Welcome to the Good Life Chronicles, where living a good life takes center stage.
Three conversations last week. Three people. The same pattern.
In the first, someone asked a friend to make a choice, then got quietly irritated when the choice made wasn't the one they had already decided on.
In the second, someone explained, with some pride, that they were too set in their ways to change much, and then couldn't understand why they kept getting the same results.
In the third, someone announced, before a single word had been exchanged, that they already felt insecure and lost all authority in 60 seconds.
Three different people. The same pattern. A choice handed over before anything even happened.
Many of us have learned, over years, to make ourselves smaller. To apologize for existing. To put forward our insecurities in a bid for others to go easy on us. To stay quiet in the meeting and then complain about the outcome later. To defer to someone else's preference and then feel resentful when we’ve handed over a choice that was ours to make. To miss an opportunity – again – to shape an event, experience, or interaction the way you wanted, and be at the mercy of someone’s casual decision.
And before you think this is a post for women, it’s not. Those three examples? All men. But that's not even the point.
A good life does not get built by others.
It gets built by people who decide, at some point, to start practising being the person they want to become and who they already probably are, but just not acting on.
(Norman Rockwell, "Triple Self-Portrait", 1960)
In positive psychology, this connects to what researchers call self-efficacy: the belief that your actions can influence your outcomes. People with stronger self-efficacy do not necessarily feel more confident. They have simply practised enough times that the evidence has caught up with the belief. They know they can change and so, they do.
Each social, work or even recreational opportunity, then, is practice for your Good Life. A chance to be a slightly newer version of yourself rather than a repeat of an older one.
The question is whether the version of you that shows up by default still serves you today.
And if you realize you’re still running an old script out of habit, you can write a new one…
One thing to try: Before your next significant conversation, meeting, or even date, take two minutes to answer three questions. What do I want from this? What is one thing I want to say clearly? How do I want to be seen? Then walk in as that person.
And remember this: it’s practise. The goal isn’t to get it perfectly right the first time, but to get closer each time.
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Have a great week and remember: Life is short, what you do with it matters.
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