2 thought exercises to lead a successful life
Life is tough. Every now and then, we face a situation where we need to make a choice. Many of these decisions seem life-altering and it seems that once we choose a path, there is no looking back.
This article presents two thought exercises that can help you make these difficult choices with confidence. These exercises are about introspection, and they help you understand yourself better and ask the right questions when faced with a dilemma.
Exercise 1: A Boon of Infinite Luck
Imagine that a divine entity, a manifestation of the universe that you believe to be all-powerful (this can be the God that you believe in, or the programmer of the matrix that we live in, or the universal consciousness that resides in every particle and each person, or an oracle which dictates the probabilities of the infinite possible futures that you will experience, and so on…) appears in front you today.
And they gift you the power of infinite luck.
Before we move ahead, it is important to understand what “luck” actually means. Luck, though often used interchangeably with “Chance” or “Fortune”, is quite different, especially in terms of how it relates to “agency” — or the amount of personal control we have over each. These definitions are borrowed from Tina Seelig’s book What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 (Page 119):
FORTUNE is something that happens to you. It is good fortune to be born into a kind family and bad fortune to be struck by lightning.
CHANCE requires an action on your part. You need to take a chance, such as rolling dice, buying a lottery ticket, or asking someone out on a date, to benefit from a chance event.
LUCK is made by finding and creating opportunities. It is a direct consequence of your behaviour. For example, you’re lucky that you were offered a great job. There was a lot of agency, even thought there was uncertainty. You had to do the work to build the skills to be prepared and to actively apply for that role.
Put simply, your boon is:
If you put the required amount of time and effort, all the other things will align for you to be successful in your pursuit.
With this power, and the knowledge of possessing the same, think about the kind of future you would want for yourself 5 or 10 years in the future. Imagine that life and write it down. You can write about the environment that you will be in, the lifestyle your will have, the day-to-day activities that you will be performing, your responsibilities, your relationships, your friends and family and everything else that you can imagine. Try to paint a complete picture.
Once you have done this, think about what would you do differently to get there. Which of your decisions would be different between your current, more realistic, life and the super-lucky life?
Lastly, come back to the reality, and argue about “Why can’t I do that right now?”. List down the risks, roadblocks and the trade-offs, and start finding solutions to mitigate them. Search about it on the internet, brainstorm about it with your friends and look for forums and communities where others are also trying to find solutions to the same problem.
* What does my super-lucky future look like?
* What would the super-lucky me do differently to get there?
* What stops me from doing the same?
You can maintain a journal for this exercise. On every page, write the date, followed by these three questions and their answers. And then read them again to make any edits that you would want to. Here is a free Notion template for writing your observations through this exercise.
Exercise 2: The Retrospective
Imagine that you are facing inevitable death in a few minutes. And in these last few minutes, you only have time to reflect back on your life. By observing what you are thinking about at this moment, you will realise what is it that you value the most. This will give you an opportunity to reassess your decisions and, if required, bring back your focus to things that actually matter.
To guide your thoughts, in case you need any guidance, here are a few questions that you can answer while waiting for your certain demise:
What experiences am I most happy about?
What achievements and actions am I most proud of?
What is my most valuable possession?
What is my legacy?
Imagining this situation is useful because it helps you differentiate things that you actually value from the things that you think you should do, things that you feel will help you get to your goals, things that you were expected to do. It is a combination of a gratitude exercise, where you appreciate all the good things in your life, and a value assessment exercise, where you need to evaluate the relative importance of things for making a decision.
Again, it is recommended to write your thoughts down and maintain a journal for the same, if it is convenient. Here is a Notion template to note down your observations from this thought exercise.
To help you create the habit of doing these thought exercises, here is a Notion Template for your Thought Experiment Journal. Create a page with this journal and add entries to it at least once every 3 months. You can see the options for using existing templates for both of the above-mentioned exercises when you create a page in this journal.
All the very best with your life and your future. I hope you make the most of it!
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