using basic pathways of fun to design your life

Ideally, you experience positive and good emotional state and activites.

  • Positive is positive. pleasurable.
  • Good means good for yourself, now and in the future, and in your mental, physical, and spiritual health. and also good for society by the same metrics. net positive for everyone involved.

The concept of 'flow' comes to mind:

When the job presents clear goals, unambiguous feedback, a sense of control, challenges that match the worker's skills, and few distractions, the feelings it provides are not that different from what one experiences in a sport or an artistic performance. - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

That sentence is a summary of the entire book and concept of flow. However reading the book allows you to understand it and apply it 1) from examples and 2) from actually sitting with the thoughts. People always want a shortcut and to be told what to do. Things fast.

You can design a life around those concepts.

So then you need to figure out, well, other concepts to support.

Life has certain demands.

"What about money?" is basically a summation of those demands.

That question is actually a summary of multiple questions:

  • How are you going to feed yourself? Your loved ones? Your family?
  • Where are you going to sleep?
  • How do you stay safe? Is that something you can do long term?

You know the questions. They are basic on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

They basically are the questions of physical and mental health and well being. The concept of flow likely has connections with mental and spiritual well being.

Of course it does not cover it. Why? Because spiritual well being likely has to do with well basically aspects of Buddhism and an overlap of spiritual and mental well being.

But we can focus on the money first.

You can look into the FIRE movement. Basically you create a business or investments to generate income. Because those you do not have to trade money for time 1:1.

You amass money.

You decrease your costs of daily living.

At some point you can robustly provide for your monetary costs of daily living with lower involvement, robust income generated through business and or investments. Basically assets.

The other part is the social aspect, which is rarely covered, but alluded to. I should write a page on that.

Then the third part is, well, the aspect of flow mentioned earlier, which is an answer to "what are you going to do (with al that free time)?"

That's pretty much it.

How? What? and like well, why kinda. Because that is a good life.

But the thing is that you realize that you can and do live a good life far before that. In fact, I would argue that you actually have to live a good life in order to amass money in a good way.

And if you want to achieve FIRE.

Living a good life is really the goal. And you can live a good life before and after achieving FIRE.

So liek the nebulous social aspect comes into play there and the flow aspect comes into play as well.

how to live a good life series: how to recognize a good life? what do you do with your life?

look at yourself and ask yourself, what do you want to do every day for the rest of your life and do that. you can do an 'easy way out' or 'makes a lot of money for not much effort' to give you time and resources, but you should not get distracted thinking that is the way you want to live your life. what you want, is to live your life doing something that helps you grow, that in the doing renews, and that, well you can put your whole self into. and because in the doing it renews, well, you have an abundance to share with your family as well.

how do you live a good life?

so how do you decide what is your best life? work towards growth and fulfilling a motivation in a good way. something is good for you, if it comes from those motivations.

motivation is an aspect people mention a lot. it is a magical fairy dragon which solves all problems. to find motivation, sometimes people refer to energy, and that it comes in a can of coffee, online e-course, or new computer eye glasses.

the reason 'following passion' or 'being more motivated' has not solved peoples' problems is because it is conflating and confusing multiple drives.

it is like looking for a partner that is supposed to be beautiful, smart, funny, your coach, your mentor, your best friend, your social circle, your fitness instructor, your personal body guard, your cook, your psychologist, your advocate, your ... you see what i mean?

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