6 Simple "Active" Questions to Increase Your Self-Awareness and Engagement

Sometimes we can get so caught up in thinking about what our organizations "should" be doing to engage us, make us happy, help us grow, etc that we lose sight of all we can be doing for ourselves.

Research by Marshall and Kelly Goldsmith has shown that posing the following active (in the "I" form) questions to yourself on a daily basis leads to marked improvements in personal engagement, happiness, meaning and achievement.

  1. Did I do my best to be happy?

  2. Did I do my best to find meaning?

  3. Did I do my best to be fully engaged?

  4. Did I do my best to build positive relationships?

  5. Did I do my best to set clear goals?

  6. Did I do my best to make progress toward goal achievement?


After a two-week study where participants asked themselves these questions every day, results showed that:

  • 30% of people said they improved in all of the six areas

  • 59% said they improved in four out of the six areas

  • 86% said they got better in at least one of the areas

  • and nobody said they got worse.


Not bad, huh?  

Now it's over to you.  I encourage you to try experimenting with these six questions each day for two weeks and see what you notice. 

Personal DevelopmentAenslee Tanneractive questions, self-awareness