Do You Ask This Question?
– Monday Mindset –

Today’s Monday Mindset: Do You Ask This Question?

All right. I just had to share this because this was too good.

And it comes out of last week’s Monday Mindset, Take the Long View on asking yourself, “Will I regret this decision?” And Robie Roberson from our PGC family sent me an email in follow-up to that Monday Mindset and said, “I think there’s an even deeper question about who we want to be aspirationally that can help influence our actions.” And I loved it so much. I said to Robie, “Hey, can I share this?” And he was good with it. So big shout out. Thanks, my man Robie.

And here you go. Here’s the question to ask yourself.

And I want to just even pull back on this question because I was with my daughter, Anna, and her friend, Kate. And Kate was trying to think of what direction she wanted to go, well, my daughter too, in terms of school and her future.

They’re both getting ready for university. And what do they want to study? Where do they want to go in terms of their career and their life? People continually ask young people, “So what do you want to do with your life?”

And while that’s an okay question, all the research shows most people change careers three or four times. So who really knows? I’m still trying to figure out my life.

And so for any young person, I think there’s a much better question to ask. And the question is not, “What do you want to do?” A much more valuable question is, “Who do you want to be in the future?”

So we actually sat down over a meal and talked through with my daughter, Anna, and her friend, Kate, “Who do you want to be as a friend?” And we discussed that.

And they each shared, and we shared, my wife, Kate, and I as well, who we want to be as friends. And then we said, “Who do you want to be as a family member? And who do you want to be as a person in this world?” And we discussed these aspirational characteristics that each one of us want to live out.

And if you want a great question to ask a young person, ask them to think about who they want to be, because when you think about that question, it gives you a vision for your best self, who you truly want to be.

And my recommendation to you is if you’ve not really sat down and really clearly identified your values, what’s most important to you, the character qualities that you want to live with, whether it’s humility, or generosity, or faith, or responsibility, or diligence, whatever the qualities you want to espouse, get super clear on them.

I would encourage you to write them down. At PGC Basketball Camps, we have what we call commitment statements. And in a commitment statement, we actually take the future and pull it into the present and use it as an affirmation, an “I am” statement. And it’s really a declaration of our heart’s desire, of not what we want to do, not what we want to accomplish, but who we want to be. Because when you get the who right, you’ll eventually get the what right, and that’ll get you the results that you ultimately want.

But I think we make the mistake of not asking that question. Thanks to Robie for helping me come back to the source, the deeper question. And that’s the benefit of community. We make each other better, don’t we? And thank you to those in our PGC community who continually challenge me and make me better as well. It’s who I want to be. I want to be a person that learns from others and that’s continually curious and good and getting better.

So my challenge to you today is wherever you’re at in life, whatever age and stage, ask yourself the question, who do you want to be?

And then anytime you have an important decision, and even the day-to-day decisions, ask yourself, “Is this who I want to be?” So if you’re a young person and you’re at a party on a Friday night, and everybody is drinking or getting high around you, ask yourself, “Is this who I want to be?” If you’re tempted at a store to steal, ask yourself, “Is this who I want to be?” If you’re tempted to cheat on a test, “Is this who I want to be?” If you’re an adult thinking about cheating on your taxes, “Is this who I want to be?” If you’re thinking about cheating on your spouse, “Is this who I want to be?” If you’re thinking about being deceptive to a friend, is that who you want to be?

I think there’s no better question to ask than, “Is this in line with who I want to be?”

So first of all, get clear on who you want to be. And then regularly ask yourself that question, “Is this who I want to be today?”

When I ask myself the question, it helps me to drop resentments. It helps me to drop a negative perspective because I’m committed to being an uplifting, positive, forgiving person. It helps me to shift what I do in any given moment because I want to live out the person that I am becoming.

So my challenge to you today is to ask yourself the question in any situation, “Is this who I want to be?” Put that into practice.

That’s your Monday Mindset.