On this finally glorious spring day, I had lunch in the park with Adam Bucko, co-founder of the Reciprocity Foundation, a five-year-old New York City-based organization that helps homeless youth heal from trauma, gain skills, and develop full-fledged careers. The group especially helps kids who want to do creative/media work like fashion, design, writing, and PR–plus many of them want to make a difference by entering arenas like green business and socially conscious entrepreneurship.

And there’s a holistic element involved–the org does its best to address mind, body, and spirit with things like regular yoga classes. In this vein, they ask the approximately 300 students they work with a year three questions. This is from Adam (pictured above standing in the middle):

“We use these questions to help homeless youth get in touch with their purpose in life. I developed these questions based on my own journey and practice of coming to my authentic self and my mission in the world (the second question was inspired by Andrew Harvey’s sacred activism). I discovered that when we work with these questions (not so much trying to answer them but to live them) something very authentic awakens in our students and their lives change. They move from wanting to have a career to discovering their true vocation.”

These are fantastic queries for just about anyone on the planet, especially those of us whose life compass often feels broken. Here they are:

(1) What makes you truly alive?