FeelGooder Asks: What Would You Do Differently?

Recently, a friend asked me a pretty challenging question—one that started me thinking differently, and sparked a course of action that has made a big difference in my everyday existence. So I thought I’d ask you that same question:

If you could do one thing differently today, what would it be?

What would you change? When I was asked this question, the answer was immediately clear: I’d do more writing. I’d spend an hour or two at work on my own creative writing.

The thing about this question is that it’s a small-time equivalent of the big life questions that tend to throw us: where do you want to go? What are your hopes and dreams? What do you want out of life?

If you’re anything like me, you can’t even begin to answer those questions in a logical, conscious way. Maybe you’re quite enjoying the way things are going anyway—maybe this is kind of what you want out of life. Perhaps.

The question “if you could do one thing differently today, what would it be?” removes the pressure from the equation and lets us home in on something that we really want, or something that’s really bugging us—something we want less of.

If your answer to the question was something like “I’d change the fact that I have to go to work—I’d do something else,” then that probably says something about how much you like your job, or your colleagues, or perhaps that you really need a day off or a holiday.

If your answer, like mine, was that you’d have more of something, then you might have struck on an unrecognized passion, or an unrealized desire.

So I’d realized I wanted to do more of my own writing projects. Great. The thing is that the answers you come up with for this question—your hidden desires—are likely to be achievable. I wasn’t saying “I’d write a novel”: all I wanted was a couple of spare hours to work on my own stuff. This is a pretty easy goal to achieve.

Indeed, within a week, I’d made the decision to clear at least half a day from my schedule each week to work on my own projects. Realizing that I wanted to do more writing in general, also I changed my working relationships to focus entirely on writing work, as well. Both these changes have worked out really well for me.

So, what about you? If you could do one thing differently today, what would it be?