When we hear someone dream about their “best life,” we usually conjure up images of mansions, yachts, diamonds, and rolling around in piles of hundred-dollar bills. So it will probably surprise you to hear that these things almost NEVER come up when I work with clients on their version of their best life.
In fact, the most common things I hear are more along the lines of:
“I just want to wake up in the morning, without an alarm, and have my coffee at my own pace.”
Or sometimes it’s slightly more lavish and sounds like:
“I want to go from city to city and explore everything about each new place.”
What is most interesting to me about some of these best life scenarios or wishes are that, at their core, they are not nearly as outlandish as we make out a best life to be. These are not unattainable desires that require a trust fund, millions of dollars, or winning the lottery.
The main work I do with clients (on any level really, not even just when designing their best life) is to shake them loose of the stories they tell themselves that keep these visions feeling like a distant, unachievable dream and more like something they can figure out how to make real for themselves NOW. So here I am, to offer you the same perspectives so you can go out and have your best life right now too.
FIRST: recognize that there is a HUGE spectrum between the endpoints of “having nothing good at all in your life” and “having everything you want with no pain whatsoever”. There is so much room to have lots of exactly what you want before that spotless, picture-perfect dream vision that you hold on a pedestal.
Oh, and it’s worth stating that those two endpoints, the ones with all the space in between? Yeah, even those are not real. If you think your life has nothing good at all, read Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search For Meaning. And if you think ANYONE’S life has everything they want with no pain…I’ll be the first to sign up for their program!
SECOND: get specific about what your best life is so you can actually make it happen. Let’s take the first example above about the coffee (which is already very specific). Figure out what adjustments need to be made, or help requested, in order to wake up sans alarm and have coffee at whatever that pace is. This might mean you need to make an agreement with a spouse, get a morning babysitter for your kid, or set expectations with your co-workers about when you’ll be available. This may seem like a challenging undertaking, but wouldn’t you be willing to expend some energy to make your best life your REAL life?! (If not, consider reading my recent blog post “Choosing your pain”).
THIRD: get underneath the specifics of your best life so you can create it in ways you didn’t think of before. Using the same coffee example, what I hear underneath that is that you want to be the one in charge of your time. So maybe designing your morning wake-up and coffee routine would really make you happy – or maybe you could start looking at ways in which you are giving up authority over your own time and find ways to take it back. Feel like you can’t leave at 3 to watch your kid’s afternoon soccer game once a week? Talk to your manager and ask if you can work out an alternative schedule. Come with a suggestion ready, one that YOU design instead of waiting for them to suggest something (again, leaving it out of your control).
There are so many ways we can have what we want well before that unlikely scenario that we become billionaires and are suddenly free to be totally in charge – and I would challenge that even if we got that lucky, the same things that prevent us from having our best life NOW are the things that would keep us from having our best life even then. So figuring out how to make your best life a real thing now is, at worst, a slow build to that dream or, at best, it is…well, having your best life, right now.
You decide.
What may look like a dull picture to you captures a dream-life moment for me: working at a fun brewery with a view of some new scenery while enjoying local fare. Not pictured: working with my partner at said brewery - it’s always more fun working in collaboration!
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