January 2018 - Optimize Your Life

Plan Your Better Life

I set out to make 2018 a year of intentional improvement.

Here at the blog, that is manifested in devoting each month to a different theme. We’re looking at all different angles of life and how to make it better.

Map out your life plan Time seems to be moving quickly and we are coming up on the end of January, which is life planning month.

To close out, I want to run through the things that we’ve learned and the action steps we can take as well as the steps that I will actually be taking in my own life. The former will be the subject of today’s post, while Tuesday will be a discussion of the latter.

I hope that you’ll share your takeaways and any action steps that you plan to take. We can keep each other accountable. Continue reading “Plan Your Better Life”

Set Goals That Scare You

We ended last week talking about fear.

While we were specifically focused on our natural fear of change, we studied the idea of fear as a whole.

Don't let fear hold you back Fear makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective, but can be overbearing in the modern context.

There are still times when being afraid helps. Our fight or flight instinct helps us get out of the way of an oncoming train or lift a car off our child.

But there are times when our fear is harmful. Our natural instincts can prevent us from introducing ourselves to someone out of fear of embarrassing ourselves. This in turn can prevent us from forming a relationship that leads to lifelong friendships, career boosts, or other improvements in our lives.

To make sure fear doesn’t prevent us from living our best life, we need to get better at examining and overcoming it.

We need to set goals that scare us. Continue reading “Set Goals That Scare You”

Making the Leap

Welcome back to life planning month here at Optimize Your Life!

As a foundation, we’ve learned how to live a better life. We’ve learned who we want to be. We’ve figured out what we want to do.

For practical steps, we’ve learned the importance of balance in our planning and we’ve learned to set smaller goals.

But what happens when a small change isn’t the answer? What do we do when we need to consider a big change to our lives?

A path to a better life Maybe the best way to get more balance in your life is to get a new job. Maybe the best way to save more money is to move to a different state with a lower cost-of-living. Maybe you’re considering going back to school to increase your earning potential. Maybe you’re debating whether to expand your family and have a kid.

These aren’t small changes. They aren’t easily translated into daily habits.

They’re also scary.

When approaching big decisions like these, how do you analyze the risks? How do you weigh the pros and cons?

Today we dive into these questions. Continue reading “Making the Leap”

Set Smaller Goals!

Most people don’t stick to their New Year’s resolutions.

Stop setting goals that are too large! Have you noticed how crowded the gym is every January? Try comparing your January experience at the gym to your June experience. It is night and day.

Last month I could go down to the gym at any hour and use any machine without waiting. This month all of a sudden the place is hopping.

Each month for the rest of the year it will get less and less crowded until we start over next January. We see the same thing play out every year.

People set ambitious resolutions every January and then gradually drop them all over the course of the year.

There are a number of reasons for that (including failure to set good goals) but today I want to focus on one particular problem. Continue reading “Set Smaller Goals!”

Successful Careers and Failed Relationships

My last article addressed how to map out a path to a better life.

Never forget the importance of balance in a good life In it, I recommended systematically going through every area of your life and analyzing each individually. Where are you right now in your financial life? Where do you want to go? Where are you in your relationship with your spouse? In your career? In your hobbies? In you physical health? Mental health and intellectual endeavors?

If you are trying to learn to be successful by looking at what people at the very top of their fields have done, my approach may seem counter-intuitive.

As someone who has read a lot of biographies of successful people, I have found that one of the defining factors of these characters is a singular focus and drive. They are obsessively focused on one aspect of their life and they use that focus to push them to the top.

I’m not going to tell you that that won’t work for you.

I’m going to tell you that it might, but you shouldn’t do it anyway. Continue reading “Successful Careers and Failed Relationships”

Mapping Your Route to a Better Life

January 2018 is life planning month around here. What do you want to do?

In preparation, I spent a lot of time imbibing a lot of different resources on life planning. Books, articles, videos, online courses…pretty much anything you can think of, I was there.

My original plan was to learn the basics and then find the best resource and follow it 100% A to Z.

The first problem I encountered was that most resources mixed up the questions of who you want to be and what you want to do.

Answering the question “Who do you want to be?” requires a very different approach to answering the question “What do you want to do?” They’re both very important questions when thinking about the big picture of your life. But they need to be addressed separately.

The second problem was that the resources that addressed the “What do you want to do?” question all took pretty much the same approach. There were variations, of course. Everyone has their own slightly different spin. But they all broke down to essentially the same three parts. Continue reading “Mapping Your Route to a Better Life”

Who Do You Want to Be?

Our journey to a better life starts with one of the more existential and abstract questions out there.

Who do you want to be?

If you are a long-time reader, then you know that this will go somewhere far more practical soon. If you’re new around here, (welcome!) I promise we’ll get to nitty gritty by the end of this article. Bare with me.

It’s easy to skip over the abstract, big-picture questions as we rush to the practical application. Life hacks are popular for a reason. We don’t think we have the time or capacity for the deep thinking and introspection required to address big issues.

I’m not judging! I’ve been there. Hell, I’m still there most of the time. But we’re going somewhere else for January. We’re going deeper.

So here we go. Continue reading “Who Do You Want to Be?”

How to Live a Better Life

My resolution for 2018 is to live a better life.

Bam. Nailed it.

But also, how do I do that?

Well for one, try adding bourbon to your normal routines. (I’m doing that now!)

That is the question (how to live a better life, not how to drink bourbon) I have spent the last month exploring, and the one that I would like to explore with you here. Continue reading “How to Live a Better Life”