What does the good life mean to you? Everyone will have a different answer to this question, yet too often, people end up trying to live in someone else’s version of a good life rather than their own. While it’s true that most people want the same things: security, community, personal fulfillment. What those mean and how to get them varies a great deal from person to person. To live a good life, you have to first figure out what that is.
Defining Your Terms
What influences your idea of what makes a life one that is good and worthwhile? You could be guided by the values of your family and community, by political conviction or by religious beliefs. Perhaps you follow a particular philosophy, such as Stoicism, or maybe you want to make a lot of money. Be honest with yourself about what you really want out of life. If you’re struggling to define it, talking to friends, a life coach, or a counselor or writing in a journal can help you get to the bottom of this question.
Getting a Degree
Embarking on a new career is often a step in creating a life that better suits you. This can mean getting a college degree, or possibly getting a new degree if you already have one. For many, tuition and other costs can seem like an insurmountable barrier, but there are other ways to pay for school. Searching and applying for scholarships online, such as Going Merry scholarships, can help you find funding that you don’t have to repay, unlike with loans. There are both large and small scholarships that can help cover the costs of your education.
Connect with Others
There are a few who have made meaningful lives for themselves in solitude, as you can read about them if you search something like “modern day hermits”, but for the most part, a big part of relieving stress and anxiety by making meaning involves connecting with others. This is true even for people who may think that they are primarily solitary individuals. Even introverts benefit from some connection with other humans.
This doesn’t mean having to have a large circle of friends and acquaintances although that can certainly be the right approach for some people. A small circle of close friends can serve the same purpose for more introverted individuals. Three or four is better than one or two because it can be difficult for just a couple of people to fulfill all of your needs. Beyond that, being part of some kind of community can be important for many people. Making an effort to communicate and connect with people you interact with daily, such as the grocery store clerk or the bus driver, is also important.
Setting Goals
Setting goals is an important part of leading a life that feels meaningful. The key here, much like defining what good means in the first place, is to be clear about your goals and make sure they are meaningful to you as opposed to imposed by others. Keep in mind as well that while goals can be the traditional kind that advance you in your career or in similar self-improvement ways, they can also help you more fully engage with the world around you.
Maybe you have decided that one element of living a good life for you means getting out into nature. You could decide that one goal is learning to identify ten species of trees, spot five types of birds, or visit four national parks within a certain amount of time. When it comes to setting goals, you should be as concrete as possible so that you have something to measure your success against, such as in the above example of a certain number of things within a certain time periods. Whether you’re trying to read more books or succeed with your stock market investments, goals can help you ensure that you are using your time in a way that will benefit you over the long term.