My heart was racing as I looked in her eyes.
I was about to tell my wife that I was ready to leave my job.
Even worse, I was going to leave without any plan of what I’d do next and with only about two months of runway before we’d be out of cash.
I’d put the conversation off all afternoon because I was afraid of how she’d respond. I mean, this was crazy, right?
No sane person leaves a cushy six-figure salary with great benefits when they have a wife and baby depending on them. Especially without a plan.
But, I didn’t feel insane. In fact, I felt like I had finally gained clarity for the first time in years. And, honestly, that’s what scared me the most.
Question #1
Earlier that day I’d asked myself a question that set in motion a chain of events that forever changed my life:
What do I want my life to look like?
It seems simple, obvious even. But for me at that time it was the most powerful question I could ask.
My job had become a toxic environment for me, so I started looking for another place to work. I was able to land several interviews at places I’d dreamed of working, but something was wrong. My heart just wasn’t in it. In a lot of ways I felt like I was just interviewing for the same job all over again.
While lost in thought walking the streets of downtown Nashville, suddenly something clicked. I stopped asking “What job do I want?” and started asking “What do I want my life to look like?”
And not just my life, but my family’s as well.
I started writing out the vision for our life in detail, and that subtle shift turned my world upside down because I realized that the path I was on was never going to take me where I wanted to go.
So, that evening I told my wife that I needed to make a change and that I had to do it before I talked myself out of it. Her response: “I’ve been waiting for you to come to that realization.” 😉
I walked into work the next day and told them I was done.
Question #2
A few months later, I was on a plane to New York City and catching up on some podcasts when I came across an interview with Jim Fortin that revealed the next question that would transform my life more than I’d ever thought was possible:
Who do I need to be to have the life I want?
As Jim explains, most people focus on asking what they need to do in order to have the life they want. But the problem is that the doing is only as effective as the being doing the doing. When you focus on being first, then the doing comes naturally.
This may sound like semantics, but it made all the difference. What it meant for me was a new awareness of and focus on reprogramming all the old thought patterns, habits, and ways of being that created my previous circumstances.
I drastically underestimated the amount of transformation this approach could create in such a short amount of time, and I owe most of my success in starting a business to this second question.
So, let me ask you: what do you want your life to look like and who do you need to be to have that life?
Take a few minutes to write down your answers. It may just change your life, too.