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The one question we all need to ask ourselves – and how to tune in to the answer | Life and style | The Guardian

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Your inner voice can open up huge possibilities for change and growth, but it can be strangely hard to hear it. In the first of a new series, we look at how to really listen I often find myself thinking about the famous question that ends Mary Oliver’s poem The Summer Day: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Late capitalism has a knack of sapping the life out of beautiful things by printing them on mugs and pencil cases and, I don’t know, probably toilet paper. But I’m trying not to let the inevitable Etsyfication kill that line for me. It helps to ask it as a genuine question: what will you do with your one wild and precious life? What? Instead of a deadened swirly quotation, the line becomes a dare, perhaps the most important question you could possibly ask yourself – the starting gun for thinking about how to build a better life. I remember clearly asking myself a similar question more than a decade ago when, having just left my job in journalism

‘If I had to pick just one way to live better I think it would be: learn to listen’ (posed by model). Composite: Getty images View image in fullscreen ‘If I had to pick just one way to live better I think it would be: learn to listen’ (posed by model). Composite: Getty images How to build a better life Life and style This article is more than 2 years old The one question we all need to ask ourselves – and how to tune in to the answer This article is more than 2 years old Your inner voice can open up huge possibilities for change and growth, but it can be strangely hard to hear it. In the first

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