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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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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.
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