Twenty Questions You Should Ask Yourself Each Sunday

Thanks Joe, I like you too, very much.

I've actually been doing a bit of thinking about this, whilst reclining in bed last night with my eyes closed.

I'll be honest, until this morning, I didn't read any of that 20 question list, just scanned quickly, and realized "wow, what a load of horseshit." I then saw your post below that and clicked on the link and thought. "ah, the website where we now have the opportunity to purchase all these books and other 'tools' to enhance our lives."

Honestly? My life is already pretty enhanced. All this talk about "what are my biggest 'time sinks' (wtf? I hate jargon), "who do I have to thank this coming week?", "what were my biggest accomplishments last week", "where do I want to be in 3 years" makes me want to just walk out of the room.

To me, all this sounds geared to making people not trust themselves, not trusting their innate knowing of what is important to them. Making things more complicated, which I suppose makes getting stuff done feel more fulfilling to some. As in "gee, I knew I should just forget about forcing myself to stay up to all hours getting what I'm 'supposed' to get done, done. Why did I need to be told to just chill, it's small potatoes, and just go to bed earlier to actually feel better?"
Do we really have so little trust in ourselves that we question whether it's "right" to go to bed an hour or two earlier, and let whatever it is we had planned go?

I can wrap up what's important to me in one word.

Peace.

I don't have to ask myself every Sunday if that has changed. I don't even need to ask myself once in a while if that is still the word. I know what that word stands for, for me, and I don't have to explain it to anyone, or anal-yze it to myself.

Decades ago, I thought I had to buy into (That's another phrase that makes me want to vomit "buy into". It's basically saying "believe what we believe") the notion I Had to have some sort of a game plan for the next year, 3 years, and the elusive 5 year plan.

Talk about not trusting myself. So many things I questioned "will this fit into my 3 year plan?" Honestly? I never did have a plan for this 3 or 5 years, because nothing I could think of seemed either worth it, or good enough, or snazzy enough to share with others.

When I stopped questioning, worrying about how things fit into this plan, well, that's when life started happening. As life started happening, I enjoyed myself in where I was right then (and right now) and stopped wasting energy thinking about where I wanted to be later on. Don't get me wrong, my life didn't stagnate. I trusted things would change, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but change it would, whether I had it written down in a day planner or not.

I learned to trust that if my life was bringing me peace right now, it would continue to do so in the future.

I don't need to question myself. I need to continue to trust myself.

Trust yourself, you won't lead you wrong.

The other day I made Frank spill his OJ. I'm on a roll

Jesus H. Christ. How could anybody come up with 20 question one should ask himself…and not have even one dealing with why you take your eye off the ball so often during your downswing?

And putting…holy ****, I didn’t see a single question about putting. Putting is the most important part of the game, Joe. How the hell are you gonna improve your game if you don’t at least devote one question out of…how many was it, 50…to putting?

Anyway…some of that other unimportant stuff must matter to some people…so good luck with it.

That's why I asked "What questions are left out?" Obviously, putting is an extremely important, some might say the most important function of mankind. Why do people take their eye off the ball? It's not as though they anything else to look at beside their shoelaces. (Oh, I know, they are trying to get one more look at that superfine hind who just walked off the green and is headed for the next tee.
"Maybe if we hurry, we can get there before they tee off."

And you miss short by a foot and half.
Joe(and it's downhill.)Nation

Totally agree with everything you say, Chai. (I, too, have no idea what a 'time sink' is.) I abhor, hate and despise all parlor pop psychology and detest all literature connected with it. I'm OK, you're OK indeed. If everything I need to know I already learned in kindergarten, then why am reading this tripe, this self-serving nit of a book? Horse feathers and bull pancakes.

I did get a whiff of that too Andy, another reason my heart didn't leap reading it.

From experience, I got tired of people whose lives, after years of hanging around the rooms, were infinitely more fucked up than mine espousing meaningless crap at me.

Anyway, that's another subject.

I finally got around to looking at these 20 questions. I still can't seem to make myself read it all the way through all of them, just taking up too much time and saying too little. (sorry joe, it's just too much for me). It's like some of them say almost exactly the same thing, but not quite.

If I can boil it down to it's simplest form, (I opened another window so I can look at it while typing this) I'd make it the following...

Write a to-do list, celebrate crossing off items.
Communicate with others
Try not to waste time with crap that can wait, or doesn't have to be perfect. People who have to be perfect are annoying, and suck.
Be nice to others, help out.
Stop worrying, it's really not a big deal.....it's really not.
Think about some of the nice **** that's happened to you in the past week or 2.
If you fucked up, try not to do it again.
Trust yourself (mine)

To a certain extent, chai, even that's too long a list. 20 questions like that is absurd.

You know what Andy? I agree with you 100%.
As soon as I posted that I thought, wow, that's way too long.

Then I got distracted by thinking about a crossword puzzle while the plane I was in was going down (never mind, don't mind me)

How's this for a revision?

Communicate with others - they can't read your mind.
Be nice to others, help out.
Stop worrying, it's really not a big deal.....it's really not.
If you fucked up, try not to do it again.
Trust yourself, you're fine (mine)

Fellow poopers, there are no answers, just questions.

I like your list better than Jonathan's, Chai. But I will say this. If I were in a plane, and it was going down, I don't think I would be thinking about crossword puzzles or lists or much of anything except, "Holy ****! Pull up!! Pull up!!!"

I've been editing and/or proofreading books that endeavor to make people more positive, to improve the quality of people's lives. They contain lists like the one you gave, Joe.

On the one hand, I admire the effort. On the other hand, I think they're nuts. Not for wanting to improve things but for going through such a megilla-like regimen to get there. Maybe it works; maybe it doesn't.

I ask myself the same question every day. What day is this? Sometimes I get it right. Sometimes I don't. I may start out thinking that Wednesday is Thursday, but by the end of the day, I've got it right.

Ro(aiming low, but succeeding)berta

I think it's a fantastic idea to guide children to think, to imagine, visualise and think positive.

I am a great believer of affirmations. Though for the most part as my mission for 12 months is to do with business, so I can breathe.... Mine daily is " do what makes you money". Though I know money is the root of all evil, it's a necessity for survival and I am tired.

I walk the dogs 3, 4 times a week but as of last week, I walk myself everyday.. There is a sense of passion, peace, achievement, grounding... Is that meditation? I don't know but it's nice.

I am always a giver, never a taker and I will always live by that and tell others younger the same.

I too am happy with myself and don't need books or want books to increase my life.. But I do believe in affirmations (if I have spelt that right)...

One of my favourite sayings in my 20's was :-

"Those who believe they can and truly believe they can, can, AND, WILL"...

I still believe that today and remind myself often.

To be a better person is to be .... I don't judge.. Everyone is who they are. And, if you can give, to people, to animals, to someone who just needs "something"... that's the biggest gift.

I don't ask myself any questions... I tell myself, when I need a kick up the azz......

Or I tell myself, when I want to put it out there and believe.

Major Award for the best question yet.

I prefer to maintain awareness during the week and appreciate those moments as they occur. Reflection is ok, but too much analysis misses the moment.

How to put this into some kind of understandable sequence of sentences? We'll see. I pretty much have Chai's take, from my own experience of how I think, but I grew into that. I'm getting longer in the tooth and have some observations, good, indifferent, or bad, about myself.

I was an extremely obedient child, rarely questioning child, mad reader but pretty much an observer, gulper, of what I read. The crux came just before I turned eighteen, my seventeenth summer. There was a book by that name, as it happens. Anyway, as some know, I was signed up to be a postulant in an order of nuns who just knew I had a vocation (and so on). My very catholic parents had me go with my father on a three week trip to shoot an industrial film. I managed to fall-in-big-crush with one of the men on the trip, who didn't do anything wrong, then or in retrospect, but I was suddenly sure of "I don't want to be a nun".

I didn't immediately lose all my gullibility but that was the start of my becoming very self directed, wherever it led me. I still read a lot but got pickier about gulping down opinions. I changed majors a few times, and one choice was psychology. I made it through psych 1B and switched to microbiology - the psych data too messy to me. I bring that up since even then I was rolling my eyes about Freud, in full favor at the time, or so it seemed. So, by the time I was in my mid twenties I was quite full of myself and have pretty much stayed that way all these decades, meaning liking just being and figuring out what I think, which can change.

I figured out later on that I'm experiential - what people call "in the now". I am almost never bored, that just doesn't happen. I caught on that I'm pretty visually oriented, engaged with what I am seeing, however non great my actual vision. I'm not buddhist, though I gather there are similarities, and I don't meditate on purpose as something to do.

I do disagree with myself, watch myself flub up. I've been known to make lists, but they are usually limited to groceries and I often don't bother to look at them, seeing something better in the produce section, for example. So, this comes to would I ask myself 20 questions every Sunday?
I'd rather go back to the convent door of fifty years ago.

Self help books and a lot of advice in, say, Huffington Post, makes me cringe. Not all advice, some on a2k is pretty good. I've a number of real life psychologist friends I respect.

We have different journeys - I'm just explaining mine.

I think this is genius.
Joe(I think I've been looking around for something to distract me instead of becoming more aware of what is.)Nation

That, in a nutshell, is truth.

Thanks, osso.

Joe(I'm going to go take a nap.)Nation

Ha!
I too make lists, but guy things. Get oil changed; go to home depot for nails, etc. I'll get to home depot and see a cool power tool, forget about nails and curse myself after I get home 'cause I also forgot the oil change.

I write lists for at work of things that could get away from me if I didn't check it periodically. Even things that are routine. I do paper and outlook calendar reminders. Outlook is for regularly occurring, paper for "don't forget to get this out of the way by the end of the day or the morning.

I don't write grocery lists, besides the random item I seldom have to get.

I write a weekend to do list, and plan accordingly

Below is this weekends to do list, with X's next to what I've done. It gets added to throughout the day, and I most recently added to it at 9am today, Sunday. Some of these items appear weekly, i.e. "pay bills", "yoga", "stocks" "go to pool". It reminds me it's there, waiting. Some of the items below won't get done today, no matter, I know what's essential today.

X - Clean cat litter
X- Give cats bath
X - Flea bomb house
Clean guest bathroom (will probably get done next weekend)
Bills
X - Garden
X - Online Walgreens
X - Library
X - Yoga
Laundry (in process, won't get finished today, as far as folding
Read (in process)
Stocks
X - Mail ticket
Clean microwave
X- Vacuum
X- Clean Ceiling Fans

chai(there aren't even 20 things on that list)tea

When my dad discovered he might have Alzheimer's and before things got critical, he began carrying a small notepad and pencil. This is how he kept up with himself for 2 or 3 years until he finally forgot where he was driving and smashed up his car. He was physically unhurt, but went downhill quickly once he lost mobility. I guess I should pay more attention to those good habits