I came across this exercise during some training and found it quietly insightful. It is just four questions. But they go somewhere that most questions do not, because they ask about how you want to live rather than what you want to achieve.
Why "how" questions matter
Most of the questions we are taught to ask ourselves are what questions: what do I want to do, what do I want to have, what do I want to achieve. These are useful but they have a limitation: they tie your sense of direction entirely to outcomes, many of which are outside your control.
How questions work differently. They ask about the quality of your presence and your actions rather than the results. They are not contingent on circumstances. You can decide how you want to show up regardless of what is happening around you. In concussion recovery, where so much is outside your control, that distinction matters enormously.
How questions are also values in action. When you answer "how do I want to feel each day?" you are essentially naming what matters to you at the level of lived experience rather than at the level of achievement. That is closer to the bone.
The four questions
Find a quiet spot where you will not be interrupted. Light a candle if that helps. Put on some gentle music. Give yourself at least twenty minutes and write your answers rather than just thinking them. The act of writing creates a different quality of reflection.
1. How do I want to feel each day?
Not how do you want your life to look from the outside. How do you want to feel on the inside, in ordinary moments? Calm? Purposeful? Connected? Creative? Grounded? Write as many as come, then look for what matters most.
2. How do I want to show up for the people I love?
Not what you want to do for them or provide for them. How do you want to be present with them? What quality of attention, care, or energy do you want to bring? What kind of person do you want to be in those relationships?
3. How do I want to be remembered?
This is not about legacy in a grand sense. It is about what you want the people close to you to feel when they think of you. What would they say if they were describing the real you, the you behind the roles and the achievements?
4. How do I want to live?
Not where or with what. But with what quality of attention, pace, and intentionality. What does a life lived on your own terms actually feel like, day to day?
Once you have written your answers, read them back. Notice where your current life aligns with them and where it does not. The gaps are useful information. They are not judgments. They are just pointing at where the work is.
Using the answers
These questions work well alongside the values discovery exercise, because they bring the values down from the abstract into the felt experience of daily life. If one of your values is connection, the how questions help you ask: how does connection actually show up in how I want to feel, how I want to show up, how I want to live? That specificity makes values actionable rather than decorative.
They are also worth revisiting. The answers you give in the middle of concussion recovery may be different from the answers you give two years later. Both are true for their time.
I found this exercise quietly insightful in a way I did not expect. The questions look simple. They are not easy.
What struck me was how different the answers felt from the usual goal-setting questions I had spent years asking myself. Those had always been about achieving things. These were about being a particular way. And in recovery, when achieving things was temporarily off the table, having a sense of how I wanted to be was genuinely stabilising.
My tip: do it with pen and paper in a comfortable spot, not on a screen. Give yourself time and do not rush the answers. The first things that come are often the most honest. And come back to the answers occasionally. They tell you something about where you are, and where you are heading.