In order to live a better life, you have to raise your standards, but not just in any place, you have to raise your standards in five critical areas.
KEY POINTS
Create goals! – Have targets within the domains of life that are important to you. Health, wealth and relationships. Who are you at your best?
Be more disciplined – Take action. The pain of discipline in the moment is far less than the pain of regret later.
Be bolder – The bolder you are, the more willing you are to step out of your comfort zone, the better life you will live. Take at least one bold action per day to move yourself closer to your goal.
Raise your standards – Improve your health. That includes sleep, exercise, and nutrition.
Happiness is a choice – We often forget that our happiness is a choice. We can choose to be happy.
TRANSCRIPT
In order to live a better life, you have to raise your standards, but not just in any place, you have to raise your standards in five critical areas. And if you don’t raise your standards in these areas, then you’re very unlikely to lead a life that is fulfilling and that you’re proud of. The good news is that I’m going to teach you exactly these five areas that you need to raise your standards in, to live a better life.
Hi, my name is Eric Partaker, and I’ve been recognized as an award-winning entrepreneur, as well as the CEO of the year. I’m also the author of two best-selling books, including The 3 Alarms. So what are the five areas in which you need to raise your standards in order to live a better life? Well, the first is all about intentionality and you’ve probably heard this word before. You need to be more intentional. You need to be more purposeful, but what does it actually mean? What is it that people are trying to say?
Essentially, what they’re trying to say is you need to have targets within the domains of life that are important for you. That’s what being intentional is about. It’s about understanding what is it that you want to be. How do you want to act, behave? How is it that you want to show up, having an intention for what that looks like and what you’ll do to be consistent with that, and then showing up and behaving in that way. And I highly recommend that you are intentional in three critical domains.
They are on the health front, on the wealth front and on the relationship front. And what I mean about being intentional in each of these domains is deciding who are you at your best in each of those areas, having an identity, something that you aspire to, and then making sure you show up as that version of yourself on a daily basis. So moving on from intentionality, the number two area in which to raise your standards relates to discipline. And one of the favorite things that I’ve talked about before, and I’ve talked about it again because it’s so important, is remembering that at the root of discipline is the ability to do the things that you know you should do, even if you don’t feel like doing them. And it’s really hard to be disciplined, but I want to make it slightly easier for you.
And I want to make it easier for you by talking about the pain of discipline versus the pain of regret. So nothing comes for free in life. Everything requires a payment of some form and it often can be easy to not do the things that we know we should be doing. And we want to just sit on the sofa and maybe not pursue that project or work against that goal and watch television or a film or something. And it feels great in the moment, but there’s a payment that comes later and that’s that we regret. We regret that we didn’t do the things that we knew we should have been doing at that time. We regret that we didn’t go to the gym. We regret that we didn’t work on that new business idea. We regret that we didn’t invest more quality time, perhaps, in our relationships, versus the pain of discipline, which maybe is a little bit more painful in the moment, he discipline of doing whatever it is that you know you should be doing.
But that pain of discipline in the moment usually is far less than the pain of regret later. So when you’re in that decision point, and you’re wondering, should I do this? I’m not sure if I feel like it. This connects the need of feeling like having to do it for the reason for doing it instead, just take action on it, whether you feel like it or not knowing that the pain of discipline that you’re experienced in that moment right now is far less than the pain of regret. And if you want to become your best at whatever it is that you’re trying to do, you have to make that payment. It doesn’t come for free. But once again, the pain of discipline will be much less than the pain of regret.
The number three area to raise your standards in is your boldness, how much action you take, how willing you are to step outside of your comfort zone to do things that you haven’t maybe done before. Bold action requires effort. It requires thought. It requires determination, grit, willpower. It’s easy to consistently and continually do the things that are easy to do that don’t require us to give a little bit of extra effort, that don’t take us to a place where we haven’t been before. But if you really want to live a better life, then you need to raise your standard in relation to how bold you are in how you go about planning your day, even, or the goals that you set for yourself for the year, for the quarter, for the month. The bolder you are, the more effort and determination and willingness you have to step outside of what’s comfortable and nice for you, the better life you will live, 100% guaranteed.
So think about where can I be more bold in life? Where can I be more bold in work? Where can I be more bold personally? Where can I be more bold professionally? And what do you need to do to raise your standard there? And I encourage you on a daily basis to take at least one bold action per day. Ask yourself, if I were to take one bold action today that moves me closer to my goals, what is that action? And then just act. Work against that bold action after bold action.
The number four area to raise your standards to live a better life relates to our health. We are nothing without our health. And I think of a trifecta or a trinity that I like to protect with regard to my health, which includes my sleep, exercise, and nutrition. And just very quickly on each of those, sleep, you need to be going for those eight hours a day. Highly, highly encourage you to do that and try to avoid the electronics right before bedtime, because that stimulates the mind and makes it a little bit more difficult to get the sleep that you need. On the exercise front, I always like to start my day with a little bit of exercise, even if it’s only just 10 minutes, a 10 minute jog or 10 minutes of some, body weight training, because it spikes my energy for the rest of the day. And it allows me to definitely live a better life.
And then on the nutrition front, really, really simple sentence for you to remember. Eat food, mostly plants, not too much. This is from Michael Pollan and the “eat food,” what does that mean? That simply means that if it doesn’t occur naturally, you probably shouldn’t be eating it, like if it was made in a factory or if it’s synthetic, that’s not real food. So eat food, real food, mostly plants. People just don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables, so definitely up your vegetable game. And “not too much” relates to portion control, number of meals per day.
If you haven’t tried intermittent fasting, I encourage you to take a look at that. It’s an incredible way to create lots of benefits for the body and for the mind.
And last but not least, to raise your standards and live a better life you also need to be looking in the area of happiness or joy. And what do I mean by this? Well, we often forget that our happiness is a choice. We can choose to be happy. We can choose to be upset. Even if something doesn’t go our way, we still have a choice. We can choose to be really unhappy about it and get everyone else around us riled up and in a bad mood as well. And then hold onto that bad mood for as long as possible because it’s important to us, and then that kind of feeling goes with you for the day and the next day.
So you can choose to do that, or you can choose to, no matter what happens, you could still choose a path of happiness. You can still choose to be happy, right? I could miss my train and I still have a choice right in that moment. I could be super upset and let that ruin the rest of my day, or I could still choose to be happy and deal with it. And I’d love to hear from you. So don’t forget to leave a comment and a rating as well. And if you’d like to get a copy of my new book, The Three Alarms, please head over to my website at EricPartaker.com. That’s E-R-I-C EricPartaker.com, where you can pick up a free digital copy of my new best-selling book, The 3 Alarms.
