EP 106
What is Living your best life
Welcome fellow confidence crusaders, neuro nerds and success equalizers. This is your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host, Alyssa Dver, and I'll be sharing a bit of basic brain science, some surprising social secrets and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. So let's get to it.
Alyssa:
The last few weeks, I've had a lot of deaths in my life, so to speak, of some family members, extended family members, friends, and whether those people were old and ill, and you know, no surprise that they passed, or in some other really sad cases, that was very unexpected and way too soon for that person to leave this planet anyway. I often heard people say to me and to others, well, it's just a reminder that we should all live our best lives.
Live our best lives. What the hell does that mean? Live our best lives. Live our best lives. You know, because we only have one life to live, we should live as best as we can. Great. What does that mean? Well, of course, it's subjective, because it's going to reflect what's important to you, but it also changes over time. We know, not just from research, but from common sense. When we're young, you know, living our best life was parting it up, you know, getting some good hookups, doing fun things, being a little life on the edge kind of thing, doing things that we probably shouldn't be doing right? That was all part of living our best life in our 20s, was if you are not no longer in your 20s, and then, you know, we get into midlife. In our 30s and our 40s, we're looking for really great accomplishments and super duper things, doing with our kids and celebrating things with them and their friends, and subsequently being the awesomest mom or best dad or or, you know, just participating in that maybe, if you don't have kids, it's really pushing through on your career, or even if you do have kids, of course, pushing through on your career, really getting those promotions and raises and always being vigilant on ways that you can increase your opportunities. So midlife, best life ever, right?
Maybe it is just hanging out with other friends and doing cool things too. But you know, it gets a little harder in that part of your life just because of the focus and the limited resources. But then, you know, we get older, we get into our 50s or 60s, and it really becomes very much centered on health hereafter, looking to make sure that our bodies are staying together and subsequently not too achy. But you know, at that point we have a little bit more means we have a little bit maybe more freedom if our children are left the nest. So we're looking for experiences and things that kind of fulfill our lives and spending time with the people that we really care about. So best, best, best life, best life, living our best life. So, you know, matching it to not just what we value, what's important to us, but you know, what's important at that time in our life, and being very intentional, being very specific in how do we spend our time?
And I think, honestly, that's what it's about. You know, finding those things that are really important to us, making sure that we have the financial ability to support those things, of course, but also that we have the time and the focus, and we're not wasting time or wasting money on things that don't fit in that bucket of value, right? So again, that includes not just saving and buying the things that are important to us, whether it's you know, something for the house or something for you personally, but also culling down, I call it pruning those people out of our lives that don't fulfill us, that don't give us that energy, that may have been, quote, friends of convenience in the past. You know they were fun in the Great party buddies, drinking buddies, whatever it might be. But now, in your 40s, or maybe your 50s, you don't really enjoy them so much, and so why waste the time with them? Right? So our best life isn't just about, you know, doing things that make us feel good, but actually really being intentional about the people and the time that we spend, so that we're not wasting it.
And I think that that takes a lot of maturity. Of course, it takes confidence, and it takes a little bit, if not a lot, of bit of consideration of, okay, I've been doing something for a really long time. Maybe it's a habit or a particular person that you often see or do things with, or maybe it's something that you bought that you know is in your house, or that you haven't bought that you'd really like, but you just, you know, kind of put it aside and like, I'll deal with it another time. Well, living your best life may mean activating those things, making sure that again, your financial resources, your time, your energy, are spent doing and bringing in things that give you joy and energy. And I'm not going to be like that woman who says you should throw out everything that doesn't but you know to not waste that moment of opportunity. You know you always wanted to go to Greece. Well, damn it, go to Greece. You always wanted to do a TED talk, TED talk, or write a book, damn it. Do it. Do it. And you're like Alyssa, it's not that easy. Yes, it is. It is. It's a matter of priority. It's a matter of really committing to something and figuring out how to get it done. And inevitably, with very few exceptions, you will be able to get those things done if they rise to the level of priority and other things, don't take your quote, financial resources, your time and your energy.
So living our best life is putting those things in the right order. Now, I know this sounds very, shall we say, idealistic, maybe even simplistic, but there are ways that we can do this with a little bit more intention, a little bit more organization. So after we come back from our wonderful sponsor break, I'm going to give you just a couple of ideas on how to accomplish your best life. We'll be right back.
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Alyssa:
I'm so glad you came back, because some of the things I'm going to tell you are the most powerful tools that we have at the American Conference institute that really not only transform how you spend your time, energy and money, but also really give you that direction, that sense of purpose and that sense of what's of value to you. So here we go. I'm going to give you a couple of ideas. The first one is something that sounds dreadful, especially since I started this podcast talking about death, but I want you to write your eulogy, and I'm not talking about your e, u, o, l, o, g, y, the eulogy that somebody might give at your funeral, but literally the y o u, o, l, g y; eulogy, y, o, u, l, o g, y, I spelled that wrong eulogy that you would write. In other words, what? What do you want them to say? What do you hope they say that someday, hopefully in the very distant future, that they are going to say about you? Now, if you've ever done this before, you know personally how amazingly powerful this is, but again, revisit your eulogy. Do it now, because things change over time, and if you've never done it before, here's the warning. You're going to get emotional. It's going to take you anywhere from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. So be in a place that you can be calm and cool and not embarrassed if you start to get a little teary. But the the object of this is to write down again what you would hope somebody would say about you in a way that doesn't have to be long. It can be just a couple sentences, and I guarantee it's not going to talk about the things that you accomplished. It's not going to say you were the Senior Vice President of Sales for some widget company. It's not going to say that you were, you know, the champion toastmaster speaker. It's going to say things like, you are an amazing parent, you are a generous friend. It's going to talk about the kind of person you are.
And the reason we do these eulogies again, y, o, u, l, o, g, y, is because it really brings out very easily, very clearly what our values are, what's important to us as people, and so subsequently, when you're done with you eulogy, it will give you a personal moral compass. And I always say to people, much better than resolutions every year to revisit that and just make sure that you're on target, you're on track. Just stay in that lane that you want to be in and remain in be known for. So youlogy. That's the first and most powerful thing I can tell you.
Another thing that is really, really helpful is to start your own confidence collection. And again, if you've been doing this in the past. People call it different things, but it's a way of kind of gathering up, not just the awards and certificates and things that you've you've received, and that's really good, putting them in one place, not just on your resume, but putting them in like a electronic, digital file that you can access from your phone anytime you need a little pick me up. Remind yourself, yeah, you know, today sucked, but you know, in the past, I've been pretty cool, good.
It's a really great technique to kind of knock the sense back into you when something negative happens, that it's just a situation or a moment in time. But overall, you're doing great things. But beyond those accomplishments, I want you to start to really mark in the sense that when you get an email, or you get a LinkedIn recommendation, or somebody sends you an email that says, Oh, you did such a great job on that project, or I really appreciated the way you handled that situation. It could be a text, it could be a comment on a post that you did. You grab it, screen, capture it, do whatever, and stick it in that digital file. Because again, as you build up this confidence collection, it is a beautiful way to reflect on all the things that you've done and the kinds of things, the way that you've had impact on other people, even if it's not quantitative, the qualitative information in there is just so important. It's so important so that you have that it may never appear on your resume, but it certainly will appear in your body language, in your eyes, if you ever need to go in for a an interview, or do a presentation, or do that TED talk, you pull out that confidence collection, and you get that beautiful confidence shot Mojo up to snuff, and it, I can't even express how important that is. So number one, your youlogy stuck in your confidence collection. And I think the third most important thing, and I don't really think that these are necessarily in order. They're just all really important, is to manage your time. You know, block out in your calendar opportunities that you have, things that you want to do, if you want to learn a new language, maybe one hour a day you want to go to the gym. Put it in your calendar. Block it out, make the time just like you would make time for a meeting, like you would make time to drive your child to wherever or go spend some time with your parent. Make that time to do the things that you need to do for yourself. So yeah, maybe you need to get a massage every week. If that's part of your well being, then put it in the calendar. Block your time.
For me, one of the things I do is I don't have meetings before 10 in the morning Eastern or after three. Why? Because it gives me the opportunity to get stuff done that needs to get done that maybe came in overnight or subsequently during the day, without having it to ruminate in my head all night. In other words, I get it done when I go to sleep. I've gotten as much done as I can in the day, but I made time to do as much as I can, right? So I don't feel badly about it. I didn't run out of time, so to speak. I just this is the time I had. That's what I allocated, and subsequently, that's what got done. So block your time on your calendar. Manage your time. Your calendar is yours, and I have some news. Everyone has 24 by seven and so do you. So manage it, put in the blocks that you want to spend doing the things that you feel that you need to do again. That youlogy and that confidence collection or ways to kind of remind you what you want to do, but in order to get them done, in order to make sure those things are priorities, you got to make sure that you block it in your calendar.
All right, I'm gonna leave you those three ideas, and in the meantime, I'm always open to more. Please hit us up if you have any either things you want to add to that list or in podcast in general, topics you'd like us to consider. So thanks so much. See ya, hear ya talk to you next podcast.
Before we totally wrap up, I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other real confidence episodes can be found on www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again that the best way to get confidence is to give it to others, and you can do it just by liking and sharing this episode on your preferred podcast and social media channels. You can even give me some confidence by noting topics you'd like me to consider for the future. So for now, this is Alyssa Dver. Thank you for helping to bring more confidence to the world.
Master editing done by Ben Weinstein with original music performed and composed by Jeff Mitchell. Real confidence is a production of American Confidence Institute. All rights reserved.
