Everyone wants to live a good life. How that life looks to you and how you get that lifestyle is harder to pin down. What constitutes success to one person may not be what is right for you, while what passes as healthy for you might not pass muster to someone else. The key to finding a lifestyle you can be happy with is identifying what you want from life.
Goal Setting
The most important part of enjoying your life is knowing what you want from it. There is a story about a wealthy business man on holiday on a tropical island, who asks a local fisherman why he doesn't work hard, earn more and expand his business until he is rich enough to retire to a tropical island and fish all day. It is important to know what would count as success for yourself, rather than for someone else.
Getting Success
Being successful can have many definitions, but the only way you can guarantee that your life will look the way you want it to is if you first know what you want it to look like. Some of the most well respected figures in the self help movement make this point, with books such as Maxwell Maltz's Psycho-Cybernetics and Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Successful People both focusing on the importance of having a clearly defined goal to work towards. This could be as simple as knowing what targets you want to hit this month, or as detailed as vividly picturing every detail of your dream lifestyle every day.
Taking Steps
Once you have your goals, you need to work towards them. Small tasks can be easily accomplished, giving you a positive feeling of success and achievement which can give you the motivation and momentum to tackle harder challenges. If you have a task or goal that is so large that it seems impossible or intimidating, then the best thing to do is to break down the task into smaller steps, each of which are individually more manageable. Similarly, you can also block off small amounts of time to work on your task. It is easier and more productive to give yourself half an hour to work hard at something before resting, rather than spending hours feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of your task.
Healthy Lifestyle
Having a healthy lifestyle may mean being able to run a marathon, or it might mean having enough energy to enjoy your life and your family. Either way, the only way to do this reliably is to incorporate this into your daily life. The key to a healthy lifestyle is balance and moderation, as well as remaining relaxed when things go awry. Josh Waitzkin, author and world champion in chess and martial arts, describes the best way to quality living is the ability to remain relaxed when things don't go to plan, or at least your ability to return to a relaxed focused state as quickly as possible when the situation is less than perfect. He recommends meditation or interval training as ways of increasing your ability to relax and recover from stress quicker.
References
- "The New Psycho-Cybernetics"; Maxwell Maltz, M.D., F.I.C.S.; 2001
- "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"; Stephen Covey; 1989
- "The Art of Learning"; Josh Waitzkin; 2008
- "Mastery"; George Leonard; 1992
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