Checking in with Life:
What Are the Two Critical Questions to Ask Yourself?
Much of my health and life practice involves a simple process I call checking in with myself. I take stock of various aspects of my health and my being to experience how things are working and how genuinely I am living. It is both diagnostic and mindful, has proven effective and grounding. The poet Mary Oliver calls it paying attention, to yourself and not a screen or other distraction. I start every day with this check in with my inner self.
Many times, all systems are go but not always. Noticing when something is not working well or is not quite right requires that I give myself permission to experience what is usually either discomfort or unease. Sometimes it’s physical, sometimes emotional, and sometimes spiritual – or a combination of all three. This deeply honest experience comes from my gut or my conscience, not my thinking mind.
The source of my discomfort or unease could be a physical symptom that needs attention, like a stiff joint or muscle that is injured, overworked, or otherwise inflamed. Or I could be feeling a sense of unease that portends something is off or a shift is underway inside my psyche.
The grandaddy of all the checking in I do involves checking in with life. Am I living the life I want to be living? is a very big question that I ask myself regularly.
This question becomes particularly poignant with the approach of later life and our perception that time is running out to change things. If the answer to this question is “No”, I need to get myself back on track. Keeping the capacity to grow, change, and experience life – and not simply “get old” – is what my book and this website are all about.
The first time I had a big check in with life was over 15 years ago when I was 57. I realized, or more accurately was woken up by a thunderbolt of an insight, that I was entering the “third third” of my life – my last years as a living being on this planet.
I had many choices to make about how I wanted to experience those years. I had to honestly answer what, and who, matters to me. The answer that came immediately was being a present, active father to my two young daughters. As I followed that singular path more answers and insights came my way, like wonder for the experience of health and life. The result is the journey I have been on ever since. My health practices are a means to continually support paying attention to what and who matters to me. The profound and deep experience of life that comes from asking and answering these questions has been the ultimate bonus of these wonderful years.
Checking in with my life is a subtle process. It is part awareness and acceptance of what comes spontaneously. It is filled with a ruthless honesty about how I feel and what is true. It comes more from conscience and gut than thinking, but it takes all my human faculties to acknowledge what is, right here and right now, and not what was or might be. Acknowledging what is comes with a built-in potential for change and growth that I never experienced as strongly before this. What is becomes what could be.
Another critical question I ask myself is What do I want? When I ask myself this, I’m not talking about the circumstances of life, such as material possessions or travel destinations or having more stuff. I am talking about the inner experience of life. What qualities do I want to foster, ones that will help me experience life more fully, teach me something, and help me grow? Again my entire health journey supports and intertwines with answering these questions.
Self-Realisation Never Ends
The spirit of self-realization is a concept I came across many years ago in the work of famed psychoanalyst Dr. Karen Horney. (I am still a board member of the Karen Horney Clinic in New York City.) She said that along with physical needs and the need for love and understanding we are all born with a basic, and lifelong, instinct to continue to grow inside and realize who we are, to ever become the selves we were meant to be. In her last book, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realisation, she explores how emotional blocks keep us from realizing our fullest potential.
This is the territory of the spirit and psyche, both of which are fueled by, and coexist with, the biological body. Keeping this flame of self-realization alive throughout life is as important as any other aspect if you want to lead a life that matters. This work can be done at any age, yet I have found that it has come to me more organically in later life, when the hustle and bustle of work and family recede.
Checking in is my way of asking myself how I am doing. It is a benevolent self-appraisal. It is not meant to open the door to self-criticism, although it sometimes presents itself that way. When it does, I need to work my way through that feeling as well. The flame of self-realization is always alive and bright inside, but it sometimes is obscured by self-criticism. This is a big part of how and why I do what I do – what motivates me. Asking these two critical questions can be a big springboard to realizing things about yourself that need realizing. It certainly has been the case for me.
Take a moment, and a breath, to honestly feel these two questions inside, in your conscience and your body:
· Am I living the life I want to be living?
· What do I want?
Listen deeply for the answers. They are your starting point for what matters.
