What Would You Do If Your Success Was Guaranteed?

You may have heard this question in different guises. Here are some common examples:nn * "What would you do if you couldn’t fail?"n * "What would you do if you won a million dollars?"n * "What would you do if you had six months to live?"

Implicit in this sort of question is, "What if you had no excuses as to what you were doing with your life?"

What if there were no excuses in your life and nothing you could fall back on? You wouldn’t be able to say, "I don’t have enough money," or, "I have to wait until the children grow up."

We may not have a million dollars in the bank. We may be limited in many ways. Still, we must ask ourselves these important questions:nn * "What do I want to do with my life?"n * "How do I want to contribute?"n * "How do my goals fit within my value and my vision?"

Several years ago I had a client who had been diagnosed with cancer. She said that she didn’t know whether she was going to have six months or six years to live at that time.

She was sitting in the group with a number of other people and one of the questions we asked was, "What would you do if you had six months to live?" She said, "Well, actually, I’m facing that now." And the group started to discuss the question with her, "What would you actually do?"

She raised a very important point to her, which was, "If I knew I had six months to live, I would just spend all my money doing the things I wanted to do." She put this wonderful list together of where she’d travel, the relationships she would mend, the conversations she would have, and the contributions she would make to live a full and rich life in six months.

At the end, she said, "The problem is, I don’t know if I’ve got six months. What would happen if I did that and then ran out of money and realized I had several more years to live?"

Her real fear came into place.

"Yes," the other group member said, "but if you had lived life to the fullest for those full six months, it wouldn’t matter that you didn’t have any money because you really would have learned how to live."

If you had no excuses, what would you actually be doing? What sort of experiences would you have? What sort of relationships and conversations would you have?

This is a very important question to be mindful of because it will help you take responsibility for showing up and being who you want to be in the world.