6 Questions to Ask Yourself to Make the Most of Each Day
Where I live, we are back in lockdown with an end-date that seems to disappear a little further over the horizon with every government press conference.
While sometimes my response to this is a swearword I won’t repeat here, lately the phrase “make the most of it” has also been coming to mind.
Each day, circumstances impact us. Within that, we have the opportunity to make our lives a little better or a little worse.
Asking yourself questions is a great way of focusing your attention and setting your priorities. When you ask yourself something, your brain can’t help but try to answer it. Give it something worthwhile to answer.
Asking yourself meaningful questions on a regular basis can change your focus and your life.
Consider asking yourself these questions:
What is the most important thing I need to accomplish today? To get the most out of each day, it’s necessary to get some things done. What are the most important things you need to accomplish – work and otherwise? How you spend your time determines the quality of your life.
Asking yourself this question each morning will give you the chance to design the day around your most important goals.What am I tolerating? We can tolerate too much. We can be taught to be tough, but soldiering on when we could actually change things doesn’t make a huge amount of sense. In particular, I’ve noticed that tolerating small annoyances in my environment can really add to the mental load during lockdown. In fact, by tackling these I could easily feel much better. What are you tolerating?
A stove with a broken burner?
A dead bush in front of your house?
A cluttered workspace?
Lethargy from a lack of exercise?
Not all of these may be within your remit to change today – but if they are, why not do it?What do I foresee happening in the future? Many of the challenges we face in life aren’t surprises. We can reasonably predict they have a good chance of happening. We’d just rather not address them or even think about them.
This doesn’t mean dwelling in the negative or catastrophising. It does mean being realistic – if I don’t fix that leak, I’ll have a major water damage problem. If I don’t take breaks during the day, I’ll burn out. If I don’t address this slight issue with a team member, I’ll end up with a major rift.It’s easier to prevent a disaster than to deal with it. Look into the future and be proactive.
How do I want to develop? It’s not a failure to need to develop and change, it’s life. If you are in the first year of your career you’re not yet ready to be CEO of a massive global corporation. There’s always a gap between where we are and where we could be.
Our greatest ability is the ability to adapt. In what ways do you need to adapt so that your world becomes what you want it to be? What might be behind any knowing/doing gap and how might you address that?What am I grateful for? As they say, our brains are wired to be teflon for positive things and velcro for negative. This powerfully evidence-based question puts you in a great frame of mind by re-setting your mental filter from negative to positive. Even on a day in which terrible things happened, there is always something positive to appreciate. Gratitude is a powerful state from which to step into each day.
What am I looking forward to? If you have something to look forward to, you’ll feel a rush of excitement and enthusiasm – even, or particularly, if you’re in lockdown. If you don’t have something to look forward to, you’ll realise that you need to make plans to do, see, or receive something exciting in the future. Even in lockdown, the possibilities are many.
Plan something to look forward to: perhaps a walk with a friend, movie night, cooking up a tasty dinner, a day off.
How long would it take to ask yourself these questions each day? Five minutes? Do you have five minutes available each day to change your life for the better?
What do you predict would happen if you asked yourself these questions each day?
These questions will make a difference in your life if you use them regularly. Take control of your focus by asking yourself the right questions each day. What are some other questions that you believe would be valuable?
Until next week,
Take care of yourself and others
Madeleine
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