Some amazing things about the human brain. The brain channels in

when it's asked a question. It can brush off a statement, it

can brush off an opinion, but not a question.

Ask yourself the right questions and you're going to get

some advice and it's going to be, if you're honest with

yourself, the right advice. You can take your own advice

and it'll change your life. It'll change your mindset. Big, big changes happen.

We make mindset shifts. Today we're going to talk about three

questions that you can ask yourself that will make a big

shift if you answer them honestly. So by the end of the episode,

you're going to have these three questions and you're going to be challenged to

answer them.

So welcome to the Decide your Legacy podcast. I'm your host, Adam Gragg.

I'm a coach and a family therapist, founder of Decide your

Legacy in 2012. And we help leaders

and their teams face the issues that they're avoiding.

Why? So they can take productive action and they can

make progress, progress that sticks long term change.

And from my point of view, everyone's a leader.

You influence your neighbor, you influence your friends. You have influence

over your family. Leadership is influence.

This episode was inspired by an episode that I

did about five weeks ago with Nick Bertram,

and it was on journaling and also another podcast which I

did with Ben Hutton on gratitude. And both of those

helped me think that and I need to address, well, what kind of

questions can we channel to give ourselves gratitude

and to give ourselves insight? So check out those

episodes. It was also inspired by my friend Doug,

who is, at least, I believe, turning 40 very soon.

And Doug is a guy who has asked me some hard questions that I didn't

want to hear and I didn't want to answer. And that's what happens when I'm

in a bad spot, not a healthy place, I get defensive and I'll even

perceive that I'm being interrogated when actually there are people

trying to get me to think. And thinking is good for me, and

I appreciate and admire that quality in Doug. So the first question is.

Drumroll. So the first question is, what do I want?

That's a great question because it starts to inspire a

vision. It's telling you the truth about your situation.

It's showing you insight into what you don't want. But

first and foremost, it's helping you aim. It's

helping you know what direction to aim in

because it's illuminating a path towards a place that you really want

to go. So a variant of that is you can

describe your life in a year in detail, ideally in a year, three years, five

years, 10 years. I like the basic question, what do

I want? And then you identify what you want. So you want hopefully health

and healthy relationships and you want some success

and whatever that definition of success is for you. But identify that,

what do I want? So I know for me at

times I don't want to answer that question because it's showing me

incongruency and misalignment in my life based on the decisions that

I'm making today. And that's challenging. That's why

I get defensive when people ask me those similar types of questions. I can

tell you right now that some things as I journaled on this question

this morning, I wrote that I want to continue

to find who's in my life, which is a concept I learned from

strategic coach. So who, not how you want to find people to delegate to that

you trust and build relationships with. I want to, I want help with carrying the

load. I want help. I want freedom, you

know, I want, I want to have freedom of

my time, you know, I want to have healthy relationships even

healthier than I have now. I want better health. I want

to achieve big goals in my life. I want

to get up early or in the morning, I want to go to bed on

time. So just those little insights as

I'm honest with myself will help me to orient myself

in a better direction. So the second question.

Second question is this is potentially my favorite question

that I would say it is my favorite question. All right, so this is such

a big mindset shift when you answer this question. And so it's,

how would I, how would I be different? How would I

be different if I was, if I had unlimited self confidence or I had 10

times more confidence, how would I be different? And

when I ask questions like this to other people, I leave them pretty open

ended because I don't want to answer it for them. So for myself as well,

okay, I ask myself that question, I start, I journal it, I write it

down and then I look at it. And I don't necessarily need to know

what that, you know, I don't necessarily need to

know specifics about the question. I mean, I just

freeform journal. What would I do? How would I act, how would I feel,

how would I behave, how would people view me,

my behaviors differently than they do today? What would they see

me do differently? If I just had this sense of, not arrogance,

but confidence that was, that was unlimited.

And as you take the time to step back and think about that.

And you journal your answers, you're going to see you're a different person and there's

misalignment. It's going to give you more information in areas of your life where you're

misaligned as well. And it'll challenge you to change some things

in your life. Because as I looked at this, and I did answer

these questions this morning, preparing, I

shared that if I had unlimited self confidence, people

externally, they would notice me letting

go more, they'd notice me laughing more, they'd notice me being

present more, not distracted. They notice that when

I'm interacting with them, I'm paying attention to them. And they'd also notice

that I let go, that I try new things,

that I'm willing to get things done and ship when it's imperfect,

that I have more energy, that I'm

spontaneous, which I know I am more spontaneous when I'm more

confident they would notice that I take relational

risks more. And I'm feeling fairly confident today, actually.

I'm not feeling insecure, but this still stretches me because

I'm not at the point where I have unlimited self confidence. That's never reality,

but it's getting you to dream. So Dan

Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach, there's this question question

and I have a variant of it, it's called the Dan Sullivan question. And it's

like he will say or in an interaction. It's a variant

of this confidence question. I've been asking that confidence question for, for a

decade, but this is a different way of thinking about it. I asked this to

a client yesterday. So if I was sitting and talking to

you in a year or one year or three years, let's just say in a

year, and you were sharing with me that you'd made tremendous progress

personally and professionally, tremendous progress.

So we're talking in a year and I ask you,

well, what are the three actions you've taken over that year

to get to the point where you had tremendous progress? And so

they're looking at themselves and thinking about themselves. First of all, defining what that

progress would look like and then saying these are the actions that would mean the

main actions that would get me there. And then you think about your

answers and share them. So I asked this to a client yesterday

and she said, number one, she would have very

clear communication with people that she

interacts with. And she knows that would be what gets her

to the point where she's very satisfied personally and professionally. I know for me,

my answer to the Dan Sullivan question is, is

I would be very

focused on eliminating distractions. So incredibly

focused on eliminating distractions. But that's one of the things, because I get

distracted. And I know that would make such a big difference. I would save so

much time in my life. So the third question, big, powerful question.

Self journaling, taking your own advice. This is a way to give

yourself advice. So the third question is, what am I believing

about myself that harms me? And

then elaborate. What's the truth?

So sitting with clients over 25 years,

I've done this activity where on a whiteboard or on a piece of paper,

you draw a line down the center, and on one side, it's

thoughts that harm me. Or I'll call them lies. And you write down whatever comes

to mind. I'm not good enough. I can't succeed in this

project. People don't like me. I'm going to fail. I've made too

many mistakes to change. I need

to carry it all on my shoulders. I'm not a good father.

I'm a perfect father. I mean, it could be a variety of things, you know,

so. But those are all you're identifying at a gut level that they're not true

and they're impacting you. And then on the other side,

you write down your best gut level reaction to that

lie. That is the truth. That's much more accurate,

hopefully optimistic, future oriented. And

you look at it, and these are all three questions. In fact,

this question, what do I believe about myself today that harms

me? Is something I could challenge you

and encourage you to do whenever you journal every day. What do I believe about

myself? And so for me, like, the things that came

up relate to. Well, I

don't really want to admit it, but I, like, I'll never have.

This is just a thought. I'm not saying this is true whatsoever. But the thought

was, I won't find a healthy

romantic relationship like that. That won't happen for me.

And I've failed at things in the past. So this next

project's gonna fail. Cause I'm working on a couple big projects right now that's gonna

fail. And I'll never be great at

delegating. That's another thought that I've had. So if I look at that on paper,

asking myself these questions, and that's what journaling is, and giving myself an honest answer,

I can see that none of these things are true. They're not based on evidence.

They're just feelings that I have. So I'm giving myself power. I'm giving myself

advice, which is super exciting. So

if you found this content helpful and you want to really get to a place

where you can step back and give yourself your own advice

and answer questions like this, but just get to a much healthier place

with your confidence. Hit the link to shatterproof yourself Light.

Go through this little mini course that we put together. There's a four page worksheet.

You answer these, the questions, you watch the content and it's

gonna really help you. It's. You gotta go through the whole thing. It's free,

it's not gonna, it's not gonna cost you anything except your time and your

energy. And you're gonna find that it's. Well, it's

gonna give you 10 times the results if you go through it.

So answering questions and as I look back

on the lowest points of my life to

when I've struggled with depression and anxiety and

lack of hope. So when I was grieving the loss,

losses in my life, one of the

only things that gave me hope was that I could sit down with my journal

and I could do my best to focus and I

could answer questions that could help me to focus

on the right things. So that's when I went and did the

daily Action worksheet. That's when I would answer journaling

prompts. That's when I would start to write down the

truth about these lies that I was believing and look at them in

a form that at least to some level, at some

level would start to sink into my heart and give me hope

and give me energy to keep pushing forward in my life.

It's gonna do the same for you. Answer these three questions

and you're gonna start taking your own advice as

well. So let me review them really quick. So first question is, what do I

want? Second question is how would I act if I was 10 times more confident?

And the third question is, what am I believing about myself that harms me?

What insights have you gained from listening to this episode? Today

I want you to take an action and commit. Because

80% of making a life behavioral

transformation is action. 20% is insight. Anyone can

listen to this podcast, but the brave and courageous, they take action.

Take action. Follow me in the Decide your Legacy podcast. Check out these

other podcast episodes that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode. And I want

to share with you that to decide anything means you are eliminating other

options. Your legacy is the impact that your life, your very

valuable life, your very one life and short life, is to value the

impact that life has on other people. There's no positive change until you

decide to change. Your legacy actually depends on

it. I'm going to close today the way I always do. Live the life today.

You want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone? You decide

your legacy. Nobody else. I appreciate you greatly, and I'll see you next

time.

Sam.