So You Wanna Live a Great Life? Here's How. Really.

Fundamental to living a great life, in fact, the very critical root of it lies in your ability to relate to
yourself as your highest and best. We tend to use the "results" of our life to determine our worthiness. This is the critical error human beings must unlearn to live a fulfilled life.

People with absent or distant fathers are particularly prone to making this error. When a child's father is disconnected, physically or emotionally, that child inevitably decides that there must be something wrong with them. Children rely on their fathers as the one human being on the planet that should tell them they're doing a good job, that affirms them and that reminds them that their worth is not tied to their results. Fathers let children know that their worth is inherent and dependent not on what they do but who they are.

You will know that you are making this error in judgment because your state of joy goes up and down based on your account balances, how hard you worked today or what you achieved recently.



You will know that you do this, because you judge every thing you do harshly, quipping that whatever it is you have done, could have been a little bit better.

You will know that you do this, because you have a very vague understanding of what it means to celebrate yourself.

You will know that you make this critical error, because you spend lots of time suffering or waiting for the big payoff, the big achievement. You probably seek out opportunities and are good at scenarios that require hard work and perseverance for sustained periods of time.

From this way of seeing yourself, that your worth, value and lovability is tied to what you do, you are forced to do whatever it takes to achieve more self worth. You must achieve more, make more, get more, have newer, better and nicer things, or you will be worthless.

The problem is that no matter what you achieve or where you get to in life, you're worth or value is only as good as your interpretation of how "well" you're doing in life. And, I don't know about you, but no matter what I have achieved in my life, running 9 marathons, completing an MBA, creating my own company, making a 100k plus per year, being a scuba diver, traveling the world, living in Mexico, learning Spanish, moving to California or having a nice car, I have never found any achievement to create any sense of lasting fulfillment or joy.

Therefore, you must begin at the root. You must learn to relate to yourself in your highest and best self. You must learn to treat yourself the way you would treat someone you love very deeply.

Only then can you create the space to live a truly great life. Only then can you en-joy the life you have created. Only then can you celebrate.

Consider that your number one job in life, the solution and the way to achieving success financially, in your career, as a leader, a parent, a friend, a husband, a wife and all things in between, is learning to relate to yourself as your highest and best self and to practice being loving to yourself as often and for as long as you can stand.