103: What is Your Daily Question?

I'm very happy to invite you to participate in this very simple transformation exercise designed to get you present to the daily questions you are asking yourself. What are they and what is their impact on your actions as a result?

Transcript

What if your life was a dance?

What if you could learn to perform it with grace and power?

My name is Tudor Alexander and I want to be your partner as we choreograph the dance of life.

Join me as we share in some of the most meaningful life lessons and strategies that I've discovered in my career as a professional athlete and entrepreneur.

We'll talk business,

Transformation,

Gratitude,

And everything in between as we dance our way through life.

Together we'll learn and navigate life's changes and dance to whatever the music is playing.

Are you ready?

It's time for the dance of life.

Today we're talking about a topic that I have brushed on before if you have been listening to the show for a while.

Check out episode 23.

It's called What is Your Slogan?

It's a very interesting episode that I put together basically a transformational exercise,

Very simple idea,

But very powerful.

It's called What's Your Slogan?

And basically figuring out what is the slogan to your life.

Whether you have created it or not,

There is a slogan there and that is basically accessing the language that goes on in our mind.

We create limiting beliefs,

We create hopes and dreams,

We create fears.

Everything that we experience has a layer of language and meaning to it.

The slogan is a great way to encapsulate that because it's a very powerful statement.

It's something that conveys a picture,

Conveys a meaning,

It conveys a lot about your values as a business.

When a business has a slogan,

It's designed to convey to you in a very short and effective way,

What do they believe in?

What can they produce?

What can they give you?

Who are they about?

That kind of thing.

Having a slogan for your life,

Whether you realize it or not,

You may already have one and maybe that's one of learned helplessness.

Maybe that's one that your slogan is,

I'll never get anything done,

Or I'm really just lazy or whatever,

You can count on me to fail or something like that.

Those don't sound very empowering.

Those don't sound like something we would choose consciously.

You're right,

You probably wouldn't consciously choose that,

But would you realize that in reality we create these mental linguistic constructs for ourselves all the time?

That's the crazy part.

When you realize it,

Of course you want to let it go and you want to change it,

But being aware of it first is the key because we're constantly chattering to ourselves.

We're constantly making meaning,

Talking about the world,

Saying how it is,

How things happen,

Why they happen,

What do they mean,

And what do we mean in that whole situation.

We're constantly creating a linguistic structure about everything in our life.

You already have a slogan.

What is that slogan?

What is the slogan surrounding your job?

What is the slogan surrounding your health,

Your career,

Your relationship with your loved one,

Your family?

There's a slogan for everybody and discovering it will help give you an access to not only changing your behavior so you can change your results,

But also creating a different slogan and playing around and having fun and experimenting with different slogans.

Language has power to create.

You have to really believe that.

Language is a very powerful tool.

It is the tool that we use to create everything.

A conversation leads to action,

Which leads to results in the world.

That conversation could be with yourself or it can be with somebody else,

But the point is that talking,

Powerful talk,

Not just gossip or complaining or pointless talking or use of language,

Powerful talking can really get things done.

That's the impetus for great things.

When you really put your attention and your energy into what is your slogan,

Basically creating a slogan for your life,

That can really mobilize your actions and your emotions and your visualizing mind,

The pictures that you create.

I call it painting future pictures.

It's true.

We create these future pictures that we live into that get us excited to move forward through our creative mind.

That happens through language as well.

Words elicit pictures.

Create a slogan.

Listen to that episode.

Check it out.

Let me know what you think.

This episode is a similar type of thing.

I'll mention another episode.

It's episode 32.

It's my interview with one of my best buddies,

Elijah or DJ Embrace.

We talked about his role as a DJ and how he transforms a regular space into a party,

Into a venue,

Into an experience for the people.

One of the things he said in there,

I interviewed a lot of people this year on transformation.

I took a little bit from each one.

One of the things I got from his interview was the power of intent,

The intent that we project onto our day,

Onto our goal.

He comes into his event and says,

Okay,

What's my intent with this?

That guides his picture-making mind.

It guides his actions,

How he's going to go about playing the playlist,

That kind of thing.

It's all about intent.

The intent colors the direction of what you do.

With that in mind and with the other episode,

What's your slogan?

This episode is called,

What is Your Question?

I thought about this episode because if you listen to the last two episodes about giving happiness,

Part one and part two,

How I have come to the point in my life where I'm not going to worry about money anymore.

I'm self-employed,

I'm making a good amount of money and it's never going to be an issue again.

I just know it.

I know in my heart of hearts,

It's not about that anymore.

I'm not in the rat race in that sense anymore that I used to be.

I'm certainly still working and I want to be financially independent.

The point is that I'm finally making what I deserve to make and I'm in a state that I'm very happy and proud of myself and I feel overflowing with joy and abundance about giving back to people.

It's all about giving back.

I asked myself,

I'm like,

Okay,

It's really what kind of question am I asking myself every day?

What more can I give?

How can I give more?

That's been the question on my mind in the last few weeks and months,

Especially since those experiences.

How can I give more?

That's really what matters.

It's not where can I get more money,

How can I make more money,

How can I get more lessons,

How can I increase my website traffic.

There's a lot of questions that we ask ourselves.

There are a lot of questions that we ask ourselves and those questions,

Some of them are meaningless,

Some of them are just empty chatter in your mind and certainly that's normal.

This is about drawing your awareness to the questions that you ask yourself and specifically setting a question for the day.

Set a question for the day as an intent.

What is your question?

The question that's going to guide your actions that day.

You are already asking your question without realizing it.

You're asking in the morning,

How am I going to survive this day?

How can I get more energy?

I'm exhausted.

How am I going to survive traffic?

How am I going to deal with my boss when I get to work?

When you wake up and you're exhausted and you're tired,

Already you are asking yourself questions.

We are naturally constantly thinking.

We're constantly thinking about the next thing.

We're constantly thinking about how to survive,

How to get energy,

How to manage our life.

We're managers and that's fine but don't be just a manager.

Be a leader.

Take action.

Think of the big picture.

Go beyond.

Give more.

Give back.

Give happiness like in those last two episodes that I talked about.

How can I give more?

That is the framing question of my day and throughout the day you're going to suffer lulls in performance.

You're going to get low on energy.

You're going to have something unexpected happen to you.

You're going to have conflict.

You're going to have shortage.

All these things that just happen because impermanence is a situation we cannot ever change.

So,

It is in dealing with those changes and coming back to the guiding principles that are shaping our actions in a consistent way.

That's where the life is lived.

So,

One of those principles is setting an intent for the day and coming back to it because certainly what you set in the morning may not live with integrity throughout the whole day because of,

Like I said,

All those things that change.

You might get into conflict.

You might spill your coffee on your pants.

You might whatever.

Something will happen unexpectedly.

So,

Being able to set the intent is the first step.

Being able to keep the intent with good habits and awareness and practice is the second step.

So,

The first step is setting your intent and to do that really you have to first realize that there is already something there.

So,

In that sense realize that your mind is already chattering and because it's already chattering it's full of already questions.

It's already full of those questions.

How am I going to survive?

How am I going to get energy?

How am I going to get to work?

I'm late.

You know,

That kind of step.

It's already full.

So,

It's not going to have any room for anything else creative.

You have to empty your mind and in order to empty it you have to quiet it and find stillness.

For this everybody is different.

Sometimes people like to meditate.

Sometimes you know for me I like to wake up with enough time in the morning that I can have a little bit of espresso and quiet time to myself and go through my little morning routine so I can clear my mind and set an intent.

If you're in a rush you cannot set an intent,

Period.

You cannot ask yourself creative questions like,

What can I do more for today?

Or what can I learn today?

What can I discover?

What can I help somebody with?

You know,

That kind of thing.

You don't have room for that if you're rushing and stressed out.

And now let's say that happens.

Okay,

Great.

So,

Now structure that stillness into your day somehow.

Somehow structure that stillness so that you can find that empty space in your mind and at least adjust course so that the whole day isn't just running you over like a tide and you just roll over and give in.

You know,

So sometimes it happens.

It happens to me all the time and I consider myself very organized.

But when you're burning the candle at both ends,

Especially if you're an entrepreneur,

You know,

I wake up at seven,

Eight in the morning and I'm not done until 12 o'clock at night working either,

You know,

Dancing or teaching or doing business stuff,

Mentally,

You know,

Writing,

Whatever.

I'm constantly active.

So,

Sometimes,

Rarely,

But sometimes I sleep in and I wake up and I go,

Crap,

Like,

You know,

I'm running late and I don't have time to go through my usual set of routines.

But then,

Okay,

There's some downtime throughout the day.

Relax,

Take some deep breaths,

Have some tea,

Find a quiet spot.

Okay,

What's my intent for the rest of the day?

The morning was hectic.

It was crazy.

But what's my intent for the rest of the day?

And how you find your intent is you can ask yourself a question.

What do you want for today?

You know,

And make it a meaningful question.

Make it something having to do with contribution.

Notice where your attention is.

Is it internal or is it external in the sense that,

You know,

What do your questions revolve around?

Are they revolving around what you're going to get from other people?

Are they evolving around survival?

You know,

How you're going to survive?

You know,

Or are they more meaningful?

Are they about what can I give?

What can I learn and discover?

What can I,

You know,

Create?

You know,

These are kind of more meaningful,

Fulfilling questions that will steer your day in the right direction,

In a more creative direction.

So set your question for the day based on contributory,

You know,

Directions on a personal growth direction,

Something that's going to excite you,

Something that will challenge you to be uncomfortable,

To learn something,

To discover,

To try something new.

What can I try new today?

That's a great,

You know,

That's a great question.

I had an episode,

This one I don't remember off the top of my head,

But it's somewhere in there in the earlier episodes.

It's the seven ways that we can transform,

You know,

And I got those from all the interviews that I did with people.

And you know,

Intent was one of them,

But you know,

Language is another.

Like what can I reframe today?

That's an example of a good question.

What can I,

You know,

Learn or discover?

Like we said that one already,

You know,

So,

You know,

Check out that episode,

You know,

What can I be grateful for?

That's another one.

Gratitude is a great way to have an immediate transformation.

You know,

What can I be grateful for today?

So find that episode.

There's seven ways to create transformation immediately in your life and frame a question around one of those points.

Take one of those points and use that to create a question for the day.

You can have one for each day of the week,

Seven days.

And set that intent.

Find you know,

What is your baseline?

So first you got to find your baseline.

How are you waking up in the morning?

Are you stressed out?

Are you not budgeting enough time?

And fix that.

Create nothing.

Create some nothing.

Have some space.

And then create the intent for the day.

And then step three,

Let's say in this case,

So step one is nothing.

Find nothing,

Stillness.

Step two is create your question on one of those seven areas of the transformation.

Easy ways to do it.

And step three is check in.

Check in to yourself on an hourly basis where you are with your goal.

You know,

Sometimes I'll start a session with somebody and if it's an hour and a half and sometimes I just check out,

You know,

Because I'm doing a lot and I'm exhausting my body.

So sometimes I just check out and it's like,

Oh wow,

Man,

Let me get back into this 100% participation.

What more can I give?

What more can I give?

That's my question.

At least for the time being,

That's my question every day.

And it doesn't have to be the same one every day,

But I'm choosing it to be the same one every day.

So create a question and check in repeatedly.

Notice how your questions will change if you're stressed out.

You know,

Stress and impermanence comes into your life that day.

It's going to go from being all creative and roses and all those kind of things into,

Oh my gosh,

How am I going to have money for this?

Or you know,

All these kind of worry-based questions or fear-based questions.

So monitor yourself.

That's step three is a continual,

You know,

Monitoring and awareness and reframing and getting back and adjusting and getting back,

Getting back to your intent.

So use that as a tool.

You know,

It's all about tools.

This whole year has been a discovery for me about a variety of tools that I've been using for the last 15 years and how I can articulate those and share them with people like you that are listening,

That are curious,

That want to grow,

That want to create change in their life.

Because that's how I am.

I want to create change.

I want to create meaningful change in my life and in other people's lives.

You know,

Life is short,

Man.

Life is short.

Take some sand and pour it in a cup and notice how time just flies by.

Life is short and it's too short in the sense to really live it all just for yourself.

It's very satisfying when you can make a difference in someone else.

And we live for that.

You know,

It's absolutely rewarding.

And so you have to frame your questions in the direction that's going to give you the maximum reward,

Which is in a contributory or a personal growth direction.

So hope that helps.

Hope you've enjoyed these episodes.

We've got a couple more to go and the year is almost over.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable that the year is almost over.

Thank you so much for joining me all this time and being here and listening.

That's one of the greatest things that we can give anybody is the gift of our listening.

So I'm incredibly grateful for you and for your listening ears during all these times that have made episodes from the very beginning of January.

It's been a year.

It's been almost a year.

So thank you so much for being with me and we'll see you soon for some interviews and the final farewell episode of the year.

So have a great rest of your week.

Thank you.

Bye.

Reviews

VERY Thought-Provoking and Inspirational❣️🙏🏻💕

Thank you for a great way to start the day. I think what can I be grateful for is a great question. For me how can I grow today is one I will use as well

Really enjoyed the talk! A good reminder about taking time each morning and I like how it is about asking a question. I never realize that yes I am already asking these questions without realizing it. 🙏🏻