The Key to Unlocking the Good Life

Posted on July 24, 2018 by Adam Mitchell-Hardt, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

The good life is available to us but only if we choose to create it.

Isn’t it funny how we get these ideas about how life should be when we grow up? Study hard, get good grades, go to college, discover your passion, marry your true love and ride off into the sunset. At many points along our journey we seem to receive these oftentimes fairytale notions of how life will unfold for us. Perhaps it was all those hopeful Disney movies with perfect happy endings. Perhaps it was our parents, our peers or our teachers. Maybe it was just all of those commercials that would run in between our favorite tv shows. All I know is that something very important is missing here. It’s that at no point are we entitled to have the life of our dreams. Just because we grew up in the United States, a country of incredible abundance and prosperity, doesn’t mean that we get to live the good life. All that it means is that the good life is available to us but only if we choose to create it.

I thought that as long as I could just get there that all of my problems would just melt away.

My story, up until recently, has been one of passively taking life as it comes. Of waiting for the good life to materialize and just when I think I’ve made the appropriate changes I often realize that it just ain’t happening. For example, after I came to terms with the fact that the east coast just wasn’t a good fit for me I set my heart on finding my place. That’s when I discovered California. More specifically it was San Francisco. The land of my dreams… I thought that as long as I could just get there that all of my problems would just melt away and I’d ride off into the sunset happy as a clam. Fast forward to several years later I found myself in the same position as where I’d started. Bummed out and unfulfilled.

What we want in life doesn’t just show up on its own.

The reason, I’ve discovered, is that what we want in life doesn’t just show up on its own. We have to create it or else we’ll just continue waiting. Waiting for something to happen… It doesn’t even have to be a super effortful project. Sometimes it starts with an intention. A desire for a particular outcome of our choosing. Discovering your purpose works in much the same way. Chances are we’re not going to wake up one day and know exactly what it is we want to do with our life so we need to figure out how to discover this ourselves.

Discovering your purpose is like treasure hunt.

The good news is that, if we know where to look, there’s clues all around that will all point us in the right direction. Discovering your purpose is like treasure hunt where the treasure is in knowing what line of work you can expect to feel most fulfilled and the clues are the experiences, ideas and insights that you’ve had throughout your life that point the way. The amazing thing is that it’s all there if we just know where to look. This is what my work involves. It involves taking my client on a journey of self-exploration to find out what those clues are.

What things have you done for the simple joy of doing them?

First we start with the low hanging fruit. What was your dream job as a kid? Then it’s understanding what kind of a person you are today. How are you showing up for other people? Are there certain activities or subjects that you’re continuously drawn to? What are some experiences that you’ve had where you’ve felt most alive or engaged? Have there been experiences where you’ve felt compelled to complete a project that took some effort where there was no expectation of external rewards? What things have you done for the simple joy of doing them? Once we’ve compiled answers to these questions we start to gain clarity around what aspects of this human life enliven us or give us energy. These are the big clues that will ultimately inform our direction.

I realized that I liked to help people make important life decisions.

My dream job as a kid was to be a Dad (clearly I was too young at that time to understand that being a Dad is not a job). I think I just liked the idea of being a guiding force for others. Dad’s often show us the way in life and I liked that as a kid. In life I realized that I liked to help people make important life decisions. I often found myself giving thoughtful feedback to friends and family with regards to their relationships, their jobs or their families. They seemed to appreciate talking to me because of my ability to listen and hear them out without jumping to any conclusions. Ever since I took my first psychology class in high school I’ve been obsessed with learning about human behavior. I had a strong desire to understand why we do what we do and also how we can act in ways that serve us best. Last year I spent weeks writing an eBook simply because I wanted to capture and express the insights I’d been gaining throughout my mindfulness practice.

The clues were there all along.

Considering these aspects of my personal history it should come as no surprise that I realized that coaching is something that I could feel pretty passionate about. What’s interesting too is that the clues were there all along. Sure it got easier with time because the evidence began piling up but had someone sat me down before graduating from college I bet you we could’ve drawn the same conclusion. I actually recall having an interest in coaching around that time but sadly never took it seriously.

You can literally create whatever life you wish to.

The point is that we all have these experiences or clues as I like to call them. We all have natural curiosities that reveal themselves whenever we have the freedom to follow our intuition and try something on a whim. It’s just that it’s not part of our culture to go through this exercise. Why that is I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if we’re just way behind the times. The world has advanced so rapidly just in our own lifetime that our customs and the way we look at the world just don’t seem to match up. The industrial revolution was a long time ago yet our mindset still seems to be grow up, learn skills and get a job. Well I’m sorry but it’s not like that any more. We’ve got choices upon choices for what kind of a life we wish to create. That’s the great thing. It’s all out there. You can literally create whatever life you wish to. The only catch is that you need to know what that life looks like. Until then you’re likely to be swimming in mud and it ain’t no fun.