‘What have we here?’: how asking yourself a simple question can transform the way you think about your life

Forget generic self-help advice and focus instead on the unique set of hang-ups, character traits and personal circumstances that stop you living your best life

One problem with trying to improve your life is that, all too often, the improvements you’re attempting have little to do with your life. That’s especially obvious when, say, you seek to emulate the extreme fitness routine of a high-profile influencer, overlooking the fact that he or she has a team of assistants to free up all the time it requires. But following the advice of the average self-help book is unlikely to work much better: no matter how wise or sincere its author, it’s vanishingly unlikely they’ve ever met you. Even when a plan for change seems to arise independently, from inside your own mind, it usually takes the form of a fantasy about the person you think you ought to be, or would like to be, into which you then try to squeeze the person you actually are – for a few days, anyway, until the struggle becomes so frustrating that you give up in despair.

This is where the questions in this series come into their own. They’re asked by people with expertise in the fields of relationships, career, health, home organisation and more. But they can be answered only by the person who possesses by far the most detailed understanding of what might genuinely make a difference in your life, which is you.