30 Questions
To Help You Find Your Best Self
By
Bill Cottringer
"You were not born a winner, and you were not born a loser. You are what you make yourself be."
~ Lou Holtz.
The self-growth movement is all about people finding ways to help themselves and each other become their best selves. People are driven to accomplish this goal, all with different motivational levels, methods, paths and results. If you are one of the many who are serious with this self-growth goal to become your best self, here are 30 excellent questions to try and answer correctly. The right answers are guaranteed to give you a big boost in learning, growing and improving into your best self. And you will know the right answer when you choose it.
1. What basic paradigm, or the fundamental way you view the important things in life, if changed 180-degrees, would result in the biggest gains to close the gap between where you are now and where you would like to be in living as your best self?
2. What personal liability could you ignore out of existence and which asset could you exploit into exponential stardom?
3. Do you measure your success against external clues in competition with others or do you measure your success with an internal thermometer that registers a sure sense of internal progress in competition with yourself?
4. Where do you spend most of your time in your mind—in the past, the present or the future?
5. What is the relationship between your levels of motivation, preparation and confidence and the outcome of your performance at “game-time?”
6. Do you see success as something to achieve or rather something you do to achieve it?
7. Have you imagined the gap between where you know you are now and where you really want to be to be full of obstacles or do you know what they are and just don’t do anything about them, hoping they will go away or that they really aren’t there?
8. When you know what the right thing to do is and the right way to do it, why don’t you?
9. How much control do you think you have over your destiny in becoming your best self, how sure are you in believing what you do about this reality, and is there anything about this belief that may be holding you back from being your best self?
10. Is most of your sense of self stable. predictable and permanent-like or seemingly in flux and changing at the speed of light?
11. Do you just take a break and enjoy things when they are going well or do you use that time to plan out your reaction to the bad times that may inevitably be headed your way?
12. Do you prefer to be either extroverted or introverted or somewhere in between?
13. Are you extravagant or conservative with personal finances?
14. Are you crystal clear on what you want and what you expect the result to be, or is there a lot of fog or uncertainty between you and what you see out there?
15. Are you more for short term pain and long term gain or the opposite, or somewhere in between?
16. Do you openly challenge the status quo with animated expressions on issues that concern you, or do you prefer to keep your opinions to yourself?
17. Do you feel more sympathy or empathy for others or do you not differentiate the two?
18. Are you more dependent, independent or inter-dependent on others?
19. Do you focus more on the similarities and inter-relationships of things below the surface or pay more attention to the differences that are obvious?
20. Do you view the good things that happen in life as permanent, pervasive and personal or temporary, local and impersonal?
21. Do you seek out mentors who are ahead of you in success, wisdom, happiness and personal growth or do you prefer to be able to be yourself around equal friends who accept you as you are?
22. Are you extremely sensitive to being able to distinguish between moments of opportunity vs. moments of danger and when the point of no return is coming before it passes, or not so this way?
23. Are you a teacher or are you a student or do you vacillate back and forth between the two according to the situation you are in?
24. Are you getting surer of what you know or less certain?
25. Are you more comfortable with tentativeness, ambiguity and uncertainty or decisiveness, clarity and certainty?
26. Do you think true creativity is reserved for creative geniuses or readily available in abundance for anyone who wants to use it?
27. How much are the limitations on your unfolding and exploding your potential are real or just mental?
28. Do you seem to see more potential in others than they see in themselves or are you more pessimistic in this regard?
29. Are you more concerned about preserving your own pride and own self or more apt to be thinking more about the welfare of others and the common good?
30. Do you welcome conflict or try to avoid or run from it?
If you can answer ten of these questions correctly, you are well on your way to being your best self. Congratulations! But if not, at least you have a smorgasbord of great questions to choose from to jump start your self-growth journey. What are you waiting for? The time is now.
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."~ Ralph Waldo Emerson.
William Cottringer, Ph.D. is Executive Vice President for Employee Relations for Puget Sound Security, Inc. in Bellevue, WA, along with being a Sport Psychologist, Business Success Coach, Photographer and Writer living in the mountains and rivers of North Bend, WA. He is author of several business and self-development books, including, “You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too” (Executive Excellence), “The Bow-Wow Secrets” (Wisdom Tree), “Do What Matters Most” and “P” Point Management” (Atlantic Book Publishers), “Reality Repair” (Global Vision Press), Reality Repair Rx (Authorsden), and A Fool In Love: Searching for True Love (coming). Bill can be reached for comments or questions at (425) 454-5011 or ckuretdoc@comcast.net