Episode 10 – What Does Living Your Best Life Mean?
Show Notes: What does living your best life mean?
Trailer of Innovate Your Life With Mary Michael – What does your best life mean?
Welcome to the Innovate your life podcast with Mary Michael. I am Mary Michael, your host on this show. If you are new and this is the first time you are hearing our podcast, let me tell you a little bit of what we will be discussing in this podcast. We will be discussing how to live your best life and no matter where you are in your journey of your life or in your busy quest to control chaos and live your best life from career to family life to learning to unwind and be in the moment with mindfulness. We share inspirational stories from others just like you to support our journey on this planet to motivate you to live your best life.
First let’s discuss the definition of what does it mean to life your best life. This phrase ‘living your best life’ is truthfully very broad and subjective, so let me add a needed clarification to allow for the unique life experiences that everyone has.
On Social Media – the tag line of “living my best life” many think that it is posting pictures of a selfie on a beach to a really amazing looking dish or a postcard image from a favorite destination. However, I want to go a little deeper than a picture and a great hashtag #bestlife, but what does it really mean?
In society “living your best life” can feel like the pressure of the “best” and this has a clear definition that feels very restrictive in this context of ‘a really big milestone.’ Let me give you an example … If you let LinkedIn and social media tell you what it means of living your best life, it means that you landed your dream job, you are traveling the world or that you got accepted by a top Ivy League University. Living your best life in the context of social media ignores the small wins and praises received to reach the overall goal or finish line and totally overlooks all the work it took to get there. It is a snap shot of the win and not the failures. Life is fluid and it is not just the big milestones … there are ups and downs along the way and small wins. On LinkedIn – would you post how many times you got rejected from a job? Probably not …
I just want to take a pause and ask a couple of questions, “Are you still living your best life when you have saved enough money for that dream vacation, or maybe you were rejected from numerous jobs before you finally landed your current one, or maybe you created a dream team but had a couple of failed experiences? What about all the time in between to get to that goal? What about all the mistakes along the way?” Success is not your only win, it is the journey to get there that teaches you not only the grit it took to get a success.
To make it and master a skill and make it to the top. It is impossible to make it to the top without a mistake and experience failure or what I like to call a ‘learning’ or pitfall. Living your best life may only shine a light on the success stories of the winning moments. Not all of life can be a success look at Thomas Edison and how many fails he had made before he could make a light bulb work. To be exact it was around 1000 fails… before the light bulb could actually work.
We all have dreams and wishes. We are all inventors, and learning to reach your greatest potential is part of creating a life worth living.
Many of us have visions for tomorrow and these are visions of various futures or an ideal world, where we will exercise more, or find a career that we actually love, make more money and be financially independent, have more free time, and you name you own vision, the lists of visions are endless.
Odds are if you are listening to this it is because you want more in your life, and that you are capable of more than what you are doing today. You have potential for much more. You have hopes and dreams and you are ready to create the life you want.
On a greater level, pursuing our dreams also means finding purpose and meaning in life. And it’s not always clear where are north star is pointing us. Without a direction in life may feel like a void, that feels like that something is missing in our lives. This can feel like a haunted feeling of wanting more and listening for the whispers that are trying to tell us something important and finding time to reflect and turn off the inner critic becomes even more critical to take those 10 mins a day to silence the world and allow ourselves to listen to life.
Living my best life also means that as soon as we reach our potential, we continue to set the bar even higher (hey we always need a purpose or a goal right!). It is not a quick fix or get rich quick scheme. It is a commitment to myself of what is really important to me. Living your best life does not necessarily mean living in a utopia world once I do one certain task and then I can quit. It means I am always asking myself what is working and what is not and constantly inspecting and adapting, and consequently moving towards what gives me energy so I can live to my fullest potential. Some may call this mastery of subject, hobby, sport, etc. An example, when I look back at life, learning how to master 3 sports, swim, bike, run at a high level constantly kept me going to perfect not only the mechanics of the sport but the mindset to push through a whole new level of cardio endurance. Another example is creating this brand of Innovate Your Life with Mary Michael and perfecting my communication and my story so it could relate to others. This might mean really mastering a podcast, a website and affiliate site.
Part of the journey of life is to discover what we really like, what really interests us, gives us energy and makes us feel alive. Self-inquiry and constantly doing self-reflections are a one of numerous ways for uncovering what we really want in our lives. This is not always easy to look at ourselves on an inward perspective and some of use may fear looking deeper into our soul. Discovering what we want in life also means discovering what we don’t like and confronting what we don’t want in life, and that process can be rough and not glamourous at all. However, learning to live with your true self leads to rewards that frequently exceed our expectations. The best part is when simple everyday life can feel awesome when we are living with purpose.
Creating the life, I want (aka “best life”) requires a dedication to personal growth. I must be willing to constantly innovate, learn from my mistakes, change, grow, and to do what it takes to live my best life.
Living and innovating my best life also means living a balanced life with the art of moderation. Balance is a key part of living well. By managing time and energy levels wisely, I foster all aspects of myself, my body, my mind, and my spirit.
What does it mean to live my best life? It means to live up to my potential. Living up to my potential means doing “the things I hope to do someday” now instead of putting them off for some magical time in the future. Life is temporary, and I don’t want to wait to feel fulfilled.
Our goal at Innovate Your Life with Mary Michael is to create focus and clarity to be able to control the chaos in our life so we can achieve our goals and what matters most to us.
We have resources that can support your goals and sometimes it means decluttering or figuring out how to manage chaos to live clearer for others it may mean learning to live in the present and listening to your interests.
We are here for you and we have mini-innovative blueprints to support your journey on our website with a podcast, free PDFs and a shop open 24/7 with helpful resources to keep life going! All links from this show will be in the show notes.
In this episode I am going to give you a taste of what you can expect with a sneak preview of podcasts we have not only done in the past but podcasts to come where we explore new topics from career to family and ‘who is in your pit crew?’ That are all part of some inspirational stories we share of constantly refining our life and allowing us to fail fast and grow.
Looking back to a prior episode about career: I talk about how to build and keep that confidence up and put with music like in an exercise video and this is one of my favorite sections where we talk about pumping up your confidence, let’s listen in:
After an episode of confidence … I talked with Glenna Crooks founder of Sage My Life where we explore networks and why it is so important to have a pit crew. The best question she was ever asked was who was in her support team. When we look at our networks all too often, we have people that depend on us but where is our support crew. Let’s listen in to a couple of minutes:
https://www.innovateology.com/episode-10-interview-with-glenna-crooks-at-sage-my-life/
As I started a family, Glenna’s advice took full shape and we explore being part of Team Parent with a Pit Crew … Here is a trailer of my take on a pit crew and what it means to my life of trying to be a super mom and how I have learned to create a support dream team.
And finally here is a sneak preview of the following episode where we speak with Lisa, a host mom that started a YouTube Channel and how this experience has changed her life 300% …
https://www.innovateology.com/11-part-1-interview-with-american-au-pair-host-mom-lisa/
Finally, we as we had a pandemic with Covid-19 – we discuss the importance of self-care and why it is so important to take care of you! We all need a sanity break and we actually have a training video on how to do mindfulness in 10 minutes a day. Yep you heard me, all you need is 10 minutes a day to realize the benefits and to keep calm and carry on. Here is a section from a mindfulness training that is absolutely free on our website. Links are in the show notes.
There is a lot more to come so we hope you enjoyed today’s episode and check us out at www.innovateyourlife.today