I make lists to stave off the looming insanity. It’s a useful sword.
Life goals
- Appreciate what I have while I have it.
- Do the things that I ought to be doing.
- Stop wasting so much time feeling sad.
- Be nice to yourself.
- Connect with other human beings.
- Give back.
I also take a minute to reassess periodically. Do my values reflect how I’m spending my time? How do I want to spend my time?
How I want to spend my days/my current top five values in life
1) Meditation
I want to make time to meditate because a lot of peaceful, happy people recommend it and I trust peaceful, happy people.
I have even another layer of list insanity that I’m not asking you to do, but I’ll tell you about. The month of my birthday, I pick a theme for the year. My 36th year on the planet, this year, is my year of mindfulness, my year of the breath. Hence meditation being my number one priority right now.
2) Fitness
I definitely want to make time for fitness.
This is an easy cheat code for life. Work out, move your body, get your blood flowing, chat with your parts and the quality of everything is higher. Full stop.
After working out every day for more than a year and tracking my smileys and seeing what else is going on, I realized that keeping my muscles happy makes me mentally happier. The difference is stark. To say the least.
It is a wonderful life hack. Take care of your body and your body will pay you back in dividends happiness. It just requests some time every day.
Sorry, I know I lecture you about this a lot. I worry I’m becoming a fitness bore.
3) Social
I want to make time for other people. I want to nurture my relationships with my friends and family, my community, my world. You make life bearable. We’re all in this together.
I want people who I’m close to and who I can feel vulnerable with. I want my tribe.
4) Writing
My ideal life includes a time to write every single day, to sit on the moment, and to think things out. The day is better and happier and calmer when I write some words.
This is kind of my purpose bullet point. Humans need to feel like they’re working toward something, that they’re making progress in an endeavor. Dissatisfaction is the driver of human evolution.
I find glimpses of happiness nestled into moments when I write. It’s my favorite pastime and where I get the most joy in the doing. The work will save you.
5) Business
I want to make money off my writing.
The outcome doesn’t matter and I’ve chugged away at this writing thing chanting the outcome doesn’t matter for years.
But a nice outcome would be…nice. Please, I want so badly for the good things to happen.*
At the end of 2018, when I saw my nest egg shed a couple hundred grand from the last time I checked it, I shuddered.
Money is the area of my life where I have been slacking. Yes, technically, my net worth has increased since my retirement in 2015, but that’s only because civilization has decided to hold on just a bit longer. It has nothing to do with me.
Earning money from my labor is my stretch goal. It would be pleasant, I think, to make some money. Validating. Not as important as the writing, but still valuable.
I want to cross “be a writer” off my life bucket list. Part of being a writer, in my head, right or wrong, means making money. A legitimate writer. No more of this retired lawyer persona.
Okay, so those are my top five values and they’ll be my theme months over the next five months. You don’t have to play along with the same theme month. The point is to tailor it to yourself.
Your turn.
Make your own lists and then we can party. Making the lists is the party.
Life goals
Current Top Five Values in life / How I want to spend my time
*Blatantly stolen from Sylvia Plath, but credited and annotated, so really just borrowed with attribution.
You have identified the big one – remaking yourself. No longer a retired lawyer. Now you’re a writer. Set writer goals. Whether it’s words written or money earned, you now have goals that align with your new uh…..career. Welcome to unretirement. I know that’s not a word but neither is pretirement. Anyway. Take the new career seriously but also seriously fun. It’s mentally challenging and it’s what many people do when they retire early – It also helps pay a few bills and add to the nest egg ! Life 2.0 begins right now !
I did the same. It’s been really fun and best of all I can step away when ever I decide I’ve had enough of career 2.0. Maybe then I can pretire a second time, maybe for a while. Recharge. Maybe then I’ll find 3.0.
Isn’t life grand. It sure is good.
This new career is the perfect mixture of serious and fun. 🙂 What is your 2.0 career?
Here’s my current list of how I want to spend my time (maybe not overall life goals):
1. Stop regretting the past
2. Serve others who are less fortunate
3. Keep doing epic shit in the mountains
4. Keep building my graphic arts business
5. Keep making health & fitness a priority
6. Help take care of my Mom
That last one is pretty noble and worthwhile. Love the list. Thanks for sharing.
Bliss and Gratitude.
I don’t know which comes first or if the order is important.
I want to be useful to others – and feel gratitude and bliss/flow while being useful.
Bliss is “perfect happiness.” What a lovely word that I don’t use often enough.
1. Put the effort into providing a little bit more value than I feel like I get. Due to how I percieve what I give and what I get this will probably make it an equal exchange.
2. Think deeper. Illusion of understanding makes me prone to mistakes.
3. Keep up the good work on my finances and weight lifting.
4. Use my negative emotions to get myself into action. I’ll have them either way and they’re not biodegradeable so putting them in a pile to rot won’t help and worst case they get flushed out into the ocean and something cute chokes on them.
I don’t really understand your first one, but I like the others. Especially number two. Thanks for sharing.
I am 31, and life goals seem very far away/abstract. But here is my next 5 year plan (so communist of me, eh?).
1. Get my Canadian citizenship (no more 3rd world passport, yay!)
2. Deadlift 2x my body weight and Squat 1.5x body weight + some running benchmarks.
3. Reach 2 million (CAD) NW with my wife, ie become an individual millionaire.
4. Visit parents more often.
Excellent goals. Thanks for sharing.
Third world just means a country not aligned with the USSR or the US during the cold war. That doesn’t seem bad.
I know about the Cold war origins of the term. But for the last 30 years, 3rd world country means that if you are a citizen of one, you are presumed guilty until proven innocent every time you want to travel anywhere worth going to and are required to produce tons of evidence to prove that you wont illegally immigrate, no matter how many times you have travelled before.
I find the term slightly better than calling it what people really mean , ie. 3rd class, or poor country, or worse.
My uncle told me that when he traveled on his Indian passport, he definitely got treated worse than when he traveled with his US passport. I’m sorry the world sometimes sucks. 🙁
‘You can’t hit a target you cannot see
And you cannot see a target you do not have’
-Zig Ziglar
Whenever I think of goals, this saying ALWAYS comes to mind.
Great saying. Thanks for sharing!
I noticed that your list did not include finding a ‘significant other’, even though you’ve mentioned in other posts that you would like that.
That’s not a critique, btw, just an observation. And I noticed it when I drew up my own list, which also didn’t include finding a life partner, even though it’s something that I’ve identified as a want/need in my life.
Coincidence? I will have to ponder the question some.
Oh man, I didn’t even think about that. I kind of put “dating” under social in my head, but you’re right that it should probably be a higher priority if I want it to actually come true.
Definitely something to think about!
Anita, You seem to me more than a little depressed. Do you seek professional assistance for your depression?
I do! I wrote these articles back in January/February indeed to pull myself out of my funk hole. I’ve since tweaked my meds and I’m feeling much better. Your concern is sweet!
🙁 You make me sad and ashamed of humanity.