What Makes a Life Worth Living?

What makes life worth living?  Well being and flourishing.  When your personal life, family, community service, career, and business are flourishing, well being, happiness and, most often, prosperity are the result.

“The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side. It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illness, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his full psychological height.  (Maslow, 1954).

On the journey to the Peak of Potential, the focus is on your strengths instead of weaknesses.  Building the good life of personal character, instead of only repairing the bad side of character weakness and flaws, and taking the lives of average people up to “great” instead of focusing solely on moving those who are struggling up to “normal” (Peterson, 2008).

As sherpa, I lead clients into developing strength.  From a position of personal strength, we build an overall plan for well-being in your personal life, career, or business.   The plan is built on optimism and positivity, healthy relationships, grit and resilience, engagement and flow, achievement, accomplishment, meaning, purpose, and passion.  

1-What Makes A Life Worth Living?  Becoming All We Are Capable Of

As the readers of this blog know, my passion and purpose in life is focused on being a sherpa–a term used in Nepal for the climbing guides who lead those driven to become all they are capable of, to reach the peak of Mt. Everest.  “The climb” to the real Mt. Everest is often the summit of a person’s physical, financial, emotional, and mental challenge to be their best self to conquer something bigger themselves.

As a “sherpa,” I work in the business realm as an executive in a building supply company serving the construction industry in Sydney, Australia.  The climbers are the 350 employees of our company.  I also work with a small, select group of executives outside our company, advising and coaching them on how to achieve their personal and professional potential, and how to lead everyone in their companies to join them to the summit of achievement.

When an entire work community, or tribe, is on this journey together, incredible character development takes place releasing, creativity, innovation, collaboration, trust, and excellence that is the “high country,” the profit land of business strength and success.  This is when companies in the J Curve of growth or reinvention emerge from what Seth Godin calls “The Dip,” into the Blue Sky Phase of soaring to heights where competitors cannot follow.

Climbing the world’s highest mountain is a metaphor for reaching what I call The Peak of Potential.  Potential, in its simplest definition, is realising what we are capable of becoming.

2–What Makes A Life Worth Living? Well-Being and Its BenefitsResearch by The University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center demonstrates that well-being is not only valuable because it feels good, but also because it has beneficial real-world consequences. Compared to people with low well-being, individuals with higher levels of well-being:

• Perform better at work
• Have more satisfying relationships
• Are more cooperative
• Have stronger immune systems
• Have better physical health
• Live longer
• Have reduced cardiovascular mortality
• Have fewer sleep problems
• Have lower levels of burnout
• Have greater self-control
• Have better self-regulation and coping abilities
• Are more prosocial

Research has identified optimism as one of the key contributors to well-being. Studies show that optimism brings many benefits compared to pessimism, including:

• Less depression and anxiety
• Better performance at school, sports, and work
• Reduced risk of dropping out of school
• Better physical health outcomes, including fewer reported illnesses, less coronary heart disease, lower mortality risk, and faster recovery from surgery.