Instead of rating life categories individually, mentally blend them to get one holistic happiness score (1-10). Your brain instinctively subtracts the 2-3 key problem areas from a perfect 10, immediately revealing what needs the most attention.
Negative emotions are signals that something needs attention, much like a car's engine light. Don't ignore them. Instead, sit with the feeling to understand it, grant yourself grace for feeling it, and then create a concrete plan to address the root cause.
Your calendar provides a perfect, objective reflection of your actual values, regardless of what you claim they are. An audit will quickly show whether your passions, key relationships, and well-being are truly prioritized or are just afterthoughts.
All concerns fall into three categories: your business (your control), their business (their control), and reality's business (uncontrollable forces). Stress and loneliness arise from mentally operating outside of your own business.
Don't confuse fleeting positive emotions with true happiness. Feelings are merely evidence of well-being, not well-being itself. A more durable and achievable form of happiness comes from systematically cultivating its three core components: enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.
End-of-life regrets often stem from things left undone or unsaid. To avoid this, one can regularly use a simple 'final checklist'—a set of powerful questions about one's life, relationships, and priorities. This isn't about cleaning up at the end, but about actively building a life so full that there's nothing left to fix.
For two weeks, nightly log the five activities that energized you and the five that drained you. This simple practice reveals your core strengths and "gifts." By analyzing these patterns, you can intentionally redesign your role and responsibilities to spend more time on energizing tasks, actively combating burnout.
Frame daily activities as either contributing to 'aliveness' (connection, movement, focus) or 'numbness' (doomscrolling, binge-watching). This simple heuristic helps you consciously choose actions that energize you and build a more fulfilling life, rather than those that numb and distract you.
Any goal, no matter how abstract, can be improved if it's measured. Even a complex concept like a successful marriage can be tracked with a simple daily metric (e.g., a "red dot/green dot" system). This creates a tangible signal to steer by, as "what gets measured gets improved."
High achievers often apply immense rigor to their companies while neglecting their personal lives. To avoid this imbalance, treat your life like a business by implementing formal processes like quarterly reviews for relationships and personal goals, ensuring they receive the purposeful investment they need to thrive.
When feeling stuck, start with your desired outcome and work backward. Ask: What action is needed? What feeling enables that action? What thought or belief creates that feeling? This process quickly reveals if your current beliefs are misaligned with your goals, pinpointing where to reframe.