If the Answers to Lifes Questions Are Easy Ask Harder

When Life is Short: 4 Hard Questions To Ask Myself

"For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? ' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something." — Steve Jobs

Sunrise in East Sumba, captured on my visit in 2018.

Living in the unknown

In the previous posts, I shared my notes from losing my Grandpa and how I cherished the most important gift he and my grandma ever gave to me.

The loss taught me a lot about two things. First, the finiteness of life. And it applies for everyone. The thing is we don't know our own limit of that finiteness. And the beauty of life is living every day in that unknown. Second, the certainty of death. When life time is finite, there must be the end of it. It's clear that we all share the same destination called death. We are going closer every day to that certainty, again, in the unknown.

But as Steve Jobs pointed, that unknown can instead be a very powerful tool that guides us to really make the most out of life. I spent the last weeks looking into some of the hardest questions that have been floating around in my head for some time. So I decided to share them here. These 4 questions are the guiding themes of the things I've been asking myself on what to do when life is short. I hope they can serve as a reflective note for myself, and hopefully for you too.

For each question, I am going to later publish a standalone post deep diving on that question, share my personal take and practical next steps.

#1. How will I measure my life?

Inspired by Clayton Christensen's famous HBR article and book, How Will You Measure Your Life, I deliberately chose it as the first question. His thought-provoking piece made me rethink the definition of success and really asked myself: "What will really matter at the end of life?"

He pointed to a very relatable example from his classmates at Harvard Business School. During the first years of reunion post graduation, his classmates seemed to be doing extremely well: they all had great jobs, married amazing spouses, and earned enormous money. However, by the time of the 10th reunion, many never came back.

He pointed out that despite such accomplishments, many of them were clearly unhappy. And Christensen was talking about the brightest people professionally — executives of Fortune 500 companies, partners at top consulting firms, or successful entrepreneurs. Behind the facade of success, there were people who did not find joy in what they do for a living. Some had unhappy marriages or hadn't talked with their children in years. One of his classmates who didn't end up in a good place was apparently Jeffrey Skilling — Enron CEO who got convicted for the scandal that was named "the biggest audit failure in history".

So in this first bucket, I'd like to deep dive further on the following hard questions:

1. How do I find happiness in my career?: the big idea is to build a strategy to wake up every morning and feel how lucky we are to be doing what we're doing. We'll talk about deeper questions that will guide us here such as:

• What motivates us the most?
• How should we deal with anticipated vs unanticipated opportunities?
• And so on…

2. How do I find happiness in my relationship?: loving and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be amongst the sources of deepest joy in our lives. But it constantly fights a battle with other things that demand our attention too, like work. We'll cover questions such as:

• How do we allocate resources between different aspects of our lives i.e. home, work?
• How do we play the jobs to be done that people who matter in our lives need us to do? E.g. What job does my spouse need me to do?
• How do we prepare our kids to be ready to face challenges throughout their lives?
• And so on…

3. How do I live a life with integrity?: There will be times in life where we face the moral dilemma of doing something or making a decision that will test our integrity. We'll need to answer:

• How do we avoid the trap of marginal thinking "only this once"?
• And so on…

"Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success." — Clayton Christensen

#2. How do I minimize regrets?

Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse spent years taking care of the dying during the last weeks of their lives. In her book, The Top 5 Regrets of The Dying, she documented this life-changing encounter. When asked about any regrets in life or anything they would have done differently, five common patterns emerged:

1. "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me": from this reflection, the question would revolve around "How do I honour the dream of doing things I want to do before I die and actually pursue it without caring what others think?"
2. "I wish I hadn't worked so hard": from this reflection, the question would revolve around "How do I create more space in my life and live a balanced lifestyle?"
3. "I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings": from this reflection, the question would revolve around "How do I be honest and open about my feelings and create a healthy relationship with my loved ones?"
4. "I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends:" from this reflection, the question would revolve around "How do I still make time for people that matter and not let friendship slip amidst my busyness?"
5. "I wish that I had let myself be happier": from this reflection, the question would revolve around "How do I make active effort to be content from within despite life's challenges?"

Looking at those five regrets made me think deeply. No one wants to have regrets at the end of life. But it seems that all of us, including myself, can easily make those mistakes by default if we don't take control over those aspects. When deep diving in this second bucket, I'd like to share some reflections on the framework I have been using to make decisions in the last 10 years: "Impact Maximization, Regret Minimization". Apparently, this same approach to make decisions by minimizing regrets is also used by Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman .

I'll share some of my experiences dealing with life-changing decisions where I had to turn into this question in the end, "When I look back, which one of these options will I regret more for not taking?"

#3 How do I embrace life's obstacles and struggle well?

It's certain that throughout our short span of life, we will face obstacles that will stand in the way of achieving our goal. What's interesting, however, isn't necessarily the obstacles itself. It is our attitude in facing those obstacles.

"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way" — Marcus Aurelius

I learned that success is not a matter of attaining one's goal. Once we achieve the goal, we will always strive for greater challenges. We will all evolve — so what's important is how we struggle well, embrace the pain, and use the learnings to progress.

"Pain + reflection = progress" — Ray Dalio (Principles)

In his book, Principles: Life and Work, Ray Dalio mentioned that there is no avoiding pain especially if we're going after ambitious goals. He offered an interesting point of view to see pain as a signal of progression. What's most important is we become aware and reflect well on the pains and the learnings because those challenges will certainly strengthen us.

I remember a time where I didn't make the cut for Universitas Indonesia's special invitation admission. I applied for an International Relations major (the most competitive major in any university nationwide back then, they only accepted 40 students per year). I reflected on the setback and prepared better for the general admission. I failed again.

In the second failure, I used the time to reflect again by talking to more people on career choices. I met a few people who then gave me a better idea on the world after college. This encounter turned out to change my mind about what I wanted to major in. I switched my application to Business/Economics in the second general admission and finally got accepted. That was one of the best decisions in my life to this date.

So in this bucket, we'll cover following questions:

1. How do we go to the pain rather than avoiding it?: it comes down to finding ways to be comfortable to always operate at some level of pain and embrace that it's a part of progression
2. How do I focus on the things I can control?: it's all about having a good perception about the obstacles and face it with positive mind
3. How do we turn obstacles into opportunity?: it's all about having the courage to start and focus on directed actions
4. How do I learn from setbacks and evolve?: it's important to have a discipline of retrospectively reflecting on the challenges and prepare ourselves to do better next time

#4 How do I be 1% better every day?

"We've been conditioned by society to believe in the effectiveness of great display of massive effort." — Darren Hardy from the book The Compound Effect

When looking into achieving success, many people think that it's all about making those big changes. Truth of the matter is, there is an invisible force that will have a significant effect in the long run called the Compound Effect. It's the idea of reaping huge rewards from small, seemingly insignificant everyday actions. Those small actions and decisions that we make everyday, if done consistently, can get us closer to achieving our goals.

When looking into this fourth bucket, at the end of the day what matters most is the investment that we put to be 1% better every day. It's about making a conscious decision to work on ourselves. It starts with understanding what are our life purpose and core values (related to Point #1: How Will I Measure My Life). We then have to make sure that the daily actions and choices we make are aligned and calibrated with those purposes and values.

So in the deep dive, I'll cover the following questions guided from The Compound Effect book :

1. How do we turn our life goal into a daily habit?: the idea is to turn the big, hairy, audacious goals we have into a habit that we can commit
2. How do we stick to our routine so that we can create momentum?: how do we keep showing up until our habits turn effortless, predictable routines
3. How do we use momentum to push through our limits?: at times we'll hit the plateau and think of stopping or giving up, but this is exactly when our momentum is tested to find tweaks and keep going.

I will share some initiatives and habits that I have done, along with their successes and failures. Most importantly, I'll share my learnings on what worked, what didn't work, and how to do it better next time. I will also touch different aspects of life to improve based on the different roles we play in life according to Total Leadership concept: self, work, family, and community.

In the end, we are all work in progress. When life is short, there is no other choice but to continuously improve ourselves and be that 1% better version every day.

Having an answer

All in all, there is never going to be a direct, simple answer to any of these questions. These hard questions have helped me recalibrate my life direction and see what matters most. As I share more nuances in the upcoming stories, I hope these 4 guiding themes can help us to stop and think for a second. Let us reflect on life's finiteness and celebrate it with our own answers on how we: measure our life with clear and noble purpose; minimize the regrets before we die; embrace life's obtascles and struggle well; and continuously push ourselves to grow 1% better every day.

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. — Ferris, from Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Read my other related articles here:

vancecaliat00.blogspot.com

Source: https://medium.com/life-is-short/when-life-is-short-4-hard-questions-to-ask-myself-9bc9704c19ee

Share this post