Am I asking the right questions?

I have been examining some of the fundamental aspects of my life and have been trying to go past the surface issues to get to the core of what ails me. The more I search my inner being and try to figure out the “truth” of my existence, the more I keep running around in circles. I can summarize the way I feel by saying that I feel like a man with one foot nailed to the floor. No matter how hard or fast that man runs, he can do nothing but run in circles. To change, the man either has to nail down the other foot or pull out the original nail. Since I don’t want to be stuck, I want to pull out the first nail.

The problem for me is that I keep running into my own contradictions, hypocrisy, and conundrums. I feel at odds with myself. The definitions that help me frame my world really don’t make sense any more. I keep trying to ask questions in different ways. I keep getting the same answers and they are all wrong. Or at least I don’t like how they sound.

I am moving more and more to the point where I think that all of my assumptions are wrong. Somehow, what I was taught in school, what I learned on jobs, and what I observed and learned in relationships just doesn’t fit how I experience the world. I have begun to feel like I have wasted a lot of my life on pursuing dreams and things that really don’t mean a whole hell of a lot. In short, I think that maybe I have been looking at my life from the wrong angle.

I read a book a couple of years ago called 4-Hour Work Week by a guy named Tim Ferriss. This book was chock full of nuggets of wisdom and real strategies to cut down on the clutter in your life. The best thing that he said in the book was that most people are making a mistake in how they pursue their goals. He said that everyone always asked, “What do you want to do with your life?” To me, that question is too final and limiting. It gives me the impression that this is all that I will be allowed to do forever.

Ferriss said that instead we should asking, “What makes you excited?” To me, that question is much more open ended. It allows for growth and change and redefinition. I can change my mind and my direction without having to justify myself to the outside world. I can more easily feel that I not locked in to a set of decisions because of some form of expectation. Life becomes more interesting because an element of passion is introduced that was carefully destroyed by formal education, economic necessity, and family expectation.

After remembering all of this, I began to think some deep thoughts about how else I had trapped myself. Can I ask myself these big life questions in better ways? Do I have to be locked into any certain path to find happiness and success? Can I reframe the way I approach things? Am I on the right path? If I am on the wrong path, how much time and energy have I wasted? Am I asking the right questions? Should I even be asking questions? If I don't ask questions, what should I do instead? (And the cycle continues.)