Ep 190: Seven Strategic Questions to Reshape Your Life

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how . Hello friends , I hope you had an amazing week . Today . I want to talk about a subject that I think is really interesting .

It is about strategizing your life , and I know a lot of times , like in self-help or especially as we head into the start of a new year , a lot of us are thinking about goals and all of that . But I'm talking about something much more all in kind of like that .

But I'm talking about something much more all in kind of like how would you look at your life ? The way a CEO of a business looks at the business , right ? So that is much more comprehensive and all in , and I think it's an interesting concept .

I was reading some articles on Harvard Business Review the other day , like keeping up with that and the McKinsey Report , and I ran across this older one and it was talking about strategizing your life and it's something that they were kind of playing with as a , as an idea , and they were saying that , you know , I guess they had a workshop or session or

something with some participants and found that , in surveying these participants , only 21% of them had outlined what a great life means to them . Only 9% of the people who participated in this group that Harvard Business Review had said that they had identified their purpose . Only 12% had said that they'd set a vision for their life .

17% had actually created concrete goals and milestones . I think that's where most of us focus right Is on the goals right . And a paltry 3% had developed what Harvard Business Review would define as a comprehensive life strategy .

And I think it's really interesting to think about it this way because , you know , for those of us who are in business , we know that businesses , whether it's about launching a product or whether it's about the business in total , they don't just keep it to chance . They do their very best to say what is this about ? What are we trying to do ?

Who are we trying to serve ? Where do we want to end up ? What the best ones say , what is our purpose ? Why are we even in existence , right , what problem are we solving ? And then they chart this mission and try to go after it . Now , you know there's varying degrees of success that businesses will encounter in that .

But the truth of the matter is like if you step all the way out of it and you look at it , you think , well , of course , like you can't just start a business and then leave it all to chance . Start a business and then leave it all to chance , you know , let luck of the draw , you know , sort of guide you down your path .

That's not going to work right , it's not going to . You might achieve some success , but you're very unlikely if you don't do it in a more purposeful , structured way , you're very unlikely to end up really getting the fullest value from that business . Well , there's a corollary to our life , right ? And I just don't think we think about it that way .

As I said , you know a lot of us will think about more and more . I think people are thinking about their purpose . What am I here for ? You know , and they're trying to answer that question . And I think you know most of us , at different times , will set certain goals for our life .

But management of those things keep us really , I don't want to say stuck , but keep us where we are . We stay where we are and we spend a lot of the rest of it managing that or kind of riding it out . And some of us like , when we get to another milestone , like retirement , we might use that as a definition to reinvent .

But I think a lot of us don't . You know , it just becomes this okay , well , I'm done with all of that corporate stuff and so now I think I'm just going to kick back . I'm going to go fishing , I'm going to do traveling , I'm going to explore my hobbies , and there's nothing wrong with that .

Certainly , having fun and exploring and adventuring is a good thing . But at the end of it , when we're at the very end , looking back , do you really want to leave it to chance ? You know , and that's what I wanted to explore on the podcast today .

You know , and that's what I wanted to explore on the podcast today Do you want to just manage the life that you've built to date and then spend retirement and beyond just kind of adventuring and having fun ? Or do you want to use midlife as a chance to say , you know what ?

I don't know if I've ever really looked at a life strategy all in in its most comprehensive way and really thought about well , what could it be if it could be anything and I think you know at advertising agencies I spend a lot of time working with those they have a function called a chief creative officer and that person is responsible for the creative point of

view of that entire agency . So agencies are known for being good at sort of different types of things and typically it's the person sitting in that chief creative officer seat that is the one that establishes that point of view . I love that analogy on our own life . What if you were the chief creative officer of your life ?

What if you could just decide this week ?

Let's just pretend that you spent an hour a day this week thinking about your life and your life strategy from today , going forward unencumbered by anything that's ever come before , and just thinking about what you want and assuming , just the way a CEO does in their corporate business , that anything is possible , that with enough time , resources , strategy and execution

you can actually make it happen . I think a lot of us don't believe that . I think a lot of us think it's like the luck of the draw and like , oh you know , I might try this , but it didn't work and so I'm not going to try that again because it didn't work the last time I tried . Or you know , we take a hit or miss .

Sometimes I'm committed , sometimes I'm not approach to our goals , and then we wonder why aren't we happier , or why aren't we more fulfilled , or why doesn't our life look more like we wish it would ? And I guess what I'm trying to say to you today on the podcast is you can actually create or recreate your life at any point you decide to .

You can be , starting today , the chief creative officer of your life , and you can use the next week and I like to say week , because what I'm about to share are seven questions that you can ask and answer to start creating your life strategy . So I think it's an interesting concept , and it's one that I ran across on Harvard Business Review .

I love their thought leadership , and so I thought we'd play with their seven steps that they've outlined , and I'm going to walk you through those and I'm going to encourage you to get in there and play with it a little bit .

I'm thinking about creating a live workshop on this , so I'll let you know next week if I put one together because I just I really love this and I think it's fantastic and so I wanted to share it with you on the podcast this week and I would encourage you as I walk you through these seven questions and sort of talk you through , you know what you need to

be thinking about when you're playing with those questions .

I think you should take one question a day for the next week it's a fun challenge and say , answer the questions and see if at the end of the week you don't feel a bit clearer about what's important to you and what you wish and hope for your life going forward , because midlife , I think , is kind of when we're just getting started .

I don't know about you , but I had somebody say to me the other day you're getting older or we're getting older , and I thought to myself I don't feel that way .

Obviously I know I am , but in many ways and I know it sounds like a cliche , but it's very true for me I literally feel like I'm just getting started , like I know I've done a lot and I've come a long way in my life .

But if I'm being very honest with you , for the last 15 years I've kind of been managing the life I'd built up to that phase and I don't want to do that for the rest of my life . I really want to operate as if , from here , anything that I can think of , that I can dream of and that I want bad enough I can actually make

happen . So let's dive into the seven steps . I want you to take out a pen and paper or open up a Google doc or , if you don't want to do that , head on over to my Instagram . Later today I will have the seven steps up on my Instagram . So if you don't have time to do that right now , or you're driving or something like that , head on over there .

I'm at the purposeful career on Instagram . If you aren't following me yet , follow me . I have been a little sporadic . I have taken the summer off of social . I'm going to be honest , but I am ready to dive back in and we're going to have some good conversations over on social . I've got a growing following and I'd love for you to be a part of it .

So let's go ahead and dive into the seven steps . All of the seven steps are really about asking yourself some very simple but very profound questions , and when you think about business strategy .

There's a quote in the Harvard Business Review article that said that it was some corporate strategist from a fortune 50 company in the United States said that knowing the right questions is much harder than having the right strategy . I think that's very true .

So each of these steps is a question and it is the right question , and they're big questions and meaty questions and questions that , in order to answer it , it's going to take a little thought , because the answer to these questions is going to look different for everyone that's listening to this podcast . That's the beauty of it .

We do not all want the same life . We aren't the same people and we get to decide what that is . And if you haven't done it before , approach this like a great game . Approach it like an amazingly fun challenge that you're going to take on for the next seven days and each day answer one of these questions .

So the first question is how do I define a great life ? Now , the starting point for any corporate strategy is really about what they define as success for the organization . They have to know what it looks like or they're not going to get it right .

A ship sailing in the ocean is just going to be wandering around unless it actually knows the port that it's headed for , right ? So you have to kind of know where you're going and what it looks like in order to get it .

Otherwise it's just this treadmill of going through the motions and it can really start to lose its meaning if we don't really know what we think a good life looks like . So what is that for you ? What are the things that are important to you ? What are your values ? That's one of the things that goes into it . What's important to you ?

How do you want to spend the time remaining on this planet ? That is going to be different for everyone , right ? So you need to really understand the things that you're good at , the things that you care about . That , to me , is the foundation of how you would answer that first question on how do you define a great life .

And it's important for you to know , be in touch with some things about yourself . And if you feel like you aren't like , if you feel like I don't know how to answer that question , I would point you to a couple of different places to take some values-based insight things . I'm going to give you a couple of resources that I think you should try .

The first one I want to point you to is something called StrengthsFinder , and I think it's by the Gallup organization . You can get there by going to StrengthsFindercom , so S-T-R-E-N-G-T-H-S , findercom , and there's a little quiz you can take and I think I do think there's a charge for it . I'm not an affiliate , by the way .

I can't remember what it , what it is , but it's , it's nominal , and if you went out there and took that , it will give you back based on the way you answer the questions they're asking you . It will give you back some of the things that are core strengths of yours and I think that's a really good way to start getting some insight .

Another one that you can do is the Enneagram . It's E-N-N-E-A-G-R-A-M .

There is something called an Enneagram and I am not an expert on this , but there's a test you can take and there are basically nine types of potential , I guess , results that you would get , and this starts to help you understand like , who are you , what are your strengths , how do you show up in the world , like it's kind of a personality typing kind of

thing that's different than a Myers-Briggs . I think it's really interesting and it's supposedly it's based on all of these a combination of kind of psychological and spiritual things that have all come together , like Taoism and Buddhism and some Christianity stuff . But it's interesting .

I took it and when I read back the report I was like , oh my God , like is so true , like it was crazy and you can't really tell when you're going through and taking the test . I'm actually a number , a type one . I'm a reformer and then my second type is achiever , so in a loyalist kind of tied . So it's a very interesting test .

As I recall , I think I paid $20 . I would send you to this place . Take the Rizzo Hudson no relation to the Enneagram type indicator Rizzo R-I-S-O dash Hudson Enneagram type indicator . Riso R-I-S-O dash Hudson Enneagram type indicator and take the test and , like I said , I paid $20 for it and then they give you back .

It's a pretty big report it was probably 25 pages and it's very insightful . So if you feel like on number one , you're having a hard time saying I just don't know , like what I'm great at .

I don't really know the things that I value or care about , if you did those two things , it would really help you understand more about yourself at a deeper level and I think it's worth doing . I think you'd find it super interesting and it would start to point you in a direction of how you would answer that first question on how do I define a great life .

So that's number one . Question number two is another big one , which is what is my life purpose ? Now , this is a lot of people stumped and a lot of people are very , very , very confused and anxious when they think about their purpose . They feel like they don't know what it is .

It's like it's this thing that's out there in the ether that's hiding from them and they're waiting for it to be revealed .

I 100% believe it's very much the same as it is for corporation , and as a brand strategist , I have been involved in the creation of many a purpose statement for a company and I will tell you , I think it is the same for the company as it is for you as a person . You create it .

There is no entity out in the universe that's going to part the clouds and present to you your purpose . You decide what your purpose is and your purpose can and I believe will evolve as you do . It's exactly the same as a corporate purpose . They're fundamentally you get to choose it and I think we all kind of know inside , if we're quiet long enough .

What do we want it to all be about ? You know why are we here , and this gets to things like you know , what am I good at ? What are your values ? That's important in here as well . So those resources that I just gave you will help you understand a little bit more about yourself . But you can just choose one .

Like when you look at your future , what do you want the rest of it to be about ? Like for me , I'll share mine if that helps .

I've just decided that for me , I've got a good amount of time left , I think , in my corporate thing and I'm growing a business on the side that I want to carry me well into retirement and my business this business and I've got a couple of others coming is 100% about trying to give back to others , right . So it's just .

I think we're all on a path , right , and we all have learned different things . We've experienced different things , and so for me , I've just decided that the things that I've experienced , it's much more .

It's gonna be much more meaningful for me if , instead of just enjoying the fruits of my labor , that I actually take the things that I've learned and the things that I've gone through and the things that I've learned from the things that I've gone through , and try to help other people who are earlier on in their path or maybe you're at the same place , but

struggling a little bit , because I've struggled through it and , granted , I haven't experienced everything . So I look to others as well for things they've gone through that I haven't gone through yet . So I just feel like I want my life at the end of it to be about well , I didn't just take those lessons in and make myself better or stronger .

I actually tried to do what I could to give that back to others so they could do the same thing and take what they learned from what I might , share little nuggets and made them their own and made their life better .

That is 100% what my purpose is , and the reason I started with the career business is really just because that has been the focus up to now . But there are other things that I've gone through and other things that I've learned and those businesses are coming . So I don't know I'm not saying you need to start a business or whatever .

I'm just saying what do you want it to be about ? When you're at the end and you look back , what would be meaningful to you and then make that your purpose . Do you want to be somebody who's constantly pushing the limits ? Do you want to be somebody who's constantly pushing the limits ?

Do you want to be somebody who's always you know , learning and and sort of becoming more ? Do you ? You know ? I don't know , there's so many different ways you could go with it , but defining that is your job . No one else is going to do that for you .

So you have to kind of know who you really are and what lights you up and what you care about , in order to actually answer that question . So I would really encourage you to spend a day pondering that one and draft a purpose statement . What is it ? It's just a statement of what your mission is . Exactly the same as you would do if you were a company .

They write a purpose statement and they honestly I hate to say they make it up . They do just like . They invent products or whatever . They decide what are we here for ?

And that's what they write down , and they try to get their employees aligned around that and the best ones , everything they do as a company sort of starts to you know , go about bringing that into reality , right ? So it's like .

It's almost like a self-created North Star , and I think a lot of us think we should know it , or it's going to be revealed to us and I'm telling you you choose it , choose it and you can always evolve it . If you change your mind in a year or two , it's okay , right ?

I think it's just going to be fun for you to play with and have some fun with , and don't try to make it a heavy , scary thing that gets you stuck . Pick something that sounds great to you and do it . Write it down . So number three is what is my life vision ? So this one is . Again , the analogy is to a corporate strategy .

Most businesses have a vision , which is where do they want to be in five or 10 years , right ? So what is your life vision ? Have you thought about that ? And I'm not talking about like , oh , I want to be , you know , sitting on a beach and the British Virgin Islands or something like that .

It's like no , I'm talking about like the British Virgin Islands or something like that . It's like no , I'm talking about like where do you want your life , in all aspects , to be in five or 10 years ? What do you want people to say about you ? What do you want to have achieved in five or 10 years ?

That is really kind of the trajectory setting that I think we all need to do , and I think not many of us do .

Strategizing your life is about . This is kind of foundational to it . It's about saying where am I going ? And knowing that , I think , is a big key to knowing if you're spending your time well and also to finding the meaning that I think a lot of us are looking for in our life . Right ?

So you don't want to be I don't think any of us want to be the 80 or 90 year old who's sitting there thinking what did I do with my life ? You know I kept up on all the latest , you know Netflix releases , but I didn't really do what was inside of me . This is your chance to do that . Where do you want to be five or 10 years from now ?

And the answer can be anything you want it to be . What would you do if money , or lack thereof , wasn't holding you back ? What would you do if you didn't feel so bogged down by the responsibilities of your life ? What if you could dream and do anything that you can think of ? What would that be Like ? Just write it down .

You don't have to do it , but know it . What would you love to be and do in five or 10 years , if you could be or do anything ? And I think this could be a really interesting , fun thing to play with as a mood board or a vision board .

So , as you're doing and playing with this and figuring out like what that is , you might have a hard time writing it down as a person . How would you dress ? Where would you live ? You know , how would you be spending your day ? What kinds of people would you have around you ?

Like that sort of start to create your life in pictures could be a more creative or fun way to answer this particular question . Right , and it really I think it's something that you need to play with and sort of try on , and so you know if it takes more than a day or two to kind of answer any of these , I think that's totally fine .

Number four question . Number four is how do I assess my life portfolio ? So this is where you know if you're a corporation , you're looking at your business units and your product assortment strategies and you're starting to think about like which ones do you keep , which ones do you sell . You know that kind of thing what , which , where ?

Where's a gap right in your portfolio and what new things you need to introduce in order to fill that gap or address a customer need ? Your life is the same way . So what is your life portfolio ? How does your life look to you in its composition ? Do you like where you live ? Do you like the people you spend the time with , like your friends group ?

Do you enjoy what you do for a living right now or do you want to do something else and if so , what is that ? Are you happy with you ? Know where you're at with your money situation ? Do you like what you do with your free time ? Do you like how you're taking care of you ? Know your body or whatever it's like ? How is your life ? You know it's .

It's your portfolio to manage , just in exactly the same way that a corporate executive looks at their suite of product offerings or business units and thinks about , you know the investments they need to make and the areas they need to shore up or whatever . Your life is the same thing . It is yours to manage .

So , what's going well , what's in good shape , what's sort of tired and worn out and in need of a reinvention , what's sort of tired and worn out and in need of a reinvention ? That is the assessment you need to do there , right . And the fifth question is what can I learn from benchmarks ?

Now , measurement and looking at performance is fundamental to achievement of any sort of corporate strategy , and I'd say the same is true for your life .

So , once you kind of know where you're going and what you kind of want , looking at the way that you think about your time and how you invest your time is really important , and that is what is meant by this benchmarks . Question is how are you spending your time , energy and money , and are you happy with the way that's breaking out ?

And are there things you'd want to change in order to make sure that you adjusted it so it was more aligned with what you want ? So you might find that you're overly invested in work and your family , but under investing in yourself or something like that .

So it's like take a look at how you're spending your time , based on the things you have in your life . So you've got this portfolio to manage . Well , how are you managing it in terms of investments and resources and all of that ? That is what the benchmarks thing is about , and I think most of us will .

If we're being honest , we'll say , well , we over index on one or another and sort of leave others to just we sort of neglect them . And so a well managed business portfolio is the same as a well managed life portfolio .

It's very balanced and it's trying to look at in a very pragmatic way how to spend your resources wisely so that everything in your portfolio gets the care and love that it needs in order to be at its best . So this will look different for everyone , but it's important to get in there and kind of look at it . Number six what portfolio choices can I make ?

This is kind of like the life edit , right . So just like a corporate strategy would be going in and saying you know what it's time to spin off this business unit ? It's kind of in its maturity cycle . And you know what it's time to spin off this business unit ? It's kind of in its maturity cycle and you know we want to get into something more high growth .

So it's like they're just always pruning and adjusting , and I feel like the same is true for us as people . What portfolio choices , what things in our life do we need to start making some changes on in order to really have the life that we want . So that is super important to know and some questions to ask yourself .

Are you know just the way you're currently spending your time or the things that are currently in your life ? It's like what would happen if nothing changed and the rest of your life looked like it looks now . Would you be happy with that ? And if the answer is no , then you know that you've got some portfolio changes to make .

You need to make some adjustments in different parts of your life so that it comes more into balance or into the vision that you would like to have for your life , and those are your choices to make .

So you know and I would just chop it up like money , people , friends , family , business , all of the different things and look at what's going well and what's not going well . You know , do you have enough fun in your life ? Are you ? Are you a well-balanced person ?

You know and , and the way you would define it , and , and if you're not , if things are not really as well managed as you'd like them to be , take a look at the areas you'd like to shore up and start to identify what would those changes look like . So that is what number six is all about , and then number seven .

The last question is how can I ensure a successful , sustained life ? Change and listen , change is not easy . It's not easy to stay with it . You know persistence and perseverance and tenaciousness . You know it's not a great trait for Americans .

If you look at just our New Year's resolutions , right , I think more than half of us give up on them a couple of weeks into the new year and 90% fail to follow through on them . So making the changes once you define them , that's part of it , but actually falling through with it is challenging .

But the truth of the matter is I think you need to look at this as a commitment to you , and I just I don't know why , but I feel like we just aren't trained as we're growing up .

You know we're learning all these things in school and stuff , but we don't learn how to shape our life , how to create our life , and I often wonder if that was part of the curriculum , where would our society be ? I think it would be in a much better place .

I'm not saying that's all we should learn , but I think it should be part of it right , because we are thrust out into the world as 18 year olds and most of us have no idea .

Now some of us get more help from our parents on shaping ourselves and the things that we might want , but I just feel like it's a skill that we all need to learn , and so one part of it is what I walked you through , which is you know all of these things , you know the questions you should ask yourself and and the answers that only you can provide on

what you want your life to be . But the truth of the matter is and number seven is really about once you've defined that you need to break all of those things down into tiny , little things that you can start doing today . It doesn't have to be big and hard . They don't have to be bold and scary actions or whatever .

They can be tiny , tiny , tiny little micro actions . They can be tiny , tiny , tiny little micro actions , because the truth of the matter is that if you just change your course by one or 2% every single day , which is so easy to do , the entire course of your life will change in six months , in a year .

Just one tiny little shift in every area every day and you have a completely different life in six to 12 months . And I think when you think about the changes as small and micro , they're less scary and they're much easier to stay with .

When you think about extreme things like I'm going to completely give up this whole area of eating , or I'm going to be in the gym two hours a day for seven days a week , like that feels too hard and we can't stay with it .

But if you think of just layering in new habits gradually , little by little , you can totally change the trajectory of your life within a very short period of time . So those are the seven things , the seven questions to ask yourself . I'm going to go through those one more time really quickly . Number one how do I define a great life ?

Number two what is my life purpose ? Number three what is my life vision ? Number four how do I assess my life portfolio , so the things you have in your life ? Number five what can I learn from benchmarks ? So you know how am I spending my time , resources and money ? Number six what choices can I make ?

So what can I edit or prune or add into my life to make it look more like what I want ? And then , number seven how can I assure sustained life change . So how do I stay with it and how do I make the tiny , consistent , little changes I need to make every day in order to bring all of these changes about ?

So that is a little wisdom from Harvard Business Review today , and I thought it was fantastic when I read the article .

So I hope you enjoy it , I hope you undertake this and I really hope you try to use some of those resources I shared earlier in this podcast , because finding out a little bit more about yourself and who you are and some of your intrinsic values and strengths is a really great way to kind of start to reimagine what's possible in your life .

Make it fun , don't make it hard . It's a great adventure and I think when we start to look at it that way , we can really reset what's possible for the next half of our life , and that is what I wish for you . Until next time , make it a great

week . My friends , do you have a life coach ? If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach . I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called Next Level . Inside we take the material you hear on this podcast , study it and then apply it . Join me at the purposefulcareercom backslash next level .

Don't forget the , the purposefulcareercom backslash next level . Join me and together we'll make your career in life everything you dream of . We'll see you there .