⚡️ 10 Short Questions To Help You Live Immediately

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

That was the stark warning Seneca offered two thousand years ago that continues to ring true.

When we’re faced with difficulty the easiest thing to do is to postpone dealing with it. Sadly, like weeds in a garden, an ignored problem will typically grow if left unattended.

The answer, of course, is to get active in your own rescue. To understand what needs to be done, break it down into manageable steps, and get started.

Here are ten Stoic-inspired questions that will help you take the first step today.

1. If you don’t feel good, ask yourself: when was the last time I did something good?

While a healthy mental perspective is a vital component of a good life, you can’t think yourself into goodness.

For the Stoic, it’s not enough to merely know goodness, to have a good life you have to be good.

If you need convincing, consider how you feel after doing something good. It’s a self-rewarding act.

To pull an excerpt from Ray Bradbury’s great poem, Doing is Being:

So doing brings it out,
Kills doubt by simply jumping, rushing, running
Forth to be
The new-discovered me.
To not do is to die,
Or lie about and lie about the things
You just might do some day.
So, to feel, be. To be, do.

Action: Do something good today, however small. Look outside yourself, and help someone who needs it. Here are some ideas for anonymous acts of kindness.

2. If every decision is a struggle, ask yourself: do I know my principles?

Without principles to guide you, without a philosophy of life, each day is an improvisation.

Time must be dedicated to weighing up each decision and assessing every desire — Should I do this? Do I need that?

With no stable foundation, you are like an empty paper bag being blown here and there by the winds of everyday life.

Or, as Marcus Aurelius put it, like a puppet being jerked around at random:

It’s time to appreciate that you have within yourself something that’s stronger and more divine than the things that generate the passions in you and in general tug you around like a puppet. What’s in my mind right now? Might it be fear? Mistrust? Desire? Something else like that?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.19

Action: Take time to define your principles. A clearer view of your own philosophy gives you something to refer to when making decisions or assenting to desires. You’re able to say whether your decisions align with the sort of person you are. Here is a short exercise you can use, borrowed from Marcus Aurelius.

3. If you’re worried about the future, ask yourself: can I specifically define what I’m worried about?

Worries often only persist and float around in your mind because they are too vague to pin down.

Because they aren’t specific, the problems never get solved — you’re not giving yourself anything to solve.

If you can plan around whatever is specifically worrying you about the future, it can help you move on from such worries.

Feeling prepared provides a level of security in the present that you can’t get from the imaginary future.

Action: Turn your vague worry into a specific imagined outcome and make a plan to prevent it from happening. Write it out in clear, simple terms to help your mind assimilate it.

4. If the judgment of others is holding you back, ask yourself: what am I afraid of?

You may get discouraged from really following your interests and callings because you’re worried about what others will say.

It isn’t the consequences of trying something new that holds you back but the judgments from an invisible jury you’ve created in your mind.

To minimize reliance on outcomes (and therefore be less disrupted by rejection or need for praise), seek only to fulfill your own standards.

Doing your best work then becomes your reliable source of self-respect and you become less dependent on the unreliable source of other people’s opinions.

What’s more, people are more concerned about their own lives. It follows that you’d be a lot less concerned about what others think of you if you could see how seldom they do.

Do not waste the time you have left thinking about others unless it serves some good and useful purpose, for it takes you away from other work.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.4

Action: Knowing that the jury is invisible, knowing that you’re following your own standards, knowing that most people are only thinking about themselves, go do whatever it is that lights up your soul!

5. If you want to feel part of a community, ask yourself: when was the last time I contributed to a community?

There is a certain intellectual or emotional loneliness that can ensue when you aren’t interacting with people who share your interests or who are on the same “wavelength” as you.

Being part of a positive community of like-minded others provides a real sense of purpose and joy but it’s not always easy to break into one.

The simple answer is to begin by contributing to the community. Help its members. Serve first. When a community receives proof of your ability to contribute, it will reciprocate.

And, more importantly, in proving to yourself that you are of use to others, that you can contribute, you elevate your own self-worth.

Have I done something that contributes to the common good? Then I too have benefited.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.4

Action: Whether your chosen community is online or offline, start helping its members. Seek no reward or recognition, simply have the confidence that your deeds will come back to you in a good way. As Seneca wrote, the reward for a good deed is to have done it.

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6. If a problem seems insurmountable, ask yourself: can I treat this as a challenge?

You will inevitably face difficult circumstances every day. That’s life, that’s Fate.

The Stoics taught that only your judgments about these circumstances can trouble you, not the circumstances themselves.

If you can accept what happens to you in this spirit then you can view every circumstance as an opportunity to improve your virtue.

By viewing a setback as a challenge you can minimize overly emotional responses in favor of more rational ones.

As fire tests gold, so adversity tests brave men.

—Seneca, On Providence 5.10

Action: Think about how you can treat a problem you are facing as a challenge. Write some ideas on how it can be used to improve your character by invoking the Stoic virtues of Wisdom, Justice, Moderation, and Courage. Now, whether you pass the challenge or not, do your best.

7. If you’re procrastinating on a task, ask yourself: do I know enough to do it well?

When you put off starting a task, it’s likely that you’re feeling intimidated by its difficulty.

The thought of not being competent enough to complete the task is a strong enough deterrent to refrain from ever starting it.

Building the confidence to get started can be as simple as preparing better.

First, be clear about what needs to be done: a problem well-stated is half-solved. Then research how it has been done before. There are virtually infinite old solutions to new problems.

As the old saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. Good practice is always based on sound theory.

Our lack of confidence is not the result of difficulty; the difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.

—Seneca, Letters 104.26

Action: Define the task you’re procrastinating on: what needs to be done? Conduct research into how it has been tackled in the past. Start with the smallest possible step.

8. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, ask yourself: how would this look from far away?

We believe these affairs of ours are great because we are small.

—Seneca, Natural Questions III

By repeatedly telling yourself negative stories you add a second layer of suffering to whatever sorrow you happen to encounter.

Due to your close proximity to them, instead of detaching from the stories, you end up detached from reality. You get overwhelmed because you overestimate.

You, me, all of us, we forget we are a tiny speck on the timeline of existence.

If you are to see these stories for what they are you must zoom out from them.

One way is to apply the same objectivity, or even brute skepticism, to them as you would if being told a similar story by a friend. Another is to imagine yourself high above the earth — from this perspective, your everyday troubles take on a freeing insignificance.

Action: Zoom out from your troubles, and see the bigger picture. Try the view from above exercise here.

9. If you’re feeling lonely, ask yourself: am I sharing anything meaningful with at least one other person?

In his book, Lost Connections, Johann Hari defines loneliness as follows:

Loneliness isn’t the physical absence of other people — it’s the sense that you’re not sharing anything that matters with anyone else.

This can be an eye-opening shift in perspective for those who had previously seen loneliness as not being around lots of other people. Even if you’re constantly in the company of other humans, it’s still possible to feel lonely.

It may seem counterintuitive if you feel lonely, but the answer is to look outside yourself.

Share what matters with people who matter. Time, for example, is often seen as something to be hoarded for oneself, but how nice it is to share it with those you deem worthy.

Action: Share something that matters with someone. Communicate what feels important to you with a trusted friend or family member. You will instantly feel a reconnection, and they will too.

10. If you are afraid to act, ask yourself: what if I did nothing?

We tend to regret the things we don’t do more than the things we do.

If you are to fear anything about a certain action, let it be the consequence of not taking it.

Sure, it may not turn out the way you want but at least you can learn from it.

If you never try, you’ll never know.

Action: Prioritise that one thing you most need to take action on. Break it down into its constituent parts. Define the smallest task you can complete to get started and go do it right now.