go – you don't want to lose!
You might want to do this with a spouse, friend or colleague. The idea is to see who can spend the least or save the most over a period of time. As with eating healthily or losing weight, compete on things which involve meeting targets that you've agreed with one another (you don't necessarily need to have exactly the same targets).
For example:
As with healthy eating, this can turn something that might otherwise seem like hard work into something fun. Trent writes about this in Making Frugality a Game on The Simple Dollar (a personal finance blog), saying:
If you can turn frugality into a mutual challenge, you can turn something that you might otherwise view as drudgery into something quite fun.
There's an often-quoted adage that "everyone has at least one book in them" – and you may well feel that's true for yourself. A lot of people have a long-cherished ambition to write a novel, but they never manage to get around to it – or they get started and quickly run out of steam.
Back in 2007, I took part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), where participants take on the challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel in a month. You "win" simply by reaching the word count: it's an easy measure, and no-one's going to complain about the quality of your writing, or say that what you've written isn't very novel-shaped.
The desire to get your name on the winners' list may be enough for you, but if you want to take the competition to a new level, get your friends involved. I wrote alongside @NickMB and @pddluke, and there was a lot of friendly but determined (certainly on my part!) competition.
(I "won", by the way, pipping them both to the 50,000 word post 
)
Those are just three big goals which many people have: all of which could be achieved faster (and even more enjoyably!) with a bit of good-natured competition. What goals do you have that you're not progressing towards as fast as you'd like? Who might you challenge to a competition?
Learn How To Get That Competitve Edge Here!
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