You think your life is hard. Your neighbor believes that they have a hard life, as does your boss. Your spouse believes that they have a hard life. What about the starving person in Africa? Yeah, a hard life. The single Mom in war-torn Syria – hard… The many people going through cancer treatment right now – hard…. Life IS hard. After all, it kills you (it’s that stinking hard!) But that doesn’t mean that you must make it even harder for yourself.
“Life is hard, and then I just keep making it worse and worse and worse.” – (What you might say to yourself in the mirror every morning.)
When I was younger, I used to believe that fame and prestige equated to, “an easy life.” I wanted to get to that level of achievement. I was open to any and all paths to an easy life; rock star, Hollywood actor, pro athlete, business titan, lottery winner or inheritance (and it’s a shame that my parents don’t have money and I have five other siblings to share the scraps with). I would also think that an easy life (a good life) is one where all inconveniences were eliminated or at least greatly diminished. So for example; I hate doing certain things. Let’s call these hated things, “chores.” Examples would be doing laundry, cooking, cutting the lawn, cleaning the house, grooming my dog, washing my car, cleaning my carpets, and painting. I hate painting.
So my logic was if I could climb high enough in life, maybe get some fame and fortune, the dough will start rolling in where I could just hire all of these people to do the things I hate to do. Then, by the amazing laws of deduction, if I eliminate all of the things that I equated with being a pain in my ass, I would have an easy life. An easy life is a good life and thus can’t be hard because hard is the opposite of easy. Wouldn’t you agree?
Somewhere along the way of doing this thing called, “maturing” (which I’m often in the slow lane traveling towards), I began to understand that there is a lot of confusion on what we are trying to accomplish in life. Thus, we start chasing the wrong things or trying to accomplish the wrong goals.
You may believe that working hard will lead to an “easy life.” But then you wake up every day wondering why your life is so stinking hard. Maybe you even got to a level where you have a landscaper or a house cleaner, and yet, your life is still hard. But you keep going on your path, chasing the easy life and the goals that you believe will lead to an easy life.
You start doing certain things daily to work towards that easy life. We call these things “habits.” These habits become so ingrained in your being that they impact all forms of your “behavior.” Your behaviors influence everything from how you interact with people (relationships), how you take care of yourself (health), and how you allocate your financial resources (and accumulate debt). Your behaviors lead to “decisions” (either good or bad) and you wake up the next day only to rinse and repeat the same sequence that you believe will lead to an easy (good) life.
At various points of your life, you wake up to realize that your life is really complicated. It’s just a big mess. Your health is a mess. Your work career is a mess. Your finances are a mess. Your personal clarity is a mess. You don’t even know what you’re doing or why things are so confusing. Yet, you wake up the next day and work your butt off to work towards a goal of making increasingly more money to eliminate common inconveniences as your main objective.
STOP: Life is not about chasing a fictional easy life just by eliminating inconveniences. That’s why rich stay-at-home spouses often slip into a meaningless life that leads to boredom and depression. Their entire day is spent drinking wine while watching over the staff that take care of all the inconveniences in life; clean the pool, clean the house, do the laundry, watch the kids, walk the dogs, cook the meals, cut the grass, spray for bugs, and wash the windows. By that reasoning, a good life is one where you do absolutely nothing.
I even know of a woman who not only had a personal shopper for holiday gifts but a separate “specialist” who did the gift wrapping. What did she do all day? She sat at home drinking wine bored out of her mind with no true purpose in life. You may think she has “an easy life” by your definition and that she accomplished the granddaddy of all awesome life goals. You would be wrong. She has a hard life because it was void of all real purpose, meaning, happiness, and fulfillment. Her mind got the better of her. Her life is quite extremely hard at the moment. She has a drug addiction.
Let’s get back to you who is probably still dreaming of how awesome it would be to have a personal shopper and a gift-wrapping specialist on your personnel list. You may very well be chasing the wrong goals (or perhaps not having any goals other than trying to live an easy life). You have developed habits that are part of your daily routine. Your habits are influencing your behaviors. Your behaviors are leading to decisions. Finally, your decisions (cumulatively) are adding up to your current life (as good, bad, or as ugly as it is).
You see, life is hard enough. Why are you making it harder by;
- Chasing the wrong goals and objectives in life.
- Believing that an easy life avoiding all inconveniences is the key to happiness.
- Spending time on so many things that don’t move the needle on real progress in life.
The way to make life, “less hard” is to master yourself and personal principles. It is submersing yourself in a journey based on the pursuit of personal excellence. That means constant improvement.
Below are the 25 principles that will make your life easier broken down into 3 categories: Happiness, Health and Wealth:
HAPPINESS:
- Have a positive attitude – smile and laugh if you can. Smiling has been proven to send feedback from your face to your brain which then releases chemicals (neurotransmitters) to improve your mood.
- Engage and pursue work that you find to be productive and meaningful. If you are in a job you hate but keep showing up every day for the money you will regret it. Find a job that you enjoy even if you have to change your lifestyle to fit your new income. This isn’t permission to live in poverty.
- Nurture relationships with family, friends, neighbors and work associates. Increase the time with people that you enjoy and help you grow as an individual. Limit or eliminate time with negative people.
- Pursue personal growth (mind, body, spirit). Read, listen to podcasts, meditate, give yoga a try, and learn from others that are further ahead of the personal growth path than you are. Then in turn be open to help others that are behind you in the personal growth category. We are never too old to improve.
- Be organized and prioritize activities and chores so that you are spending more time on what really matters to you. Focus on things that truly matter to YOU.
- Live in the present moment, have fun. Calm the “Monkey Brain.” This is the brain that is constantly overthinking the past (which we can never change) and the future (which we can’t predict.)
- Understand the role of money in your life. How much and why do you need a certain amount? We are extremely adapt at turning luxuries into necessities. Frills become essentials and often people become unhappy because they are without luxuries that they don’t possess. Or, we give in and buy the luxury increasing our debt only to find out that it did not make us happy after all. Fruits of labor sour quickly. Money spent on life experiences (not things) often brings way more happiness.
- Give conscious thought to what your last days would be like if you were reflecting on your life. This probably sounds really morbid and hard to do but it puts a new perspective on your current life. Would you have regrets?
- Create Habits and Routines so your brain doesn’t have to constantly be making decisions and managing the daily/hourly chaos that goes on in your head. This is especially important when you are trying to improve your lifestyle with healthy foods. If you only have healthy foods in the pantry and fridge it is much easier to build habits and routines. Day by day you start to forget the bad foods that you were in a habit of eating because they are replaced with good foods and your body starts craving those healthy foods.
- Find balance that is important to you. By my definition balance is about what makes life important to you and gives you personal satisfaction. So, don’t spend a lot of time on something that is not important to you just to balance your life.
- Define your own meaning of life and pursue it. “Not everyone will understand your journey. That’s fine. It’s not their journey to make sense of. It’s yours.”
- Appreciate what you have. Write down 2-3 things every day that you are grateful for. If you are grateful for a certain person then tell them. If you are grateful that your spouse unloads the dishwasher then tell them.
- Treat others the way you want to be treated. Sharing and caring counts.
HEALTH
- Eat healthy and get rid of the garbage in your diet. Start replacing the sugar with fresh fruit, add a few more vegetables to your day, stop eating things out of a box, eat whole fresh foods. Your body and mind will be so much happier.
- Exercise – minimum 30 minutes a day. Be active. You don’t have to train for a marathon just move. Get outside for a nice walk in the sunshine.
- Adequate Sleep – aim for 7-9 hours depending on your age and body. Your body will tell you how much sleep it needs. It is no longer cool or tough to see how much you can get accomplished with the least amount of sleep.
- Reduce stress (work to eliminate things that lead to stress and anxiety – toxic people, relationships, money woes)
- Be very cautious of pharmaceutical drugs as they all have side effects. Do what you can to “not need” man-made health drugs. Prevention is the key not treatment. Don’t suppress the symptoms, fix the problems.
- Avoid recreational drugs and chemicals. Check out the opioid epidemic. Do not think you can try it just once. Just like chips or popcorn no one can eat just one.
- Smoking – yeah right – don’t even think about it.
WEALTH
- Make a substantial living. This means enough income to support the lifestyle that you want to live. That does not mean you need the same amount of money at Brad Pitt to have an easy life.
- Live below your means and control your spending. Before spending you hard earned money on big ticket items think about how many hours you have to work to pay for that item. Then make the spending decision.
- Save Make savings a priority by paying yourself first.
- Eliminate Debt. Imagine how much easier your life would be if you never had to pay an auto loan or mortgage again.
- Always keep an emergency funds on hand. No one in life escapes crap happening unexpectedly so be prepared.
If you want an easier life just like everything else it takes work and discipline. It will not happen overnight. But if you start making small changes they will add up over time and you will be thankful you took the necessary steps to change.