Our lives are a response to the questions we ask. Toward the end of each year, I like to reflect on the year that has been and the year that is to come. I plan a little and dream a lot. Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, I exchange questions with a group of friends. The questions are designed to encourage and challenge us to make the coming year amazing.

It’s amazing how the right question can change the direction of your life, provide instant and startling insight, and allow you to see things you have never seen before.

Here are the twenty-five questions I put together to share with my friends this year. I hope they lead you to new dreams, rare discoveries, and the best year of your life… so far!

#1. When was the last time you felt fully alive?

#2. What do you believe about your past that is keeping you from your future?

#3. If you could only accomplish one thing next year what would you like it to be?

#4. What needs to be on your NOT TO DO list next year?

#5. What are you dissatisfied with at this time in your life?

#6. What do you need most from your friends next year?

#7. How do you want to feel differently one year from now than you do today?

#8. Are you serious about making this the best year of your life?

#9. Who do you want to help in powerful ways?

#10. How do you feel about the year ahead right now? Is that how you want to feel about it all next year?

#11. If you retired on December 31, what would you spend your time doing next year? What piece of that can you do even though you aren’t retiring?

#12. What ten books do you want to read next year? Make a list. Check them off one at a time.

#13. Who do you want to love more and better than ever before next year?

#14. Have you given up on some part of your life? Which part? Why?

#15 If you could vacation anywhere in the world next year, where would you go?

#16. If you gave one thing away each day for a whole year how would your life be different?

#17. What do you do that requires only 10% of you and what do you do that engages 90% of you… or more?

#18. If you knew you only had one year to live, what would you make sure you did?

19# What is something you have to do, for if you do not, your soul will start to die?

#20. What's the one thing you could do every day next year that would make you a-better-version-of-yourself ?

#21. When were you happiest this year?

#22. What is it that you really want? Do you even know? If you don't, that's okay. But if that's the case, isn't it time you spent some time in the classroom of silence working it out.

#23. What are you proudest of as you look back on this year?

#24. What three dreams are most important to you next year?

#25. What are you pretending not to know? And why are you afraid to acknowledge it?

The right questions can change your life forever. I hope these questions help make next year the best year of your life!

Don’t just be yourself… be the-best-version-of-yourself!