How Do You Want to Live Your Life?

DAY 2 – For years people have criticized the “scowl” on my face. They ask why I am so unhappy. I mean, I don’t know. I’m not unhappy. I guess I just don’t show it that much. I want that to change that, which is why I’ve started this one-year project.

Now is a good time to introduce you to the term “lifestyle design.” Made famous by author and lifehacker Timothy Ferriss, lifestyle design is the art of creating the ultimate lifestyle for yourself. In the book The Four Hour Workweek, Ferriss lays out the principles of work productivity. He says from the start that the title is more of a gimmick than anything based on his ability to only work four hours a week. He explains how to minimize? the amount of work you have to personally do while taking mini-vacations throughout the year to enjoy the things you love to do.

The current lifestyle model is to work your butt off until retirement age. Then you live off the money you’ve stored up and do whatever you want. There’s just one big problem with all that. By retirement age, you could be (and will probably be) too old and too tired to really enjoy life. This concept hit me hard because my mother, my father and my stepfather all died at early ages. I plan on beating all three, but it still scares the heck out of me. That’s why I’m going to see the world now. I’m going to design my lifestyle so that I can maximize my happiness, doing all the things that get me jacked.

Well, that leads to one basic question – what makes people happy? What kind of lifestyle do I want to live? What are the things that get me jacked? Are those items that make every man happy?

I don’t have the answers to those questions. I’ve made a list of things that get me jacked, and I plan on sharing that list with you throughout this year. But this blog is going to be more than just what makes me happy. It will be an exploration of happiness. And because I live in the South, it will concentrate on all the amazing things there is to do right here at home on a daily basis. Sure, I love going to Italy, Amsterdam and France, but I can’t do that every single day. I can, however, do things around me that increases my happiness daily.

I got the idea from Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. Honestly, I didn’t dig the book too much. It is just way too girly for my enjoyment. Still, she has a fantastic premise and incredibly strong points. The things that make Gretchen happy aren’t the things that make me happy, but that is her point – figure out what makes you happy and figure out what makes you unhappy. Then systematically eliminate the unhappy things and concentrate on the happy things.

Seems easy, right? It isn’t. It’s dang near impossible. I’m going to try it anyway.