The Socratic Method, which is a famous technique of debate and also of teaching/ learning, especially amongst the legal circles, involves using questions to make the subject validate, prove or even criticise his or her points of view. Similarly, the use of questions to make you validate, prove, criticise, look at different angles of, and – even install – your own points of view concerning your self, your abilities, your goals and your beliefs. Alright, enough theoretical, philosophical mumbo jumbo. Let’s finally get down to work.
Have you prepared a list of things you want to achieve in your life with you? Look at them and see which are those which you deem to be the most important ones to you. How will you know? Try asking yourself this question, “If I have only 1 year to live, which of these goals do I most want to achieve before I die?”
Really imagine what it feels like to have the knowledge that you will cease to live on this Earth in 12 months’ time. What does it make you feel? Or ask yourself, “One day, when I die, and I will eventually die, just when I am about to breathe my last, how would I want to feel? What would I want to think? How would I want to look back into the life that I’ve lived and say whether or not I have truly lived the best life I can have?”
This is the moment when you’re most probably (and hopefully) lying peacefully on your deathbed, with your loved ones around you. At this moment, do you want to be smiling or crying? Do you want to be afraid and sad because you haven’t fully lived up to your potential in your life, or do you want to be satisfied & proud with what you’ve done, ready to brave come what may in the next phase of existence (whatever your beliefs are)? If you want to be proud and satisfied, and smiling on your deathbed, what would you do? What could be the things that will make you smile on your deathbed? What are you reflecting about as you lie smiling, await- ing your final breath?
The answers to these powerful questions, which are called meta questions, would give you ideas or pointers on those most important goals which you really, truly want to achieve.