Live Your Best Life
Everybody is seeking to be happy, fulfilled, and successful! I call that your “best life”. What that means for people can be quite different and personalized.
I don’t believe it comes from just a bucket list of things you want to do and places you want to see. This obviously can be part of your best life.
I don’t believe it necessarily has to do with being the richest, most popular or most powerful. We all know very unhappy popular, powerful, and rich people.
I don’t believe “best life” means that you are perfect with no mistakes or setbacks.
I believe being your ‘best self’ means that you were intentional and fully engaged in the process of enjoying life and learning from it.
Here is a model with detailed information for living your best life:
- Define your best life.
- Plan to live your best life.
- Enjoy the journey.
- Define your best life.
What exactly is my best life? For 30 years, starting with myself and then helping thousands of others, I have been advising people how to define their best life. This is what I’ve found. Research by end-of-life nurses and other experts tells us it is not about working more. People who are dying were interviewed and often say they wish they would have lived their best life, not the life somebody else expected them to live.
The Triple 7 personal purpose development process
I have synthesized the process into 7 questions and exercises over 7 days with 7 journal writing sessions. At the end of this process, you will have a 50-word (maximum) personal purpose statement to help you define your best life.
The process begins with this defining question and exercise: How do you want to be remembered? Imagine you are visiting your funeral. What do you want people to be saying about you? Journal what you would like them to say and then start planning and executing that plan each day.
Chapter 4 of my book, “Live Your Purpose – A Step by Step Guide to Live Your Best Life”, shares the entire Triple 7 process. The book is sold on Amazon. Alternatively, you can go to my website, ci4life.org for more resources and methods to live your best life.
- Plan to live your best life.
Many people have big dreams for life but lack the skills or the right processes to help them successfully accomplish those dreams. Or, many people work so hard for retirement and then expect to be able to accomplish their dreams only to be robbed by sickness, health, and other changes. Plan to live your purpose starting today.
Identify goals that will help you accomplish your purpose
Research shows only 20% of people accomplish most of their goals. Why? I believe that the majority of reasons have to do with not knowing the right process and having the right skills to live on purpose and live their best life.
Here is the 7-step process for successful goal accomplishment:
- Identify all the areas you want to be successful in; e.g., health, relationships, work/finance, and spiritual/emotional well-being.
- Pinpoint Specific and Measurable goals to help you live your purpose.
- Make action plans to accomplish those goals.
- Track those goals.
- Have a weekly planning session to review past successes and learnings and to make new plans.
- Establish Daily prioritized planning to accomplish those goals.
- Share this process and the results with a trusted advisor on a monthly basis.
How can you accomplish 80% of your goals? Identify what your purpose is and then develop this goal-setting process. Be prepared to be amazed!
- Enjoy the journey.
This may be the most important step in the entire process to living your best life. Real joy and happiness come from the process and the journey – not the arrival. I have heard people say, “When I graduate or when I get out of debt, then I can be happy.” Or, “When I lose 25 lbs. or when I go to Bali or when my son graduates…then I can be happy.”
I have known a Pilipino family for years that works very hard each and every day and doesn’t have a lot of extra money. What extra money they do have, they send home to their family back in the Philippines. They are the kindest, most respectable, and happy people I know.
Are you just born with this skill set to be happy, given any circumstance, or can it be learned?
I believe everything can be learned with the right mindset, skill set, and tool set. We may not be able to throw a touchdown pass like Tom Brady or drive a golf ball like Dustin Johnson, but with the right mindset, skill set and tool set, we can get better and develop any skill. We may not be able to be as content and happy as my Philippine friends, naturally, but with the right mindset, skill set, and tool set, we can improve.
What is the right mindset, skill set and tool set for enjoying the journey?
- Gratitude may not solve all your problems, but it is the first thing that needs to happen in order to get your mind right to learn and improve and live your best life. What happens if you are not naturally a grateful person? What happens if your brain focuses on what you don’t have versus what you do have? Start with developing the skill of gratitude. It is like any skill set; it can be learned and developed. I developed a CI4life planner to help people develop this skill. On every planning page, it has space for gratitude lists. Start each day with writing down what went right and what you are grateful for. After you have finished your gratitude list, you will have the right mindset to learn and plan to live your best life every day!
- Stay Present and Mindful. Have you ever gone through a day or week or year and it was just a blur because it was so hectic, busy or stressful? So have I. This is not the best situation or state of consciousness to live your best life. We get confused into thinking that busy is “best life”. That is not true. Being able to enjoy each day and be aware of your feelings and moments is how to respond and live your best life. Meditation is such a critical skill for you to stay present. Stop your mind from racing ahead or behind/past. Train your brain to enjoy the journey of each day through stillness and meditation.
- Learn from Mistakes. Along the path to your best life, you will still make mistakes, have heartaches, and setbacks. The key is to have the right mindset and realize that this is part of the journey. Have a learning mindset about your setbacks. What am I supposed to learn from this as I progress? You have a choice when trials happen. You can let your mind get discouraged or give-up or get mad. Or, you can take the mindset of a learner. What am I supposed to learn from this as I progress toward my best life? The latter mindset is way more fun, enjoyable, and fruitful. What can you do if you get stuck in a downward spiral after a setback? Get help. Ask a trusted advisor for guidance. Read a book or watch a YouTube video that gets you pumped up and back to the learning mindset.
How well are you doing at developing and living your best life? Where are you on the continuum? What do you need to do to take the next step in your happiness, fulfillment, and success?
1st step to Living your best life: Take this 3-minute calculator quiz to determine your score and your next steps here.
Good luck on your journey. Enjoy it and you will look back on a fruitful life knowing that you did the best you could. It’s an incredible feeling of peace and contentment to know that you were intentional in executing your best life.
Rick Heyland