15 Questions to Unlock Your Potential

Hey, we're going to have a heart-to-heart today, all right? This is a secret tool that we've used for decades. Every couple of years, we go through these exact questions to have a reality check with ourselves, and today we're going to do it together. Save them in the notes of your phone or write them down somewhere. Here are Alu's 15 questions that reveal your true self.

Welcome to Alux, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired.

Number one: Do you feel like you belong where you are right now? What place is drawing you in?

So, this question reveals how in tune your reality is with your aspirations. Some places feel like home, and some places feel like you're swimming against the current, and you can't wait to get away. But if you haven't flourished, if you feel sick, if you feel deep down that something's not right, it's the soil, Aluxir. It's the environment that you're in that's not conducive to growth.

It's easier to be healthy, to thrive, to be happy in some environments than in others. You'll change over time; that's why it's important to ask this question regularly. At some point, you'll realize you've outgrown your current environment, or you found a better fit. In some cases, there's a certain place that's been calling you for years. Now you can feel it calling in your soul and probably your TikTok algorithm too. As long as there's a gap between where you are and where you wish you would be, that feeling of anxiety and unsettlement will never go away. Either make Heaven of what you already have, or go find it somewhere else.

Number two: If you could go to school over again without the pressure, where would you study and what would you study?

Take a moment to really think about this. If it wasn't for parents or society, if you didn't take into account the job market or the pressure to be at the top of your class, what would real education look like for you? Where would you learn? Would it be on an American campus, or maybe somewhere in Europe? This question is meant to reveal your deep interests and your passion for mastery because this time you would have chosen a field where you would dedicate yourself fully.

The people around you would fuel you because they would be your people. It would mean a life of curiosity instead of a life of achievement. The purest form of education is a journey into who we really are, and that's probably where your greatest contribution could have been. Now, the beauty of these first two questions is that if you take them seriously and change locations, you might alter the future of your children and mitigate the distress you're feeling, while also getting closer to your true self.

Number three: What would you really like to do for a living so that work wouldn't feel like work?

We don't like it when people phrase it as, "What would you do if money was no object?" because money is the reward for hard work, for impact, for solving problems. We don't have a problem with the money part because the best possible outcome of that equation is you getting paid a ridiculous amount of money for something you would be willing to do for free. You want to be in the yellow quadrant of this satisfaction-to-money graph. You want to know that you've had an impact, that you've touched the souls of people, and that their lives are better because you were in them, while never having to worry about money ever again.

Whatever you do, just stay away from the bottom left zone because that is where your soul goes to die. When you're in that yellow zone, work no longer feels like a chore, like something you do in order to afford what's left when work is over. Instead, it feels more like you're dancing with destiny.

Number four: What car do I think I am, and what car do other people think I am?

Now, we know this is a pretty odd question, but listen closely because it'll make sense in a second. In the business world, we call it a personal brand. You have a personal brand with everyone around you: with your friends, your parents, your neighbors. Everyone has their own perception of who you are. So, back to cars. You might think of yourself as a Ferrari, but other people, well, they might see you as a Volvo. Through your actions, you made people see you as a Volvo; they'll treat you like a Volvo, and you'll get pissed at why they're not treating you like the Ferrari you think you are.

This is more of an identity question than anything else, because until you get the internal perception to match the external perception, life is going to feel like you're going uphill. People are not going to treat you right; opportunities will elude you, and you'll constantly feel like your reality isn't matching up to your potential. But lucky for you, there's a specific framework you can use to make this change called circles to triangles.

Now, we learned this one from Claudia Mous, a high-level personal branding expert that you have access to in the Alux app. Normally, you'd be paying thousands of dollars to sit in a personal branding seminar with an expert like Claudia, but if you go to alux.com/app right now and you get yourself a subscription, you've got access to the same coaching and frameworks that she teaches people, plus a bunch of other experts just like her for the price of a decent meal. Even better, if you download the app and then scan the QR code on screen right now, you'll get 25% off the yearly plan. Scan that QR code and get people to see the version of you that you want them to see.

Number five: Where would you like to retire, and what would retirement look like for you?

Now, this question helps you to figure out location plus daily activity. Since your life is made up of the little things, the biggest impact will come from the environment, what you see when you look out the window, the walk to your grocery store. Basically, how much well-being is within a 40 m radius and how you spend your hours in a day.

Most people think retirement is something for old age because that's the only example they've ever seen, but most people are wrong. Okay, we have a different definition of retirement that might shift perspectives for you. Retirement is actually when you stop trading today for an imaginary tomorrow. When we posed the question, most of you thought of a beach somewhere or a house in the countryside, but what would it take for you to stop sacrificing the present for a future point in time?

The mistake most people make is thinking in absolutes: "I will work now; I will not work then." But by the time then comes, you realize you traded all the good years away and you still have to work. So why not begin retirement now, or at least add more retirement to your present? The more you think about it, the more you realize that retirement is not the end of purpose, but the refinement of it. You should start refining your purpose now, so that one day you'll wake up and realize you've been retired for a while now.

Number six: Who would you like to be friends with? Or to put it more creatively: What podcasts do you listen to? Because those are the friends that you seek.

We're surrounded by people left and right. We've got a window into the private lives of other people through social media, so take some time to make a list of people that you would want to hang out with and try to figure out why. What makes them cool to you? What makes them interesting? Because in this process, you'll identify the traits you yourself hold in high regard. These are foundational values. You want to be friends with them because, well, they provide something that's missing within—be it someone you could hang out with, share an adventure with, or someone to have a deep conversation about life with.

If the friends you seek help you identify what's missing within yourself, well, this next one will help you find what's missing outside of you.

Number seven: Who do you envy the most?

Just take a moment to think about the people you envy. Envy, like real envy, is an indicator that someone's got something that you not only want but you believe you need. If you had it, your pain, your suffering, it would all go away. Envy reveals hidden aspirations that you have; it'll uncover deep-seated insecurities and unmet needs, and the crazy thing is that it's less about what others have and more about what you feel you lack. Envy shows you the life you secretly wish to live.

It bundles together all of the unfulfilled potential and pain of watching others achieve what we believe we deserve. The great aha moment that comes is when you understand you don't envy the person in their entirety. For example, you might envy Warren Buffett's money, but you would not trade your life to be a wealthy 93-year-old. You might envy the fame of an A-list celebrity, but not their addictions or lack of privacy. The goal is to find the specific thing you envy in other people and get yourself the version of that which works for you. So who do you envy the most, and why?

Number eight: What would you miss the most if you lost it?

What would devastate you if it went away? For some people, it's their car; for others, it's their morning coffee, and for the rest, it's their mom, their dad, their spouse, or their child. You never really took the time to organize the big and important things in your life based on a hierarchy of importance.

When you ask this question deeply, you'll reveal the greatest treasures you have in your life. The shocking thing is just how big the gap is between it and the next thing. This is your wakeup call to prioritize it. Knowing what your biggest treasure in life is allows you to not treat everything else with the same kind of importance or urgency.

Number nine: How am I lying to myself?

You know, we tell lies because, well, we don't like what the truth will do to us. Lying to oneself is not merely a distortion of facts; it's a deliberate weaving of intricate tales designed to create a cocoon of comfort and temporary solace from a reality that we just don't want to acknowledge. In this regard, the irony of lying to oneself is that it's both a betrayal and an act of self-preservation at the same time.

Our ego is fragile, so we make up our own truths to protect it. But every lie we tell incurs a debt to the real truth—a debt that at one point we're going to have to pay back. Even if the lie is to ourselves, it's not long until we realize the lies we've been telling ourselves have obstructed reality and have kept us from making the small changes that wouldn't require these lies in the first place.

Take this moment to think about the stories you tell other people about yourself. About the fantasy that you've created in your mind that has yet to materialize. You talk about what you'll do, and others are impressed by it. You feel that praise without putting in any of the effort. Then years go by, and you realize you've ridden the high of what you said you were going to do without ever doing it.

People start to see you for what you are: someone who just talks. And you start feeling like a fraud because of it. So confront yourself head-on; look at yourself in the mirror and have whatever conversation you're avoiding. You're overweight, you're lazy; you said you would do it, and you haven't. This question allows you to see the low-hanging fruit that would have an immediate impact on your life. If nobody else is going to do it, it is your responsibility to call yourself out on your own.

Number 10: What does enough mean to me?

Now, the goal is to live a life that satisfies you, right? Satisfaction resides at the equilibrium between ambition and contentment. The pursuit of more, when your needs have already been met, is actually detrimental to your health and everything else that's actually important to you. The more you go, the more you harm yourself. Very much like a child who just can't stop eating chocolate after chocolate after chocolate until they collapse.

There is a sweet spot, Alux, or a goldilocks zone of achievement where your life is optimally lived. If you're one of our subscribers, you know our quote that says at some point, more money becomes too expensive for some people. Enough is a number; for others, it's a point in time or a feeling. You know what enough means for you, and if you don't, take the rest of your day to figure it out because it's probably the most valuable piece of information you need to find. It's an anchor in the future, and it'll keep you from getting swept up in the current.

Number 11: Who do I secretly crave the approval of?

We all want to self-actualize, and we all have people that we wish looked at us with importance, pride, or even envy. Craving the approval of someone means that you place them as an authority or some kind of standard against which you measure yourself. The approval you seek tells you what kind of identity you're trying to cultivate for yourself, or it could be an indicator of where the power lies in your relationships.

The first one is beneficial; the second one means your worth and sense of self is outside of your control. So dig deep to separate between the two and rid yourself of the latter. Approval from others is a very poor substitute for self-acceptance. Seek your own validation and you will never need it from anybody else.

Number 12: What do I preach but don't do?

The reason why you do it is because it creates a sense of identity that you strive for. It's easier to give the advice to someone else instead of looking inward, so we'll do that here today. Pretend you're walking into a room, and there's the person you are sitting in a chair, knowing everything you know about them. What advice would you give them? What advice do you wish they actually followed through on?

It's a lot easier to do this when you simulate it this way, and it gets easier to implement it once you do. You have to treat yourself as you would treat someone else that you are responsible for. Screw everybody else; okay, you're the most important person in the mosaic that is your life. If you're not well, if you're not at your peak, you can't take care of anybody else.

So start doing one thing that you've been preaching. It'll take you less than 5 minutes to get started, and it'll snowball into a superior life than the one you're currently living.

Number 13: What am I proud of? What am I secretly ashamed of?

We encourage you to have this conversation privately because what you answer to any of these questions on this list is meant exclusively for you, to do with it as you see fit. Nobody's entitled to the depths of your soul, so be honest with yourself. When you think of your recent life, what do you genuinely take pride in? When's a moment when you stood by your principles even when the world wanted you to cave?

The moment when you did what you said you would do, and you got it done the right way—even now thinking about it, it brings a smile to your face. You know what? You felt that hit of dopamine from an emotional feeling; that's your North Star. Act in accordance with that, and you'll be fine, my friend.

Then there are moments when you're alone—moments when nobody's watching—and the mind wanders to something from your past, something you didn't want anyone else to know, something you wished you would have forgotten completely about but you can't because it lives rent-free in your mind, poking its head out more often than you want it to. Well, that's your moment of shame that you can't let go of.

As with that moment of pride, you know exactly what you're going to feel when that memory comes up. One is an emotional high, and the other is an emotional low, and you live life in between. Pride and shame are tools for self-reflection, and it serves you well to know how far your spectrum stretches.

Number 14: What makes me happy? How can I do more of that?

Now, this is probably the most actionable item on our list, so here's what you do: You make a list of the little things that make you happy. For us, it's reading a book, watching a movie, reconnecting with old friends, or taking our dog out on an adventure to our favorite coffee shop or bookstore.

So here's how you use this: every time you've got some downtime, you don't open up TikTok or Instagram or Netflix. No, what we do is we put the phone away, and we pick up one of the hundreds of books we bought but haven't read yet. It gives us this sense of accomplishment and makes us happy instead of just filling our time with nonsense scrolling.

We text our friends and jump on a call for 10 to 15 minutes, and then we find ourselves smiling for the rest of the day because of how great it was to reconnect with them. We started being really deliberate with this since the beginning of the year, and it's been incredible. Everyone wants to be happy, but very few people make a list of what makes them happy, and even fewer make it a priority to pursue them when the time allows for it.

Somehow, they program the algorithms to make us miserable and addicted in order for them to make billions of dollars. So make your list, and the next time you need entertainment, pick something from the list instead of defaulting to what the algorithm says you should be doing.

Number 15: Do I actually give it my all, or do I just tell people I do?

Okay, let's be fully honest with this one. You know this is a safe space. You know that you could be making a lot more progress if you went at 100% of your ability, but for some reason, you're not. Between what you're doing now and what 100% is, there's a lot of room for growth. This is where the magic in your life happens; this is where dreams come true.

Your current pace puts that growth years ahead of you because you're not moving fast enough. You're not working hard enough. You're not learning fast enough. Everything you want is on the other side of an increased speed of action. Why do you wait a week to do something that takes a day? Why can't you make three years' worth of progress in the next 6 months?

You're smart enough to know that your decisions in the present compound in the future. So the sooner you make them, the sooner you publish, the sooner you hire, the more return you get on your decision.

20% more effort on a monthly basis compounded means 9x the yearly outcome of what you would have got if you only did what you're currently doing. So find your extra 20% in a month and watch life unfold.

You'll find all of these questions in the description of the video, Aluxir, so you can easily save them and get to work on them somewhere else. But we're curious to know, in the meantime, which of these questions rattled your cage the most? Let us know in the comments.

And since you already watched this long video up until this point, you've earned yourself a secret bonus. That bonus today is: What would you think about yourself if you just met you? Would you do business with someone like you? Would you date someone like you? Would you trust your future to someone like you?

Other people ask themselves this, and maybe it's time you ask yourself too. Chances are you wouldn't like you if you met you. It's your challenge to find out why that is and fix it—not because you'd be doing it for somebody else, no, but because if there's something obvious enough for you to notice, it's definitely holding you back.

You owe it to yourself, to your future self, and to your kids if you have them, to be better than you were when you started watching this. If tomorrow will look better than yesterday for you, write the word "tools" in the comments. Let's see how many of you take these questions seriously, and we'll use the answers to them as the tools to craft the new version of you.