I am pretty much convinced at least from my mental map or a mind set, as you like, that we can master our mind and our life with use of questions, statements and commands.
When it comes to questions, somebody said once that the key to wisdom is knowing all the right questions. So, what questions do you ask yourself every day because they determine the quality of the life you lead.
Why is that? Because these questions you will be asking yourself will trigger its own set of answers. Consequently, the answers will lead to certain emotions and emotions will then lead to certain actions (or inertia) that will be get manifested as results of lack thereof. You may deduce from this analogy that should you keep continue asking yourself limiting questions, guess what? You will get limited results. If you ask yourself mind-opening, forwarding questions, you’ll gain a lot more out of them.
Now, let’s go to the main theme of this post reflected in the title -and beyond. I know very very few people who understand the importance of writing down their goals. I personally was someone who was very lazy and always procrastinating to start writing down things on the piece of paper not on my PC.
If you are like me then you probably write a so called ‘To Do List’ for the next day. However, guess what? It is not enough because we need also a ‘To Be List‘ in order to clear on who we need to be to complete the items on the ‘To Do List’.
The underlying process involves asking the right questions, and making the right statements and commands such that you wear the right hat, access and mobilise your resources, engage others and take the required steps to achieving the outcome.
We start by bring awareness to our state of mind and our behaviour. Awareness is always the key. Then we ask a question, “Is this what I want to be thinking right now? Is this what I want to be doing right now?” If not then we ask, “What thought would serve me right now, or what would I rather be doing right now? It’s very important to bear in mind that we don’t get into an argument with ourselves. We just bring awareness to our thought processes and our behaviour and then pose an appropriate question to the unconscious mind.
Once we know what we want to do then we might use a command and say, “Go for a work-out, or to study, or whatever . As you get ready to go to study or clean your room , you might make statements to self and say, “I am going to walk for thirty minutes and get back in time for dinner”. Then you might make a commandand say, “Okay let’s go. Common let’s move”.
So by cunningly using questions, statement and commands we get ourselves from the back seat into the drivers seat of our life.
In order words, what we experience and achieve in life is directly related to all those small talks you are having with yourself. Hence, it’s about the questions that you ask yourself, the statements that you make, and the commands that you give yourself. So, how do you want to talk to yourself?
Now, coming back to our ”to be list” the key list, having “To do list” is very much OK, however, in my opinion “To be list” is of the utmost importance, at least for me, because it tells us who do I need to be to bring those goals to fruition. So in the same way you need to know what your goal looks like, sounds like and feels like
The WHO YOU ARE as your the most important question.
Consider this for a moment. You get born. That is a given. You get conditioned by your parent, the society; you get an education and then somewhere around late teens, parents and teachers start asking you ”what you want to do with your life”. The presupposition is that you should choose something that fits the identity given you by society, right?
So, if you were brought up in a working class family then you would look for a working class type job. If you were brought up in an upper class family then you would move into a career which keeps you in the upper class. For example, I have met a number of people in their late forties who lamented about the job they found themselves in – just because a parent made their career choices for them.
The lesson is to get clear on your identity as early as possible in life such that you get on the right track. For if you don’t play an active part in defining who you are, then you may end up mixing with the wrong people, in the wrong places at the wrong time. So who do you need to hang around with such that you form the type of identity that will support you in achieving what is important to you, such that at the end of each day, and at the end of your life you can turn around, look back and say it was a life well worth lived?
Once you clarify who you want to be, who you need to be, then think about what you want to do. So how to build a new identity? I see two ways to approach this question.
First, let’s think if you could have whatever you wanted in life then what would this be? For example, if you want to own a X million EUR real estates, wear expensive clothes, drive a fancy car, then who do you need to be to acquire those items? In this case you start with the WHAT and then move to the WHO and then the steps and stages to attain the goals.
Or, you may ask in this way, WHO do I admire, (who do I envy) , who could I be like, who could I emulate, who do I identify with… Here we are not looking at WHAT THEY HAVE (as in the first approach) but WHO THEY ARE.
To sum up – In order to start your personal process of identification – Your ID – you first need to identify a role model and simply step into the shoes of your role model. Do you already have one? If not, don’t waste your time and attention and go for it! Now!
