Have you ever heard of Vishen Lakhiani’s 3 Most Important Questions?
Their answers can bring you into a position of surprising clarity about what fulfillment looks like in the current season of your life:
✧ What experiences are you longing for?
✧ In what ways—or areas of your life—do you want to grow?
✧ How do you wish to contribute to your loved ones, your community, or the world?
These questions are powerful on their own.
BUT, they are ALSO perfect jumping off points for the 3rd layer of the Impartial Gratitude List practice—the part where you write that you are grateful for the experiences that you want to know or grow into (as if they have already happened.)
The 3 Most Important Questions have an even deeper effect on our scope of reality when they are aligned with gratitude.
Because the answers become more than just a clear goal post. They become an actual living meditation that shifts your mindset and attention.
Instead of only asking, Who do I want to become? What do I want to experience someday? We begin practicing the feeling of those answers immediately.
We start looking for places where they are already true. We make choices from them. We sew them into the fabric of the present moment. No waiting. Have it now.
Here’s what that looked like for one person experimenting with the Impartial Gratitude List Phenomenon:
On day three, a friend sent me a voice message about the final part of the practice.
She told me that writing gratitude for things she hadn’t received yet was one of the most interesting journaling exercises she’d ever done.
But something unexpected happened when she started writing.
Her list wasn’t full of things.
Instead, she wrote:
I’m grateful that I can keep calm in the eye of the storm.
I’m grateful that I manage stress with ease.
I’m grateful that I am a peaceful person.
She realized that what she wanted most wasn’t something outside of herself.
It was a way of being.
And that excited her, because these weren’t far-off circumstances she had to wait for. They were qualities she could practice. Experiences she could begin inhabiting right now.
Then, almost as if life wanted to give her an immediate opportunity to practice what she had just claimed, she told me she was heading into “a bit of a wild day.”
Before hanging up, she said:
“But I’m grateful because I am a person who manages stress well. I’m calm in the eye of the storm. I’m a peaceful person. So—I got this.”
And there it was.
Her words had already left the page.
She wasn’t just writing gratitude for some future version of herself anymore. She was walking into a wild day carrying the experience of the woman she wanted to be.
***
This is what fascinates me about the Impartial Gratitude List. What we think we want “in the future” is actually an experience of ourselves we can begin practicing today.
So I have three questions for you:
What do you want to experience?
How do you want to grow?
How do you want to contribute?
Try beginning each answer with:
I’m grateful that…
And see where it takes you.
Or if you want to, come experiment with the Impartial Gratitude List Phenomenon at Kenzie’s Desk →
With unwavering appreciation,
Kenzie
Ps. If someone came to mind while you were reading this, please forward this to them. Maybe they’re ready to experiment with gratitude, too.
And as always, you can hit reply. Tell me what came up when you tried the questions, send me your list, or ask me anything.
Kenzie’s Desk 