Here’s this week’s Quality Question:
Imagine a version of yourself from 10 years from now traveled back in time to give you some advice. What do you think “future you” would tell you?
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We all have times when we get “triggered”.
Our higher cognitive functions go offline and we react from a place of hurt. In this mode, we often say and do things that we later regret.
And we asked you, what happens in your body when you get triggered?
Learning to identify the signals in your body that indicate you have been triggered is the first step to improving your response.
The next step is to create some space between the trigger and your reaction.
What can you do to help regulate your state when you get triggered?
It could be something as simple as taking a deep breath before responding. Or going outside.
Perhaps this is where a meditation or a mantra can help you. Or journaling what you’re feeling in that moment.
Finally, ask yourself: Why are you getting triggered?
Is there a pattern to the scenarios that trigger you? Look deeper and try to find the root cause. What about those scenarios is triggering?
Does it happen when you feel like you’re being judged? When someone pokes an insecurity or past trauma? Is it related to some stress you’re feeling (about money, your relationship, something else)?
We’ve spent the last few weeks asking questions to help you explore the edges of your comfort zone in your work, your love life, and your spiritual path.
These are difficult questions.
Answering these questions forces us to admit that we have fears, and that our fears are holding us back from being and achieving all that we desire.
If you missed or shied away from any of the three questions, take a few minutes now to go back and answer it.
You can also ask a friend to help you. Close friends can often see the fears that we don’t let ourselves see.
Now that you’ve spent some time with these questions, pick one area and ask yourself:
What is one thing I can focus on for the next month to play at my edge?
Playing at the edge of our ability and comfort evokes a feeling of flow and helps us gain a sense of meaning and satisfaction in life.
The goal is not to get anywhere in particular (we will always have an edge we are unwilling to cross), but to recognize that the most satisfying way to live life is to constantly play with your edge and express the best version of yourself you can in the world.
This week we’re continuing the series on finding the edges of your comfort zone.
We already explored our fears around our work and relationships. Today let’s look at how our fears affect our spiritual life.
Whatever their religious affiliation, including ‘none at all’, most people agree they would like to be better connected to a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in the world.
This week’s question is designed to help you do that. Ask yourself:
What stops you from leading a deeper spiritual life?
Go beyond surface level excuses like, “I go to church already so I’m fine”, “I’m too busy for this woo woo stuff” and “I don’t like organized religion.”
What are your inner blocks to a more spiritual life?
Are you afraid of ‘being a fool’ and believing something that isn’t true?
Do you gain status by being viewed as practical and rational?
Are you worried that if you followed a path of meaning you would lose out on the more concrete things the material world is offering you?
Find what feels true for you. Don’t try to change anything now, just bring awareness to what is really going on.
You’ve probably heard the saying, “life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
But how are we supposed to find the edges of our comfort zones so that we can push past them?
That’s what we’re going to focus on for the next few weeks of Quality Questions, starting right now.
The first thing you should know is that the fence around your comfort zone is fear.
It’s also helpful to recognize that you probably don’t have one single comfort zone. Instead, you have varying levels of comfort in different areas of life (relationships, work, spirituality, etc).
Let’s start with work. Ask yourself:
If you were truly fearless, what would you be doing to make a living?
What if you knew that you couldn’t fail?
And you weren’t worried about what anyone else would say.
Imagine if you could wave a magic wand and instantly change your reality.
What would you do then?
Think deeply about a means of making money that would make you feel fully alive.
Maybe your career would be more creative?
Perhaps you would commit to a global cause that you care about?
Maybe you would finally start the company you’ve been dreaming of?
Write down what a career without fear looks like and use that as a guide to the direction you should lean in your future choices.
Most of us spend huge amounts of time and energy worrying about the areas where our knowledge, skills, and abilities are lacking.
We look at a job ad and our eyes jump straight to the part of the job description that we don’t know how to do.
We’re acutely aware of the various ways we don’t measure up to some ideal — in our personal, social, and professional lives.
As a result, we live in a state of perpetual imposter syndrome. Always feeling like we’re not quite measuring up, because there is some aspect of life that we haven’t yet mastered.
In doing so, we often overlook our own growth. We forget all the things we have learned and the ways we have progressed.
This week’s question is a way for you to break that cycle.
Ask yourself: What used to be hard for me, but now is easy?
Think about your work, as well as your personal life — relationships, social situations, habits, health, etc. and make a list.
What skills have you mastered, obstacles overcome, or confidence have you attained?
Give yourself credit for all that you have already learned and done. 🎉
Then carry that feeling forward — there will always be new things to learn and try for the first time, but you should feel confident, because you’ve mastered new skills before.
Last week we sent a Quality Question inspired by Ryan Holiday’s best-selling book, The Obstacle is the Way.
Ryan takes timeless principles from the ancient Stoic philosophers and makes them accessible and relevant to our modern lives.
In this YouTube video, Ryan shares 12 great questions inspired by Stoicism, including this one:
What am I missing by choosing to worry or be afraid?
We all have limited focus, time, and energy. It’s up to us to choose how we spend it.
If we choose to spend our precious time and energy feeling anxious and worrying, then we must know, it comes at a cost.
In other words, worrying and feeling anxious are not just unpleasant emotions. They are actively destructive.
We can’t control everything that happens to us in life, but we can choose how we spend our energy and where we focus our thoughts.
If there’s something that you’re worried about or that’s making you feel anxious, ask yourself: What am I choosing not to see right now?
Last week we sent a Quality Question about using fear to help us identify our most meaningful goals.
But even after learning to “lean in” when we feel fear, sometimes our fears can still sabotage our attempts to achieve our goals.
To combat this we’re going to do something Tim Ferriss calls Fear Setting.
Think about one of your goals that scares you and ask yourself: What am I worried about if I try this?
Write down any fears that come to mind, no matter how big, small, or crazy they might seem. The objective is to get them all out of your head and into writing. Don’t hold back.
Do this now.
For example, say my goal is to save $5,000 towards retirement this year, but I’m afraid that the stock market could crash any day, so I never take action and start saving.
Next, look at the first fear you just wrote and answer the following questions:
How likely is it that this will happen and what would be the impact if it did?
Continuing the example: The worst U.S. stock market crash was on “Black Monday” in 1987. The market went down 23% in a single day. That could happen again. But losing 23% is not the same as the market going to zero, which is probably not going to happen. A worst-case scenario might be that the market suddenly loses 50% of its value. And this is pretty unlikely.
What could you do to prevent this or make it less likely to happen?
I can’t control the stock market, but I could reduce the impact of a crash on me by spreading out my investments (some stocks, some bonds, etc). I could also make sure that I don’t invest money that I need immediately (keep a 3 month cash reserve) so I can absorb the shock if I need to.
How could you repair the situation if it did happen?
If the market did crash and I lost some of my savings, the best thing would probably be to do nothing, just keep saving and investing since it will eventually bounce back. Maybe a crash would even be a good opportunity to invest more.
Start by answering these questions for at least one of the fears on your list now. This activity takes a bit more time, so if you need to, schedule time later to come back and answer these questions for the rest of the fears on your list.
This is the final question in the Quality Questions series on setting and achieving meaningful goals. We saved this question for last because it’s both the most important and the most difficult one for most people to face.
Our process for setting and achieving meaningful goals is as follows:
That’s it. If you can follow those four steps over and over again, you can accomplish anything. There’s only one thing that can stop you…
Fear.
Ask yourself: What goal or habit are you most afraid of pursuing?
Perhaps it’s one of the three you already wrote. Or maybe it’s one you thought of, but were too afraid to even write down.
If you hide from your fear, you’ll end up running around in circles accomplishing goals that seem nice on the surface, but don’t actually get you closer to what you really want.
When it comes to goals, our fears are like a compass, pointing to what really matters to us. Once you figure out which goal or habit scares you the most, make that your top priority!
If your goal is to become a great public speaker, but the idea of a going live on social media terrifies you, then lean into that fear! It’s because this is something important to you that you feel fear at the potential failure.
Pick your top goal based on fear and train yourself to lean in. This is the true path to mastery and becoming the best version of yourself.
Over the past four weeks, we’ve spent time figuring out what we don’t want, which helped us get clear on what we do want.
Then we identified the kind of person we need to become to get what we want, and set some goals to help us become that kind of person.
You should now have three clear, achievable goals that you are going to accomplish in the next three months (if you haven’t set those yet, you can do it now — we’ve linked to the previous questions above).
The next step is to ask yourself: What daily habits do I need to adopt to accomplish my goals? Your habits are the key for turning your vision into reality. Without supportive habits, even the most exciting goals are just hopeful fantasies.
Here’s an example of how a big vision can translate into a daily habit:
What do I want? To be invited to speak at important conferences and be seen as a thought leader in my field.
Who I need to become? A great communicator, comfortable speaking in front of a large audience, and able to explain big ideas in a short timeslot.
Three month goal? Give a 15-minute TED Talk-style presentation in public.
What habit do I need to adopt? Go live on social media for a minute or two everyday for a month to get used to speaking in public.
Choose and commit to a daily habit for each of the goals you set.