 For most of my 20s, I was really plagued by three primary questions. Now these were the primary questions that really kept me up at night, and I was really questioning my whole life when I was in my job, when I was in my relationship, and when I was just in my evening hours wondering like what the point of all of this was. Now in this video, I want to share what I think those three essential questions are, and one way for each of these questions that you can answer them. Hey, it's Alex Hein, author of the book, Milk the Pigeon, I bet you thought I was gonna say Modern Health Monk. We're gonna talk about this soon. Now I've included a free download below this video, which is a free worksheet to help plan out on how to have the best year ever of your life, right? You're checking out right below this video, that first link, and you'll also get an email series on that topic. So you know in my 20s, I mean a lot of the content here was inspired by that, because I really struggled with deep existential questions. For me ever since I was young, I've always been a deep thinker. I've never been someone who could easily settle for the status quo, just the average media where life, I just could not do it. But when I was trying to articulate my thoughts like what are the things that plague me? What are the big hard problems I'm trying to solve? It came down to three things. Now those three questions were number one, what the hell should I do with my life? Number two, how do I find meaningful work I love, but that also fulfills my material needs? And number three, how do I live a life worth living to me? How do I find a really exciting worthwhile life? So the first question is what the hell should I do with my life? Right? I mean, if you're a free thinker, or maybe you're just a very very jaded or unhappy person, we all can be any of those. You're probably thinking like what do I do with my life? In my early 20s, for example, I felt myself at a good nine to five. It was easy. I liked doing it. It wasn't very very difficult and it was fulfilling. I had all my material needs met. You know, I was paying my rent, saving money, could travel. But even after just a few months that creeping gremlin came in and it's like is this what you really want to do for the rest of your life? Is this all there is? You know, like I'm not even that motivated to work to earn an extra $5,000. So where do I go from here? So the lesson for me for this first question is that you have to really think about no surprise what you want your life to look like and where you want it to go. Like that what the hell should I do with my life? Some people dedicated all to raw achievement as much money as much status as they can get. Other people what the hell should I do is contribution and charity oriented. For other people it may just be I want to have a fun life. I'm fine with a nine to five that's chill and pays me 50k forever. I'm gonna play video games at night. I'm gonna hang with friends. I'm gonna do whatever I want on the weekend and that's cool with me. The big thing is though you just have to think. Now the second question is how do I find meaningful work I love that meets my financial needs? So going back to that first job that I had at 22 I was a teaching assistant in a high school in New York and I really like teaching that's basically just what I'm doing now. I thought the students were getting a lot of help from what I was providing. The hours were great. I was getting a good salary and I had just moved back home from down south where I went to school. So I had all a lot of these various needs man. But after like six months I was like well can I do this for 40 years like most humans do and it was great but it just didn't excite me the thought of that. You know and so for me it was well technically I had my material needs met but those excitement those soul needs right like those psycho spiritual needs the Jungian needs were not being met. I just intuitively knew instinctively that there was something there out there for me and that for me was why I bought that one-way ticket to China because I was like well if I'm gonna die I better start doing the shit I've always wanted to do and I bought that one-way ticket to China to go off on this quest to pursue the life that most excited me that you know that really made me feel the most alive. So the lesson here for me personally and I think this will help you is that on some level if you want to break it into this false dichotomy you have your material needs i.e. money and you have the psycho emotional or psycho spiritual soul internal needs right your intrinsic needs and intrinsic desires the things you would do if you just had a million dollars and could chill for the year what would you do right if by chance the thing you really love to do makes money the new in if it doesn't like it doesn't for so many people then I would do what I did I would recommend that like I worked for 35 or 40 hours a week and then later I cut those hours down the half and I spent the rest of my time trying to find what I was interested in building projects I started writing blogs and shooting videos coaching people I tried to see and test these things out to find how I could bring that intersection together some people it is all in one field but others you work a nine to five and then you have something that's really soul fulfilling in the evenings now the third question very very important is how do I live a life worth living to me I was speaking with this guy years ago when I first started doing this kind of life coaching and he said to me you know when I got to my 50s I had this sickly creeping feeling that I don't know where my life came from I don't even know how I got here and where here was I did not want to be and I had all these dreams in my 20s that for some reason just never happened and I don't even know how I just woke up in my late 40s early 50s and most of those things didn't happen and I'm sitting here kind of shell shocked like what what became of my life all these plans I had now this is like your archetypal midlife crisis right but the quarterlife crisis is a real thing as well and I think the big thing is how do you build a life worth living well first of all you determine what that is not society not your parents not your friends and two you have to build a reflective life where you're making sure you are always course correcting if you're not going in that direction you have to course correct now and not 30 years later so all of these things are possible you know whether it is figuring out what to do with your life building a meaningful work life you love that pays you well and then building a life that is true to you that excites you they're all possible now those three questions are the three parts of my second book milk the pigeon I haven't talked about this whole lot I'm not really sure why but this book is the book that I wish I would have had when I was 18 because it would have saved me a decade of figuring things out especially for a topic where there's not a lot of good guidance you know you have the conventional advice you have the very alternative advice but where's the conscious advice you need to figure out for you rather than become a banker or become a hippie stoner in Thailand right like deliberate living the path out of average you got to figure that out for you so anyway this book milk the pigeon it's also available on Amazon there's a link below to it but these questions are things that you should now of course again there's a free download below the video it's how to have your best year ever there's a free worksheet you'll get as well as an email series on how to do exactly that and then before you guys go I have two related videos on this topic right here