Here Is What You Need To Have A Good Life

1. You need to be on your own team.

The key to living a good fucking life is first believing that you deserve one. If you are not emphatically, enthusiastically and unequivocally on your own team in life, nobody else is going to be. You have to be the one who believes that you are capable of accomplishing big, huge things. And then you have to be the one who consistently proves yourself right.

2. You need to be honest about what you want.

To lead a good fucking life, you need to stop bullshitting yourself. If your goal is marriage and a family, you need to own that. If your values are money and success, you need to admit that. If you cannot be honest with yourself about what you want out of life, you’re going to end up waist-deep in a life that you don’t want – wondering how the hell you got there and where you can find the exit ramp.

3. You need to go all in on what matters.

To lead a good fucking life, you have to commit yourself entirely. You can’t love people half way. You can’t leave important business unfinished. You can’t deliberately half ass your job or your relationship or any other area of your life because you feel more comfortable when you have one foot out the door. You have to decide what you’re in for and then go all the way with it. You have to realize the freedom and possibility that exists within commitment.

4. You need to feel like you matter.

You don’t need to be a celebrity or a CEO or even hopelessly in love, but you do need to feel, at the least, like you belong somewhere. You need to feel as though there is a person or an organization or a community that would miss you if you suddenly disappeared. You have to be a part of something bigger than yourself because that sense of belonging gets you purpose, and that purpose will get you through the worst of times.

5. You need to be braver than you feel.

Achieving a good fucking life is that it doesn’t come easily or comfortably. You have to be willing to size up uncomfortable situations, recognize that you’re going to feel a bit out of your league while engaging in them, and then make the conscious choice to engage in them anyway. You have to learn to disconnect from that part of yourself that tells you, ‘No, stop, retreat.’ You have to barrel on despite it. You have to act in a way that is in conscious and deliberate defiance of your fears.

6. You need to invest your love.

People with good fucking lives know that it feels better to give love than it does to receive it. Instead of sitting around waiting for the person or place or situation that is going to give them what they need, they ask themselves what they can contribute to the people, places and circumstances that surround them. They know that you have to first invest love before you can withdraw it.

7. You need to say ‘No’ when it’s wrong.

The enemy of the incredible is the convenient. To lead a good fucking life, you have to know which opportunities to turn down and which avenues to not pursue. You have to know when saying ‘No’ is actually freeing you up to pursue, the greater, more promising ‘Yes’ that is burning inside of you. You have to trust yourself enough to bypass the good en route to the incredible.

8. You need to say ‘Yes’ when it’s right.

To lead a good fucking life, you have to be self-aware enough to know when something is right. You have to be ready to step up to bat for your life at any point in time – not just when it’s convenient or ideal. You have to jump on opportunities as they arise, because you trust yourself enough to go with them.

9. You need to be willing to forgive.

To lead a good fucking life, you have to learn to let go of the way that you wish things had gone. You have to cast aside resentment and bitterness and pain over the wrongs of the past, because they’re only going to cloud your present actions. And that’s only going to keep you away from the new future that you could be formulating.

10. You need to know what keeps you grounded.

To lead a good fucking life, you have to know what your non-negotiables are. You have to understand what it is you need to cling onto when everything is falling apart, and how you can keep yourself together when chaos is completely encompassing you. You have to be willing to make time for whatever centers and grounds you, because that consistency is going to see you through all the toughest of times.

11. You need to maintain a sense of wonder.

To lead a good fucking life, you have to allow yourself to remain amazed by the world around you. You have to fight the urge to consistently judge, organize and fit new information into neat little boxes that coincide with your current worldview. You have to be open to your worldview expanding. You have to allow the discomfort of uncertainty to morph into wonder and awe.

12. You have to know what you stand for.

To lead a good fucking life, you have to have a purpose – and you have to stand behind it with confidence. While being open is a wonderful thing, being decisive about what matters is a key component to developing a healthy self-concept – and to providing your life with purpose and meaning.

13. You need to feel at home inside your body.

You don’t have to look like a supermodel or perform like an athlete. But your body has to be a home that you are comfortable inside of. You have to feel as though you and your body are working in sync with each other, rather than against each other. At the least, you have to not be your own worst enemy.

14. You need to be comfortable being alone.

We all hope to be surrounded by people who love and support us throughout the majority of our lives. But like it or not, there will always be points in life in which you find yourself lacking the community that you’re aching for. And you have to learn how to cope throughout these times. You have to learn how to be your own best friend and support system, because it’s impossible to have a good fucking life alongside someone else if you don’t know how to have one alone first.

15. You need to be vulnerable with others.

To have a good fucking life, you have to let others into your experience of it. Your highs are going to feel infinitely higher when you’re sharing them with others – and your lows are going to feel less low conversely. A life lived alone can be successful but a life lived with love will be meaningful. And to achieve that kind of love, you have to open yourself up to real vulnerability.

16. You need to make time for whatever makes you feel the most alive.

To lead a good fucking life, you need to make pleasure a priority. You have to understand what it is that makes you feel the absolute most invigorated, inspired and enlightened, and then you have to find a way to work it into your regular routine. Because at the end of your life, you won’t go out wishing you’d spent more time at work. You’ll go out wishing you’d done more of what makes you feel the most alive – and you owe it to yourself to engage in whatever that is while you still have the chance to do more of it.

17. You need to let life keep surprising you.

To lead a good fucking life, you have to accept that you aren’t already holding all the necessary ingredients to it. You have to be open to input, open to inspiration, open to new ways of doing things and open to surprises. Because regardless of what your current definition of a good fucking life is, chances are it still has the potential to be better than you could ever possibly imagine.