Live Your Best Life

Your best life may look amazing from the outside and still include heartbreak, fear, and failure.

That isn't a contradiction. It's part of living fully.

When friends told me I was living my best life, they saw the exciting choices and experiences. Those were real. So were the painful, challenging parts.

In Episode 384, I shared what living my best life means to me: listening to my true desires and being willing to experience the whole journey, instead of organizing my life around never getting hurt.

Notice the cost of ignoring yourself

A friend looked at my life and told me it seemed exhausting. I thought about that carefully.

There are different ways to wear yourself out. One is to keep ignoring your dreams and the desires that are asking you to grow.

You may be comfortable in your job, relationship, or home and still have a consistent nudge toward something more or different.

Sometimes maintaining that comfort requires buffering, resistance, and telling yourself you don't want what you actually want.

That takes energy too.

I know the pull to stay in a life that already feels good. When I hear the nudge, I can want to cling to the comfort I have. Going toward the next version of myself may require an identity change that feels painfully unfamiliar.

The question is whether I'm listening to myself or using comfort to avoid what I know.

Understand the urge to return to the cave

I think of familiar parts of life as caves. You have the warm fire, the known surroundings, and a sense of safety.

Then a desire asks you to go outside and explore.

Once you leave, you don't know which direction to take or when you will find another cave. Your brain can't anticipate everything around the next corner.

It tells you to go back.

You can have a strong desire to evolve and a strong urge to return to what you know. Those competing thoughts can create anxiety and panic.

Thoughts create feelings, which drive actions and results. Understanding what your brain is doing gives you a chance to manage the emotion rather than automatically retreat.

With practice, you become more able to tolerate the uncertainty. You gain resilience, and more experiences become available to you.

You don't have to keep changing everything

Sometimes you want to stay in your current cave. You've taken a journey and arrived somewhere that feels right. There is no inner nudge asking you to leave.

That is a beautiful thing.

I'm not suggesting you should always move to the next thing. I want you to know the difference between a true, consistent desire to expand and an urge to hide or buffer.

Self-awareness is what helps you distinguish them.

What do you really want? Is it the life you currently have? Or are you trying to silence a desire because you know pursuing it will bring discomfort?

You don't even have to act yet. Begin by hearing the answer.

Choose the mountain for the view you want

Imagine several mountains you could climb. One is shorter and easier. Another is higher, more complicated, and requires more technical skill.

There is no shame in choosing the shorter one. But ask yourself which view you want.

The higher mountain may take longer. The terrain may ask more of you. In climbing it, you gain skills and become a different version of yourself.

The point isn't to make life hard for the sake of difficulty. It is to find the goal that makes your heart sing.

Would the opportunity be worth attempting even if you failed? Would you honor yourself for trying?

I shared a business example in this episode. At that time, maintaining The Life Coach School as a $50 million business felt comfortable. A goal of doubling revenue required our team to think more creatively, challenge ourselves, and be willing to fail more.

The larger goal asked us to evolve. The work was doing that without destroying ourselves or making the pursuit come at our own expense.

Growth isn't a search for permanent happiness

There is another extreme: running from cave to cave, trying to find the circumstance that will finally make you happy all the time.

That pursuit can burn you out. You're treating the normal contrast of being human as evidence that something is terribly wrong.

I'm asking a different question. What is the highest, best version of my life? What do I genuinely want, and am I willing to give myself an opportunity to pursue it?

Life will still be 50/50. A bigger life doesn't necessarily make you happier. It can give you a richer experience and a different view.

For me, that is worth the discomfort.

Other people may want you to stay the same

When you make choices that aren't typical, people may tell you that you shouldn't. They may criticize or question the change.

We don't have to hold that against them.

Their brains also want safety. Staying together in the familiar tribe feels safer than watching someone step into something new.

You can understand their response without allowing it to replace your own desire.

Listen to what your heart is asking. Notice what you fear. What do you think would happen if your heart broke? What are you afraid to know about what you want?

I can't hear the whispers of your heart for you. You can quiet the noise, use the Model to understand your thinking, and listen.

Be willing to open your heart again

I have found that when I allow heartbreak and let myself heal, I become more willing to open up again.

A relationship matters because you loved. A business disappointment matters because you invested yourself. The pain can reflect how fully you participated.

When you allow it rather than fight it, it doesn't have to become the reason you never try again.

I don't want the story at the end of my life to be that I avoided getting my heart broken. I want it to be that I loved deeply and lived fully.

Through sharing my work, I have had the opportunity to put love out into the world and connect with so many people. I want to keep opening myself to that, even with the risk of disappointment.

There is pain in ignoring your desire. There is pain in pursuing it. A life devoted to avoiding all discomfort isn't one of the options.

Ask what you are truly capable of. Hear the answer. Give yourself the chance to experience that life.

I want to be there for all of it.