3 Most Important Questions | Vishen Lakhiani

So now that you know the difference between a means goal and an end goal, the question remains, how do you make sure you're pursuing the right end goals? Well, I found that these three questions help all end goals fall into three categories. And when you ask yourself these three important questions, you end up identifying the right end goals for you in each category. The model is really simple. The first category is experiences. Let me tell you why. CS Lewis said, you do not have a soul. You are a soul. What you have is a body. What this implies is that we are souls here, having a human experience. And one of the most beautiful things about this human experience, it's things such as falling in love, traveling to a new city, creating something new, doing those things that create that heart pounding feeling of joy and happiness. These are beautiful end goal categories that you want to put on your three most important questions sheet. Now, the second category is growth. Really, it's asking yourself to have all of these beautiful experiences, from the travel to the people I want to meet, to the environments I want to live in. Who do I have to be? Who is that man or woman I have to evolve into? And this is where you start listing how you want to grow. I think one of the things that we are here to do is to grow ourselves as human beings. So in this category, you ask yourself, how do I want to grow in terms of my skills, in terms of my career, in terms of my abilities? How do I want to take care of my body so I have great energy and I'm able to do things even as I get older? How do I cultivate and grow my mind so that I can enjoy all of the amazing opportunities here on planet Earth? Growth is that second category. Then we go to the third category. The third category is contribution. I once heard the Dalai Lama say this. If you want to be happy, learn to make people happy. And this is really what contribution is about. If you believe we are all on this planet together, why not help each other grow, help each other have beautiful experiences? And the way we do this is through the third category, contribution. Contribution is where you make a list of how you want to give to your family, to your community, to the company you work for. That's a company that's contributing in a good way to the world. Your contribution could be a blog post you write that inspires people. It could be volunteer work. It could be. It could be a work of art that beautifies the planet. There are many ways to contribute, but I think we all agree that contribution is one of the surest paths to happiness. Interestingly, in Tony Robbins hit TED Talk, which is one of the most watched TED talks ever, he talks about how all of us have two great spiritual needs, right? The need to grow and the need to contribute. He says, if you aren't growing, if you aren't contributing, then you might be happy, but you will never be fulfilled. So again, the three most important questions are, what beautiful human experiences do I want to feel in my life? How do I want to grow as a human being? And how do I want to contribute? And you can see how each leads into the other. So here's how the exercise works. You take out a piece of paper, you're going to make three columns on the paper, and I'm going to take you through a timed journey where you're going to write down your answers to the three questions I'm going to ask you. Before we get there, I'd like to share with you just a brief glimpse of why this exercise is so important. Now, something mysterious happens when you start putting down your goals and your visions on the three most important question sheet. Very often what I've seen is that situations, opportunities emerge in people's lives that allow them to check off multiple items on their sheet. One person I'm proud to talk about is Ronan. Diego. So Ronan's sheet looks something like that. And if you were to look at the sheet and the items are highlighted, you could see that this is a man who really loves inspiring others and having a healthy body and learning about help. Interestingly, about a few months after Ronan's sheet, he ended up taking part in the Viper Challenge, a really grueling race with 20,000 other competitors. Ronan ended up coming out number one. And through that, not only did he help develop this body of his dreams, this fitness level that he's always aspired to, but inspiring others to do the same. Jason Campbell is another friend of mine. On his sheet. When I looked at it, I could see that there was a lot of ideas on the sheet about becoming a world class speaker, being a team builder, a manager, teaching entrepreneurship and sales. So Jason one day happened to be at a fest and a major speaker who had to speak fell sick. And all of a sudden we had a 20 minute slot on stage and no speaker. Now I knew Jason was a good speaker, but I didn't know if he was a fest level. But he came to me and said, vishen, I promise you, put me on that stage and magic will happen. And something in my gut said, trust him. I put Jason on stage and he was voted best speaker. He checked off a large number of items on his three most important questions and also got to speak about sales and entrepreneurship and really inspire the crowd. Luminita Sobiak was a blogger who worked at Mindvalley, who her three most important questions were a lot about inspiring others, being a personal growth teacher, even being an author. Strangely, Luminita, while at Mindvalley, wrote a blog post called 15 Things to Give up to Be Happy. Nothing happened for the first couple of months, but about six months later, a group of people started sharing that on Facebook and it took off. Within a few months, it became the single most shared personal growth article in the history of Facebook, with 1.2 million people sharing this on their timeline. Luminita got an offer from Penguin Books and her book is now out. She managed to strike off multiple ideas on her three most important questions, from inspiring others to being a personal growth teacher, to writing a book, to being an author. Amir Ahmad joined mindvalley as a 22 year old. He, he was an intern when he joined me at our team retreat and did this exercise. And I guess being young he had no idea just what his limitations were. So he put down some pretty fancy things. He wanted a best selling book, he wanted to speak at Ivy League universities, he wanted to be on television. Four years later, Amir was 26. He wrote a book called My How Fundamentalism Stole My Mind and Doubt Free. It was about how the digital revolution was shaking up the Middle East. Amir's book ended up being selected by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top 25 must read books of 2013. And before he knew it, Amir was being invited to speak at Ivy League universities, sharing the stage at the Oslo Freedom Forum, being on television shows, being invited to speak at companies like Google. He became well known in his field because of that book. All of these people, whether it was fitness or becoming an author or speaking on stage, attained incredible things in their life. A lot of it started with a dream in their head, a vision for a life based on what were their end goals. End goals that really, really fuel them and made them happy. And this is what you're going to experience as well. One of the best things about this exercise is that it works beautifully in groups. At Mindvalley, all our employees do the exercise, the three most important questions, and then we take everyone's sheet and we stick it on a giant wall so people can go to this wall, look at other people's goals and figure out how can we help each other. We try to create a culture where as much as possible, individuals are not just chasing their own end goals, but helping other people attain theirs too. One example is Mariana. Mariana wanted to hike in Nepal. She went to a giant wall of three most important questions. She saw others who had written down Nepal on their sheet connected with them. And together, four people ended up on a beautiful hike in Nepal for seven days. It was one of the most beautiful moments of their life. And all of them got to strike off multiple items on their three most important question list. See, there is no monopoly on dreams. It's beautiful to be able to come up with ideas for your three most important questions and then to share these ideas with people or to see other people's sheets. And when you see something you like, you can go, aha. I want to add that too. There is no monopoly on dreams. So whether it's schools or it's within your organization, there are so many ways you can use the three most important questions to help not just craft a beautiful life for yourself, but help others create their beautiful life. It's a beautiful exercise, not just for the individual, but for teams, for schools, for groups. And this is why I think it's one of the most important ideas in my book, the Code of the Extraordinary Mind. So now let's get you started with the three most important question exercise. It's really easy. All you need is a pen and, and a notebook or some paper. If using a notebook, you're going to use each page for one of the three categories. If you're using a single sheet of paper, you're going to divide it into three columns like so. Now what I'm going to do is give you a timed moment to write down your experiences, your growth, and how you want to contribute. The reason we make it timed and it's going to be three minutes is because if we take away their time and we give you unlimited time, what tends to happen to most people is that your logical left brain kicks in and starts making you doubt yourself. Who are you to say you want to be a world class speaker? Who are you to say that you're going to travel to 50 countries? But when you give yourself a timed constraint, what happens is you're free to dream, you're free to play, you're free to let your imagination flow. So I'm going to give you three minutes for each category. But don't worry, you can come back to this sheet later and in the subsequent chapters in this course and go into each category and refine it. So I'm going to give you A timed constraint to fill out each of these three questions. But don't worry, later on you can go back to each category, Dive in deeper with the additional chapters in this program and take additional time if you wish to expand the depth of your ideas in every one of these categories. So let's get started with the first category, exp Experiences. So at this point, you should have your notebook open. I'm going to set a timer for three minutes and you're going to list down all the beautiful experiences you want to have on this planet in your lifetime. Let's get started. So when you think about experiences, think about love, relationships. Who do you want to wake up next to? Who do you want to be with? How do you want to feel even without others? How do you want to feel being with no one else other than yourself? Who are your friends? How do you play with them? What do you do with your closest friends? What adventures do you have? What rich, beautiful human moments of sharing and connection are you experiencing with friends? In a famous Harvard study called the Very Happy People Study by Ed Diener, they found that the number one thing that correlated with happiness was the strength of our social connections. And that's why it's so important to write down goals, end goals that link to love and connection and friendship. So think about moments you want to have with friends, moments you want to have with people you love. Extend it beyond just a relationship. Think about your connections with your parents, no matter how old you are or your kids. Family vacations, perhaps trips to places like Disneyland where you get to really connect and bond. Now let's think about adventures. Have you ever thought about skydiving? White water rafting in the Grand Canyon? Visiting different countries? One of the beautiful things about living on Earth today is how easy it is to get from one place to another on a simple budget airline flight. There are so many rich human experiences that we can explore in the world today. And increasingly more and more people work for companies that provide flexi time. We're no longer locked into the 9 to 5, which means for many of us it is possible to take an extended three day vacation and really experience one of the beautiful parts of the planet. We no longer have to prescribe to outdated models where you have to work like a dog only to someday retire and then see the world. Why not see the world and have experiences right now? Another aspect of experiences is your environment. Think about your home, your office, the hotels you get to stay in when you're traveling. Maybe the car or the bike you drive. Maybe the Objects you own? What beautiful experiences do you have in life regarding your environment that thrills you, that excites you, that makes you happy? Maybe you're a minimalist. Maybe you don't care about a beautiful home. Maybe your idea of a rich life is not owning any objects. Being able to move around, live in different places, be mobile, with nothing more than a smartphone and a laptop. That's beautiful too. So at this point, the timer has rung. The three minutes are up. Look at what you just wrote. Soak it in. And don't worry if you have more to add. You'll have plenty of time for that later. But now we're going to go on to the second category, which is growth. It's really simple. Look at the experiences you wrote down and ask yourself, who do I have to grow? Who is the man or woman I need to evolve into to have these beautiful experiences? And that's the starting point for your questions on growth. And again, we'll get started. Ask yourself, how do I want to grow in terms of my health and fitness? Our bodies are our vehicles for functioning in the world. Our bodies give us the ability to have all those beautiful experiences. So no matter what your health is now, how would you like to maintain it and where would you like it to be? Ideas to write down might be the idea of being able to do, say 50 push ups, or to go on a particular health diet, or to take up yoga or run a marathon. What are your ideas for health and fitness? Next, don't forget about your mind and your brain. How would you grow your intellectual life? Write down museums, perhaps, that you want to visit, books that you want to read, seminars you want to attend, online courses that you'd like to take. Again, a beautiful thing about our world today is that you can learn and grow so easily because of this incredible thing called the Internet. Just think about the number of online courses available for relatively low amounts of dollars that let you expand yourself in so many amazing ways. Next, think about your skills. What are new skills that you want to develop to help you truly live a rich life? These could be skills that help you progress in your career. It could be a skill completely unrelated to your career. My wife, for example, right now is learning Spanish and Bahasa, which is the ninth most spoken language in the world and spoken in Southeast Asia. And she's learning it just for the heck of it. What languages would you work want to learn? Or maybe it's a musical instrument, maybe it's something such as photography. What new skills would you like to Develop next your spiritual life. This is that aspect of your body that gives you meaning. Fulfillment helps you get in tune with yourself. What would you write down for how you plan on growing that spiritual side of you? Maybe it's taking a course on a spiritual practice. Maybe it's really getting into a good meditation practice or mindfulness practice. Maybe it's a pilgrimage or trip to a part of the world that you know is going to infuse you with a certain spiritual awakening. So think about health and fitness, your intellectual life, your skills, your spiritual life. All of these are beautiful ways to help you grow as a human being. Society has kind of programmed us that we stop learning and growing as fast after we graduate. That's simply not true. Growth should be part of your life all the time. And we're wrapping up. The timer has just sounded and you're just done with those three minutes. So now we're going to go on to the final category, which is the contribution you're going to make to the world. We're going to start with this simple question. If you could have all of these beautiful experiences that you just put down, if you could grow to be that man or woman that you just put down, how now would you give back to the world? How would you contribute to other people's growth, other people's experiences? After all, one of the surest ways to be happy is to make other people happy. So I'm going to set the timer. You have three minutes. And here's what I want you to think about. How would you grow in your career? Many of us work for companies that are genuinely doing good in the world. We call these Humanity plus companies. Companies that are perhaps in innovating on education, alternative energy, producing healthy foods, working on improving the livelihood of others. Maybe you're working for an NGO or a government. Maybe you have your own company. Think about how can you contribute to the world through your career, through this business, through your own company or the company you work for? Perhaps you work for a company that you feel is isn't contributing in some way to the world. Maybe it's one of those companies that's producing artificial demand. Maybe junk food with heavy marketing budgets, maybe bad practices such as, say, the tobacco industry. Many people who do this exercise sometimes end up with the realization that they need to switch, and that's okay too. So think about how can you contribute to the planet through your career? Now let's go on to your creative life. Many of us forget just how much we can contribute through just living creatively. It could be music that you write or compose or perform. It could be art or film, or even a YouTube channel you run, or a blog or a book. One of the greatest things about the world today is that true technology such as YouTube, the proliferation of blogs, websites such as medium.com, all of us get to be creators and our work gets to reach out to people. So think about what you create that people share on Facebook, that people get inspired by. And remember, an end goal of creation is not about how many people see or view your creation. It's about the act of creation itself. Then think about contribution through your family life. How much time are you spending with your kids? How much time would you like to spend with your kids? How are you raising those little critters to be the most incredible human beings on the planet? Maybe you don't have kids and you don't want to. That's okay as well. How are you contributing to your family in terms of your parents, your spouse? And remember, you don't have to define family by the traditional rules of the culturescape. Your family could be a group of close friends. It could be a tribe of people you're building a company with. How do you contribute to those human beings who are closest to you? And now we go on to your community. And depending on your worldview, your community could be your tribe, your city, your nation, your continent. It could be a global Internet community. How are you contributing to your community? Through fundraising, through volunteer work? It be could. It could be supporting a Kickstarter campaign. But what are you doing that's contributing to that wider area of human beings that you consider your community? And the timer just rang. Time is up. So you've now completed the first draft of your three most important questions. And I use the word draft because this is a draft. You get to add to this and you get to check off items as you attain them. But through the consistent practice of this exercise, you give yourself the opportunity to live a life that's truly extraordinary. That's extraordinary by design because you're pursuing end goals and steering clear of means, goals that may be nothing more than brules that the culturescape is imposing on you. So congratulations, you finished the first part of this exercise. Now that you're done, we'd love to hear from you in the comments section below. Share your thoughts. How did this exercise work for you? What. What were some of the most beautiful ideas that you had? You might even want to upload a picture of your three most important questions on our tribe. Remember, there is no Monopoly on Dreams. By sharing your three most important questions, you are giving permission to other people to dream as boldly as you dream. So I look forward to hearing from you. Now you've completed the first part of this video. Congratulations. What I recommend you do with this sheet is to stick it somewhere visible where you can see it. Always. If you run a company or are part of one and you want to do this as a team, I recommend you photocopy the sheet and you have everybody do this. They have one for themselves and one on a giant wall. At our company, we call this the blueprint to the soul. And many managers, when they're having a one on one lunch with someone, they take out that person's blueprint. Every manager, including me, I keep the blueprints of all my employees on my smartphone. It helps us connect as human beings. It helps us be more in tune to how we can support each other. It's a great model for the world and I hope you take this beyond just yourself, but into your families, your communities, and your companies. So again, hope you enjoyed this lesson. Share your blueprint, if you wish, in the tribe section so that you can inspire others and spread this exercise out to others. Because as you can see, it can have such a powerful mark on helping us all elevate our levels of happiness. Now, in the next section of this program, you get to dive in deeper into each of the four categories under Experiences, Growth, and Contribution. And what I'll share in each of these smaller lessons is how to dive in deeper into each of these categories, how to rethink the rules of the culturescape, how to see new models for how these areas might work, and you can expand your list of end goals in each of these categories. You can do these 12 additional bonus chapters in one day or in 12 weeks. It's completely up to you, but as you go through them, you will enrich slowly and gradually your three most important questions and help yourself create even more beautiful visions of where your life can be when you pursue end goals and transcendental the culturescape.