After Man’s Search for Meaning, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s On Death and Dying probably had the largest impact on the development of The 3 Life Questions™. Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity, in turn, led me to see that my own way of integrity meant bringing The 3 Life Question to others.
I was a sophomore in high school when I was required to read On Death and Dying for a theology class (thank you, Fr. Chris Pinné). The book is the summary of Dr. Kubler-Ross’s findings from her worldwide study of individuals (and their families) facing a terminal illness. It was On Death and Dying that introduced the world to the 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
The book had a profound impact on me. I couldn’t shake this feeling that there was an additional common thread that wove its way through the stories of the terminally ill patients. It took me some time before I found it, and when I did, it spoke to me so plainly that, in retrospect, I wonder why it took so long for me to access it.
The 3 Life Questions
What I realized was that each of the patients, as they looked back on their lives, were asking themselves 3 fundamental questions. Some patients were content that their answer was a deep, emphatic, “Yes!” Others realized to their dismay that they could not. Moreover, these 3 questions were present regardless of the patient’s socioeconomic status, religious conviction (or lack thereof), cultural background, gender, or ethnicity. The 3 Life Questions are:
- Am I satisfied with the impact I made?
- Did I become the best possible version of myself?
- Did I create authentic, lasting relationships?
I began to ask these same questions of myself, every day. Now, I am about the farthest thing from a saint that one can be and, truth be told, I was trying to stack the odds in my favor. I figured that if I could answer The 3 Life Questions with a “Yes!” every day (or at least, more days than not), when I got to the end of this earthly existence, chances would be pretty good that I’d be able to answer “Yes!”
Bringing the Questions to Others
But I kept this to myself for years. It wasn’t until a confluence of events that I brought The 3 Life Questions to, well, life!
One event was the winding up of the strategic planning and coaching organization that I was privileged to be a part of with my friend, colleague, and mentor, Bill Moye, due to Bill’s retirement.
The other was reading The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck. In Integrity, Beck explains why being in harmony with oneself (“integrity”) is the cure for psychological suffering. She draws on Dante’s Divine Comedy as the framework to present a process through which individuals can (re)discover their own integrity and, in so doing, find a sense of purpose, emotional healing, and freedom from inner conflict.
Like On Death and Dying, The Way of Integrity contained a profound lesson for me. It made me realize that my own depression is related, perhaps in large part, to the inner conflict associated with living my life based on the expectations of others; expectations that I had internalized and falsely adopted as my own but which never felt genuine. The Way of Integrity helped me understand that (1) I wasn’t crazy or alone in feeling this conflict, and (2) the way to a more peaceful existence could be found if I were willing to answer that “still, small voice” inside that had been telling me for years that I am meant to share The 3 Life Questions with others, and to help those individuals navigate their own unique path so that they, too, can answer each of these questions with a confident, emphatic “Yes!”
I’m excited to share this work with you.
Chris Kenny, The 3 Life Questions™
