To win at life you need to know yourself in detail: what you want, what you are good at, what you value, what you will sacrifice and what environment and people help you grow. The video opens by saying that feeling overwhelmed or stuck is often the result of mismanaging yourself, and that you cannot make the world better until you make yourself better.
What follows is a list of 15 questions about yourself, from the big one (what you want from life) to the uncomfortable ones (where you are being lazy), plus a bonus.
Watch the full video here, or skip to the breakdown below.
The 15 things at a glance
- What you want from life (0:24)
- What your passion is (1:12)
- What your strengths are (2:00)
- What your weaknesses are (3:07)
- What your core values are (4:26)
- How you are making yourself happy (5:07)
- What you are willing to sacrifice to get what you want (6:00)
- What gets you excited (7:11)
- What you are being lazy about (8:11)
- How strong you really are (9:13)
- What environment works best for you (10:45)
- What kind of people you vibe with (11:35)
- How to self-motivate (12:43)
- How far you have come (13:52)
- The difference between how you see yourself and how the world sees you (14:34)
1. What you want from life
Most people say they want peace and happiness, which the script compares to going to a restaurant and asking for something with nutritional value. It is too abstract to mean anything.
The value comes from detail. If everything worked out in your favor, what would the next ten years look like? Do you see a family, adventure, fame? What do your weekends look like? People lack goals because they never think about what they actually want, which makes this the first priority in getting to know yourself.
2. What your passion is
Some things you must do for money, and some you can do for yourself. Your passion is what you can do for hours without noticing time pass, what gets your blood flowing a little faster, and what lights a flame when you see other people doing it.
Plenty of people go through life without ever asking what they are really passionate about. They become the neighbor you never talk to, the one with no story to tell. If you only get one life, the video asks, why not indulge your passion a little?
3. What your strengths are
Your strengths are your competitive advantage: things that are easy, even boring, for you but difficult for others. Aim to find three. They are the things you do consistently and reliably well, which you may not find amazing while other people do.
Useful questions: What was the last problem you successfully solved? When did people compliment how you did something? What do your friends like about you? What do people in your circle come to you for help with? Keep asking until you have three. Combined with your passion, they are your best route to the life you described in number one.
4. What your weaknesses are
A weakness here does not mean something you are bad at. It means something you have no interest in getting good at, like a task you watch someone else do and think you would never have the energy or patience for.
Look for three: what you find boring, what drains your energy fastest, what you have usually needed help with, and which projects you could not wait to finish so you could get back to what you love. Later in life your job is to find people who are good at those things and have them do it for you. If you fail Spanish, your parents get you a tutor, but in adult life you outsource the weakness and go all in on your strengths. Being mediocre at them costs effort, money and time, and mediocrity will not get you the life from number one.
5. What your core values are
Values act like traffic lights: decision filters that give each choice a green light or not. There is no universal truth, and more than one thing can be true depending on how you look at it. As the saying goes, what is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.
Knowing what matters to you lets you decide quickly and gives you the does this feel right? skill. Think of it as a gut feeling on steroids.
6. How you are making yourself happy
A fulfilled life needs an understanding of what makes you happy. Dig into it and it is not the dress that made you happy but the feeling it gave you. It is not the wedding, the food or the flowers, but knowing you have someone you trust, someone you will care for and who will care for you.
The script calls happiness a choice, shaped by how you view the world, how you position yourself and the thoughts you think. Material things give relief that you no longer have to worry about them, but it is how you decorate your house that makes you happy to live there.
7. What you are willing to sacrifice to get what you want
In business and in life, everything has a price, which the video calls opportunity cost. With limited money, time and opportunities, every yes is an indirect no to everything else.
Some people sacrifice family for money, some sacrifice health for entertainment, and others sacrifice money for pleasure. You may not be far down that road yet, but life will ask for a sacrifice. The script’s view is that the bigger the sacrifice, the bigger the reward, though some sacrifices carry too high a price. Once you know what you are willing to give up, the path forward becomes clear.
8. What gets you excited
Do not confuse excitement with passion. You already know your passion. Excitement comes from discovering opportunities for growth in any form: finding a new artist, or trying a restaurant or recipe and loving it.
Everyone wants to grow, and when you find a path to do it excitement builds. You discover it by trying a lot of things, and you have to risk the bad experience so you do not miss the really good ones. Without excitement you get a feeling of insufficiency, where every day looks the same and you stop loving your life. Asking this question fixes that.
9. What you are being lazy about
Do not confuse procrastination with laziness. Procrastination postpones important tasks in favor of pleasant ones, but you still get them done when the deadline arrives. Laziness is ignoring the things with no clear timeline.
Examples: how your health has evolved or declined in recent years and where it is heading, how much inflation will eat into your retirement fund over 20 years, and how your relationship with family will change if you keep avoiding them on holidays. You usually only notice these once it is too late. They are the things that make you say you do not want to think about them right now. Find yours and do something about it.
10. How strong you really are
No matter how hard life has been, you have survived every challenge so far. Going through what you went through and still working on yourself is not easy, and most people would have quit earlier.
So give yourself credit. Having a good opinion of yourself matters, because you are your own number one fan and the one who gets up and does what needs doing. Treat yourself with respect.
11. What environment works best for you
The same seed grows fast in some environments and starves in others. Most people do not realize how limiting their environment is to their trajectory.
Unlike a seed, you can control yours. You can optimize your current one for growth or relocate to more fertile ground. That may sound hard and risky, but the video asks you to think about the alternative, because you can probably tell where your life is going if nothing changes.
12. What kind of people you vibe with
Your environment has two parts: the place, with its geography, tools and workspace, and the people around you. If you want to be better, find people who make you better, who challenge you and support you.
Choose company you enjoy not because they are below you and make you feel ahead. You are not racing them; you are racing to catch up with your potential self. A circle is worth more than the sum of its members, and once you know who suits you it is easier to avoid people toxic to your growth, like pulling weeds next to a seed.
13. How to self-motivate
Self-motivation gets results other people cannot get. It comes from two things at once: organizing small actions that add up to big results, and harnessing willpower to just do it. Without both, nothing gets done.
A common mistake is believing you must knock it out of the park every day, a standard nobody can meet, so they quit. Think of the minimum amount of work that still moves the needle, and do that every day. Some days motivation strikes and you do more. Success is made on the off days, and if you want to win a championship you train in the offseason.
14. How far you have come
To win at life you need to know where the finish line is, and to remind yourself how much you have grown. Every mountain looks overwhelming, but nobody gets to the top in one step.
Yet that is how people expect life to work. They ask for the secret to making money fast, the pill for a six pack or the guru who will pass on mystical arts. Knowing how far you have come gives you the confidence to keep going.
15. The difference between how you see yourself and how the world sees you
Hold yourself to the standards you set for others. You judge yourself by your intent and others by their actions, giving yourself the benefit of the doubt. We all think we are good people, so let your actions prove it.
Who are you when nobody is looking? The final step in knowing yourself is being yourself. Nobody else can be you, and being authentic is the best version of you.
Bonus: the things you do not want to become
If you do not yet know who you are, you can at least work out what you do not want to become. Pessimistic, bitter, disappointed and angry all the time are what you can turn into if you make no effort to discover yourself.
With no expectations of yourself or the world, you live in a continuous state of disappointment, and that is not fun. Answer the 15 questions above and the bonus gets easier to avoid.
FAQ
How do you figure out what you want from life?
Be specific. Picture your life ten years from now if everything worked out: your family, your adventures, your weekends. Vague answers like peace and happiness are too abstract to act on.
How do you find your strengths?
Ask what the last problem you solved was, when people complimented you, what friends like about you and what people come to you for. Keep going until you can name three.
Are weaknesses things you are bad at?
In this video, a weakness is something you have no interest in getting good at. The advice is to outsource it and go all in on your strengths.
What is the difference between laziness and procrastination?
Procrastination postpones important tasks for pleasant ones but you still do them by the deadline. Laziness means ignoring things with no clear timeline, like your health, retirement or family relationships.
How can you motivate yourself?
Combine small, organized daily actions with the willpower to just do it. Aim for the minimum amount of work that still moves things forward, since success is made on the off days.
Keep reading
- 15 Things You Should Know About Yourself (if You Want to Win at Life)
- 15 Things Poor People Don’t Know About Making Money
- 15 Things You Didn’t Know about JK Rowling
