If you can identify with the busyness that is 21st-and-a-quarter-century stress, and if you’re feeling a bit lost because of it, the road to lower levels of stress and higher levels of success may be difficult to find at first. Maybe you’re too tired or too busy doing life to contemplate possibilities. Or it hasn’t occurred to you that change is possible. Or you know that it is, but you can’t imagine where you’ll find the time or energy to do what it takes.

That’s the influence of 21st-and-a-quarter-century stress on your life. It draws down your mental, physical, emotional, and cognitive bandwidth until you lose sight of what is truly important to you.

A great first step to mitigate this kind of stress so that you can get to success, is to clarify what success even looks like for you. And, this process starts with a  simple question: What do you want?

Exploring how to find success with everything that’s important to you begins with your goals. Do you know yours? What do you want?

Do you get up most days excited for what’s ahead?

What are your goals for your career, finances, relationships, health… for your life?

When you align what you do and why you do it, you’re in a prime position to navigate toward great things. Remember, purpose is a powerful driver of success, and it’s one of the key reasons why goals matter.

Last week I shared how to set SMARTer goals that excite you, focusing on specific, measurable, accountable, resonant, thrilling goals. Learn to set SMARTer goals by starting with the what I call ‘The Big Little Question’.

The Big Little Question

What Do You Want?

The big little question is not an easy one to answer on the fly. It might even make you uncomfortable at first. Ask it anyway.  If you can dream it, you can do the freakin’ work to make it happen.

Be selfish. Make your responses about you and your vision of success at work, and in the rest of your life.

Friends and family may factor into your vision, but try to respond with focused attention on your own needs first. Gift yourself some time right now to start the process. Don’t overthink. Point form counts, and make sure you write your answers down.

The Big Little Question: What Do You Want?

• What does success look like to you?
• What or who is important to you in your daily life?
• What’s working in your life?
• What isn’t working?
• What or who receives energy that they don’t deserve from you?
• What needs to change?
• What do you want to try?

What do you want? The big little question that will help you get to the core of who you are and who you want to be. Keep asking it until the answers appear.

Until next time. I’m Michelle Cederberg, reminding you we’ve got one chance to do this life. I say Dare To Live It Big and dare to set SMARTer goals that truly clarify what you want for your career and life.

P.S. this post is an excerpt from my latest book The Success-Energy Equation. Read below to find out how to get your copy and take advantage of more information like this that will decrease stress and drive success.