What are the “3″ biggest questions of your life?

1. Who am I?
2. What Is My Life Purpose?
3. What is My Life Plan?

I’ve been thinking about these three questions a great deal lately. I’m giving the keynote week after next at the Indiana Aviation Association’s annual conference at the Belterra Casino and Resort. I thought it would be clever to wear a Captain’s hat and, as I approach the podium to speak, I plan on tossing little packages of pretzels to the hundreds of aviators gathered there to hear my talk.

Yes, I actually ordered a pilots hat and a box of individually-wrapped pretzels, just like the kind you get on a commercial flight today. Just enough pretzels in each package to make you crave more.

I’m calling my keynote address: “Successful People Fly First Class: Upgrade to a Happier, Healthier YOU!” Among the things I’ll be saying is that, in order to live happier…to live healthier…you must get around to asking and answering the three biggest questions of life.

Nobody can answer these questions for you. Not your parents, your spouse, and, nope, not even your religion. Especially not your religion. These questions must be probed in the one-and-only-place they can be answered – deep within your soul.

Take each question and ask it of yourself.

1. Who am I? One of the biggest mistakes each of us makes throughout much of our lives is to confuse who we are with who we aren’t. Here’s who you are not.

You are not your name.
You are not your occupation.
You are not your accomplishments.
The way I put it often is, you are not your trials, tragedies, triumphs or titles.
You are not your body or your thoughts either.

When you look into the mirror each morning, the image you see you may think is you. But it is not. What you are seeing is what Albert Einstein called “an optical illusion in consciousness.”

You could not be your body, however, because that would beg the question: “Which body?” Your body is constantly dying and rising, changing every few minutes. That’s right. When we began understanding molecular modification, we discovered that the cells in your body – and there are trillions of them – are constantly changing.

Which is why, among other things, you are aging. Which is a nice way of saying, you’re dying.

You say, “Well, if I am not my body, my mind, my titles, trials, trophies or tragedies, then who the heck am I?”

You are the awareness that is aware you are none of these things.

Why is this question important? And, how does this answering this questions contribute to my personal happiness and health?

Unless you constantly remind yourself that you are none of these things, you’ll discover you get attached to these illusory images of yourself. Which explains why people in our culture resist aging and growing old with as much aversion as you do the Ebola virus. People work out in gyms in excessive fashions, eat and diet excessively, and seek magical products and potions that promise to reverse the aging process and, the truth is, we get caught up in such excessive madness because aging and death scare the hell out of us. As a consequence, we cling to almost anything that perpetuates the illusion of permanence.

Become the observer and notice when you’re getting too attached to anything external to your inner, invisible you. Make this your spiritual practice. You’ll discover the difference it makes to live detached, as the Buddha put it, to anything that is material and transitory.

The Buddha called it detachment; Jesus called it denial. In fact, he instructed that followers should “deny self”(Matt. 16:24). Not your inner self – your soul – but all of these “substitute” self’s we might call them. Little ego attachments – titles, trophies, tragedies, and even time. We can get attached to “time” too. And, time is really just an illusion. There is only this moment. Right now. This second. That’s it. Whether it’s 4:30PM today or 8:00AM tomorrow – when either actually shows up, it does so as now.

Do you know who you are? Don’t make the mistake of thinking you are who you really aren’t.

The second of the biggest questions of life is this…

2. What is My Life Purpose?

Here’s what each of us needs to remember about life: the position you hold will never be as important as the purpose that holds you. What is your life purpose? The overarching reason for your being here?

Your happiness in life depends on how you answer this.

When I was a young minister I was misled to believe that the purpose of life is to get prepared for the life to come. So I went about telling everybody I met that they needed “to get right with God.” Otherwise, they would miss heaven, wind up in hell, and so thwart God’s purpose for their lives.

I was just misguided in this thinking, however. That’s NOT why any of us show up. But, unfortunately, it took me nearly a lifetime to figure that out.

God did not create the world so the world could get ready for another world, anymore than God created you to live this life just so you could get ready for the next life.

The whole notion is pretty silly and does little to answer this big question. Nope, you’re here, either by some random accident or by divine design but, in either instance, you’ve got to figure out why you did show up.

And, if you ask this question, and refuse what many religious folk do and that is cop out and take the easy road of avoiding this hard question while hiding behind religious rhetoric like, “I just believe the Bible,” you will be much better off.

It’s OK to “believe the Bible” on this question of why you showed up. But just make sure your believing has been forged in the crucible of question asking and seeking. If you’re just using your religion to avoid asking the question for yourself, then your faith is phony. Period. And, the only person being fooled is you.

Mark Twain used to say, “The two most important days of your life are these: the day you are born and the day you figure out why.”

Have you figured it out? When you do, this purpose will serve as your internal GPS system. It will guide you in every decision of life you face.

Which is, of course, the real reason you must ask this hard question: “What is My Purpose?”

The third of the biggest questions is this:

3. What is My Life Plan?

For those of you who follow my posts regularly, you’ll likely remember the story/post I wrote last spring on the return flight from a speaking gig in Los Angeles, CA.

Remember the story of the baggage handler I, and other travelers, met on our short ride from the Airport Hilton to the LA airport? The middle aged man all of us marveled over because of his incredible work ethic, attitude, and ingenious method he had developed for loading everyone’s luggage on board the bus, driving us to the airport, and remembering whose luggage belonged to whom, as he helped every passenger disembark from the bus?

I’ve included the link here to that original post for those of you who never saw it.

I was the last one, you might remember, that he dropped off in front of the Delta terminal. As I got off the bus, I handed him a twenty dollar bill and my business card.

Remember what he told me when I asked him for the secret to his remarkable, as well as successful attitude, work ethic, and method for managing so many passengers?

He said, “Sir, I just try to live by something my daddy taught me when I was just a young man. He would say to me,

‘Son, you can’t get there from here; you can only get here from there.’”

“Wait, wait,” I said. “I’ve got to write that down. Wow, that’s really good.”

He repeated it so I could write it down. But I ask you, “What did he mean? What was he saying, ‘You cannot get there from here; you can only get here from there?’”

He was saying that everybody needs a life plan – a goal to shoot for…so you’ll know where you’re going.

If clarity about your life purpose is what keeps you between the lines, so to speak,…keeps you grounded…helps you stay rooted to life and guides you in your daily decision-making, a LIFE PLAN is the goal or goals you establish for your life.

Everyone needs a goal or goals in life. Once you get clarity on where you’re going…where you’re headed, then you will begin to see clearly the steps you must take in order to get there.

Now, this is how to live a healthier, happier life.

Ultimately, its not what you do in life that matters all that much – the world must have baggage handlers just as it must have CEO’s. We can’t have all of both. If you know your purpose, however, the position is secondary. The position is never as important as the purpose.

That’s my point in the second of these questions.

If you know what your goals are, then, and only then, will you get clarity on how to reach those goals – the steps you must take.

That’s my point in this third question. And, it’s what the baggage handler – whose name I unfortunately never got – was trying to say to me. “You cannot get there from here; only here from there.”

Whatever your position in life, set life goals, attitudinal goals, work goals, etc. When you set goals for yourself, you make life happen. You’ll achieve infinitely more than you ever would by simply letting life happen to you.

Who am I?

What is My Purpose?

What are My Life Plans?

Answer these three questions and I think I can promise that life for you will be lived at a much happier, healthier level.

Dr. Steve McSwain is an author, speaker, thought leader and spiritual teacher. His books and blogs inspire spiritual seekers around the world. He is a devoted follower of Christ but an interfaith activist as well. He is frequently heard to say, in the words of Mother Teresa, “I love all religions; but I’m IN LOVE with my own.” Read more from Dr. McSwain on his blog Your Best Life Now.