I’m reading through Repacking Your Bags: Lighten Your Load for the Rest of Your Life for a project I’m working on. One of my favorite parts of the book is their generic formula for living the good life:
Living in the Place you belong, with the people you Love, doing the Right Work, on Purpose.
When you ask people to define their version of the good life, you’ll get a different answer from each person—and that’s the way it should be—but most answers will encompass these four areas.
- We crave meaningful work.
- We long to be connected in loving relationships.
- We search for a place to call our own.
- We need a sense that we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves.
If any of these elements are missing, we’ll eventually sense that something is wrong with our lives.
The tricky part of life is that each of these areas is a moving target. What we found to be meaningful in our twenties, bores us when we’re forty. The people we loved working with ten years ago no longer bring out the best in us. Our dream house no longer feels like a home.
While the formula remains the same, the specifics of our definition of the good life will change over time.
The good life isn’t a destination that we hope to reach before we die; it is a lifelong quest that can only be enjoyed by those courageous enough to keep changing as they chase it.
Telling Stories, Asking Questions, Learning Lessons