21 powerful questions: gain clarity on who you are, what you should do

I changed the thread title slightly from the title of the questions that I found in an article a couple days ago. I just thought it was a great exercise for more reasons than figuring out what career a person should follow. I think the best way to approach it as an exercise is to take one question each day and write a short response to it. Be sincere and ruthless with yourself.



21 powerful questions to help you gain clarity on your dream career

1. You’re on your deathbed looking back on your life. What did you like best about it?

2. What is the one problem you were born to understand?

3. If you had only three wishes, what powers, possessions or qualities would you wish for?

4. If you were granted three life mentors, who would they be and why?

5. If you had one hour of prime time TV to address the world, what would you do?

6. If you had an opportunity to teach every child one life lesson, what would it be?

7. If you knew with certainty that you would not fail at doing this, what would it be?

8. What is the single most important thing missing from your life right now?

9. If you could predict the next big choice your life would present you, what would it be?

10. What would be your single greatest regret if you died tomorrow?

11. What is the “unlived life” of each of your parents and what effect has it had on your life?

12. What are your top three talents?

13. When were you the happiest and what were you up to?

14. What is your most memorable break with tradition or taboo, and what were you after?

15. What do you want to be remembered for after you die?

16. What have you rejected that seems determined to claim you?

17. If you could choose one friend to trade careers with who would it be?

18. If you had to go back to college tomorrow what classes would you take?

19. What is the most consistent message; impulse or prompting you’ve been getting about following a departure from the status quo in your work life?

20. What do you love most about your current job?

21. When was the last time you were in a state of flow, in the zone and totally lost track of time? What were you doing?

There are a lot of questions here so don’t get overwhelmed. Just pick one of the questions to answer each day.

Try to write your answer quickly and automatically without much thought.

If the question is difficult to answer that’s okay too. Give yourself time to see what emerges as you start contemplating these deeper possibilities.

These are great questions to ask oneself. Thank you for sharing Laura. I have been looking into changing careers for over a year now and I am still sort of unsure. I hope that in answering these questions a day at a time will help me in whatever way. I've never been one for being absolutely certain as to what I want to do career wise and now I'm 35, I still don't! Well I sort of do, I want to help people in some way.

This is great material for my daily journal entry. I can seed the question at night before I go to sleep and journal on it first thing in the morning. Thanks Laura!

Where do you find all of these quizzes and exercises?

These are REALLY good questions IMO, and come at the right time for me. Thanks a lot for sharing.

Thanks, what good questions! I'm gonna print this and put it up in my room at work, and consider carefully each question.

luc said:

These are REALLY good questions IMO, and come at the right time for me.

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Same here, that's a really good find, and timely, too. Thanks for sharing!

Aiming said:

luc said:

These are REALLY good questions IMO, and come at the right time for me.

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Same here, that's a really good find, and timely, too. Thanks for sharing!

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Yup, I conquer, these are really good questions and veeeeery timely questions. Thank you for posting!!

Seamas said:

This is great material for my daily journal entry. I can seed the question at night before I go to sleep and journal on it first thing in the morning. Thanks Laura!

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That's a great idea, Seamas!

Thank you for posting these questions, Laura. Very timely for me as well; I can sometimes find my mind running in circles as I attempt to decide on what's the most important area of my life to tackle at the moment - these should really help to gain some clarity.

Thank you for sharing these questions. I will take the time to think over them.

Indeed a really great list of questions - going to ponder on them, and thanks a million for sharing :)

food for thought indeed, thanks for sharing :)

Wow, powerful questions, some just reading them made me cry. I think they are very, very important to answer. They remember some questions that sometimes the stoics ask, also. (I am reading "The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday).

Thank you Laura!

Looking at these questions carefully, I see that almost every one of them deserves more than a paragraph of response. Yes, you could do a quick overview paragraph, but then, an essay could be developed from each one. I see some serious journaling in front of me here. Even at my age, these thoughts deserve consideration.

Very interesting questions, but it's not easy to answer quickly and automatically. I think it will take a time to come up to internalise the sense of some of these questions. Thank you very much !

Thanks for posting this Laura, timely indeed. I started with the first question, wrote a few lines automatically, but as was mentioned above, it is worthy of pondering in more detail. Might also come in handy for my daughter who is in her final year at school and has no idea as to a career. Food for thought indeed!