New Year Resolutions and Living the Excellent Life

At this time of year, many people are making new year resolutions but in retrospect, are you able to look back and confidently say that you have lived an excellent life? By this, I mean health, wealth, love and happiness. It’s not just about the money. It’s not just about finding love or being happy and in good health. Everything goes hand in hand and it needs to be balanced. It’s all about this all-encompassing, holistic approach that meshes together and gives you the excellent life in such a way that you can look at the quality of life you’re living and be like “I like how this turned out.”

Instead of making new year resolutions that you may or may not keep, here are the four cornerstones you need to pay attention to in your life: health, wealth, love and happiness. This is a great concept I got from one of my mentors.

Health: Integrate your health into every part of your life. Find a way to increase your physical health while you work. You don’t really need a gym membership. You can bring the gym to your home or if that’s not your thing, then take a half-hour walk everyday during your lunch break. Start a lunchtime yoga session for your colleagues at work. Eat an apple every night before bed. Take care of your body and mental/emotional health by having a regular self-care routine. Join a meet-up group for people who love to play tennis or volleyball. There are so many ways to link your health to love as well. You can meet people through mutual friends at sports events and form great social bonds based on shared interests.

Wealth: This one is pretty explanatory but it’s more than just money though. It’s creating value for exchange which in turn translates into money and eventually wealth. You can create value at your full-time job, in your business, by that side-hustle or anything else you do that produces a product or service. Link your wealth to other aspects of your life. I have seen a lot of people who have tons of money and are miserable because they have no family or loved ones to share that affluence with. They long for the love and companionship of a partner but it is nowhere to be found. They have not linked their wealth to love. Sometimes, the result of their wealth is it has made them workaholics who neglected their health for the sake of the grind. So now, they are sick in their physical body and cannot enjoy the money they’ve made. All their money is spent on medications and hospital bills because they have not linked their wealth to their health. Besides investing, use your money to create healthy, loving and happy experiences.

Love: Don’t separate your love life from the rest of you. Love here means social interaction and it does not have to mean romantic love alone. It can also refer to family and friends. Some people prefer forming social bonds with multiple people that they can just park in the lot and come back to anytime they want or need something. It doesn’t really work like that. You will usually form deeper bonds with those you’ve either interacted with for a long time in different scenarios or been through a variety of struggles with. These can be people you meet through your work/business or via your active lifestyle and because of that, you are able to share some type of deep, common ground with them. I currently have a few friends who are people I’ve worked with in the past and knowing them over a long period of time coupled with the daily grind has only made the friendship that much better.

Happiness/Fulfillment: Most people in the modern world are not happy because they are trying to be fulfilled by getting a bunch of stuff. Those things you are trying to get are good but I will encourage you to become a certain type of person first. You can be happier by doing something that is fulfilling instead such as touching people’s lives. This can mean being involved in or supporting a certain cause that is bigger than you. It could come from being employed in a career that creates meaning for others, volunteering at your local church or setting up your business to create social impact in the world. For most, this comes in the form of their faith – the concept that there is a higher power to whom they must connect with in order to find purpose and a meaningful existence.

Finally, integrate, don’t separate. Link the four cornerstones together and to do this effectively, you are going to need a clear purpose and vision. You don’t have to compartmentalize your life into little boxes. The ideal situation is that it should all be integrated together, not separated and should not be detached from the other. The reason you should not break your life into separate parts is because each one makes up the whole. Due to compartmentalization, we see people being trapped in jobs and marriages they hate, living secret lives for fear of being judged or rejected by others and basically living just to survive instead of thrive. If you have a passion for something and it makes you happy, then make it a part of your whole life. Let it flow into your entire lifestyle. Own it and share it with family, friends and co-workers. You do not need to compartmentalize that part of you, relegate it to something you do only on a certain day or hide the joy you receive from it from certain people – that is only a recipe for depression.

Let me give you an example. I am multi-passionate. Writing is my first love and that led me into the communications and marketing field because everyone knows a good marketer must first be exceptional with words. However, most people also know how much I love fashion, beauty and lifestyle. I have integrated my life by merging all those interests via this blog, creating a value for exchange and in the process I have been exposed to many social events where I have met amazing entrepreneurs, some of whom are now my great friends and close allies. I try to nurture these friendships by sharing regular and meaningful experiences with them. So you see, my wealth (career/business) is now linked to my love or social life and better yet is tied to happiness/fulfillment because I give back through my ability to speak to women’s groups on certain subjects relating to fashion and self-care. When I wake up in the morning, I do not dread the fact that it is a Monday or fear the commute to my full-time gig. I am able to work from home doing something that I genuinely love – marketing for a cause that revolves around creating a sustainable environmental future. I am free to be myself in every sense through what I do, the people I come in contact with, the way I treat my body and the causes I support. The only thing that’s currently a work in progress is active living but I am facing that challenge with grace by doubling down on healthy eating. I may not have all the money in the world right now and indeed so but I do not need it to in order to live the excellent life.

Image source: http://bit.ly/2BBuAYf

What are you going to do in the new year to improve your life in the areas of health, wealth, love and happiness? What two areas will you link together?

Jamila Kyari

I’m a seasoned communications and marketing consultant with a penchant for all things stylish and chic. Follow me on social media and subscribe to the newsletter for regular updates on industry trends and much more!

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