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Looking at the best and worst days of the week, month or year allows me to understand the variance in my life. This reflection is beneficial to help me ask questions about myself. What did I do in the last month? Was my last year better or worse than the previous?

All of these questions are good, but am I asking the right questions? After I got home from listening to my 97-year-old grandpa’s speech at his wife’s (my grandma’s) 90^th birthday party, I began to realize that I wasn’t asking the right questions. I compiled a few different questions here that I hope will help you realize what is important for your rich life.

The Three Sieves

Recently, I read an article that talked about the lesson of The Three Sieves. This story has been attributed to Socrates and many others, but regardless of who said it, I think it is important to repeat it here.

One version of the story is told like this:

In ancient Greece, Socrates had a great reputation for wisdom. One day someone came to meet the great philosopher and said:

Visitor – Do you know what I just heard about your friend?

Socrates – One moment before you tell me, I would like to make you a test of the three sieves.

Visitor – The three sieves?

Socrates – Yes before telling anything about others, it is good to take the time to filter what you want to say.

Socrates – I call it the three-sieve test. The first sieve is the truth. Have you checked if what you are going to tell me is true?

Visitor – No, I just heard it.

Socrates – Very well. So, you don’t know if it’s true. We continue with the second sieve, that of goodness. What you want to tell me about my friend, is it a good thing?

Visitor – Oh no! On the contrary.

Socrates – You want to tell me bad things about him and you’re not even sure they’re true?

Socrates – Perhaps you can still pass the test of the third sieve of usefulness. Is it useful for me to know what you are going to tell me about this friend?

Visitor – Nope.

Socrates – So what you were going to tell me is neither true, nor good, nor useful. So why did you want to tell me?

In an age of information and dis-information, truths and fake news, it is good to take everything we hear through The Three Sieve test. As described by this article from the Canadian Government, these three questions revolve around truth, goodness, and usefulness. We should try to filter all thoughts and stories we hear through these questions.

Not only could this help prevent gossip, but it could ensure each of us focuses on important topics to share. Thereby, our overall discourse would improve with each other and provide space for productive conversations.

Precious Present

I started reading a new book called How To Want What You Have by Timothy Miller, PH.D. The very first chapter got me hooked on something called the Precious Present. The idea is what we have right now is precious and we should focus our thoughts on that.

The author then points out the obvious argument against this way of thinking. “If you learn to want what you have, will you still work hard to have a better life?” The idea of More (purposefully capitalized) is something the author says can lead us to not appreciate what we currently have.

The way to combat this is my favorite point. I’ll give you the full quote so it doesn’t lose its meaning.

Your primary motive will change from having a better life to having a good life. Working hard to have a better life will become something you might do as you deeply appreciate ordinary existence. When you learn to want what you have, you will start to live in accordance with the old saying that happiness is a way of traveling rather than a destination. When you really understand that, you might still strive for a better life, but you will not do it fanatically, obsessively, or to the point that your ambitions unnecessarily harm yourself, other people, or the planet.

How To Want What You Have by Timothy Miller, PH.D

This was a big point for me. I was afraid to want what I currently have. In my mind, that meant I was satisfied and wouldn’t be motivated to push for more. As the author points out, I can still strive for a better life. I will be directed in my approach because I know what I have is great, but I can still go after something better as well. This leads me to my next question…

Future Thinking

I recently listened to a Rich Roll podcast with Ari Wallach, who is a futurist. A futurist is a person who studies current trends and makes predictions about the future based on their studies of the past and the present.

The thinking that Wallach wants people to learn about is called Longpath – “an active way of being that cultivates future-conscious thinking and behavior to build more hopeful visions of the future, turn those visions into action, and foster more meaning in our lives and legacy.”

While listening to this podcast Wallach and Rich Roll brought up something that I found very interesting. A lot of the material we consume through video games, tv shows, movies, or other content is about how the world will end. There are natural disasters, civil unrest, aliens or a zombie apocalypse that we are told will occur in the not too distant future.

But what about some of the possible futures that are good? For example, solving world hunger is (probably) more likely to occur than Godzilla vs. Kong. We could also have a future in which we have a literacy rate of 100% instead of Mad Max: Fury Road.

We could start to envision what our future looks like. The practice of goal setting is one task that involves thinking about our future selves. This way we can ask the question that we all hope to be answered someday, “what do we want our future to look like?”

Are You Happy?

It was very timely when I was thinking about the last question I wanted to add to this article. I was catching up on the movies from the Marvel Comic Universe (MCU) this weekend and finally got around to watching Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Even if you have no idea who Doctor Strange is or ever watched a movie from the MCU, this clip should still resonate with you. It takes place at the end of a 2-hour epic in which the two characters in this clip barely survived after defeating the villain. In this scene, they are surveying the damage as the movie concludes.

The whole movie talks about how you could have a superpower to take the place of your other self in a different universe and live a different life. The villain wanted to do this so badly that she was willing to destroy everyone in her path to do this. What was her motivation?

She was unhappy in her current life. As we continue to look at our past, present, and future selves, we should make continue to ask this very simple question. And pause for 10 seconds before answering allowing ourselves to take inventory of our whole life to make sure it is in balance.