PDF Summary:The Master Guides: Living Your Best Life, by Shortform

Do you feel unsatisfied with your life but unsure about how to get unstuck, feel happier, and do more things that feel meaningful and positive?

Many authors have tackled this subject. While they all take different approaches, they seem to agree on one thing: Knowing your values and living in alignment with them is key to feeling satisfied and happy with your life.

In this Master Guide, we’ll examine and compare what over a dozen experts have to say about living your best life, compiling advice from a range of authors, including a poet, a former Vedic monk, a holistic psychologist, life design professors, happiness experts, and self-help authors. You’ll come away with a better understanding of what’s making you feel unhappy, a clearer picture of who you are and what you really want out of life, and actionable steps for living a more meaningful and happy life.

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Furthermore, the more you encourage positive self-judgment, the less time you waste thinking about how others perceive you. This helps you accept yourself exactly as you are and frees you from the pressure of adapting to please or impress others.

2) Assess Your Current Opinions and Beliefs

An important part of accepting yourself and clarifying what you want out of life is assessing whether your current opinions and beliefs align with who you really are or if they only exist to please or impress others. Wiest suggests that you can dissect each of your opinions and beliefs by asking yourself the following four questions:

1. When was the first time you came across this idea? For example, you believe that people should not make mistakes. You remember overhearing your parents punishing one of your siblings for making errors on a spelling test.
2. How does this idea influence your judgment of yourself, other people, and your experiences? Your belief that people should not make mistakes compels you to be overly critical of yourself and others. It also makes you feel resentful of the experiences that don’t live up to your perfect standards.
3. How might adopting opposing ideas impact you? If instead, you choose to believe that it’s okay to make mistakes, you might find it easier to accept and forgive yourself and others for making mistakes. You might also be less inclined to notice mistakes in the first place.
4. How would you choose to think about this if your thoughts were already aligned with who you really are? Your aligned self sees mistakes as a valuable part of learning. Therefore, there’s no need to feel critical of yourself or others for making mistakes.

Distinguish Between Positive and Negative Values

Beyond assessing whether your values are truly yours or if they’re informed by others, think about whether your current values are “positive” or “negative.”

According to Shetty, values that inspire positive thoughts, such as compassion or kindness, are true values that elevate you to a state of happiness, fulfillment, and meaning. On the other hand, values that inspire negative thoughts, such as fear, greed, or envy, are false values that demote you to a state of suffering, dissatisfaction, and anxiety.

Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck) considers the difference between positive and negative values a bit differently:

• Positive values arise from an internal focus and have outcomes that you can control. For example, if you adopt kindness as a value, you can shape your thoughts and behaviors to align with this value.
• On the other hand, negative values arise from an external focus and have outcomes that you can’t control. For example, if you adopt popularity as a value, the outcome hinges on what others think about you. While you can adapt your behavior to increase your popularity, you’ll never be able to control the outcome.

3) Define Your Values

You've now determined which beliefs serve you and which don’t, and you’re closer to understanding who you really are. Now, let’s explore what's important to your true self in order to define your values and clarify what you really want out of life.

Approach 1: Pay Attention to What Satisfies You

Burnett and Evans suggest that the key to defining your values lies in paying attention to what satisfies you. They recommend that you start a daily journal to track and reflect on how your activities make you feel. The point of this is to identify what types of experiences make you feel joyful, engaged, and energized—and those that make you feel bored and drained.

After the first week of tracking, include weekly reflections in your journal: Zoom in on the details of each activity to identify what you specifically like or dislike about them. Pay particular attention to who you were with, what you were doing, where you were, and what you were interacting with (for example, people, objects, or a machine) as your positive feelings rose and fell. Write down any themes, insights, or surprises you discover. If your current schedule doesn’t offer much in the way of variety, consider including reflections on past experiences that stand out as particularly positive or negative.

Jack Canfield (The Success Principles) adds to this by suggesting that you list the times in your life that you’ve felt most happy and determine whether these instances share any characteristics.

Approach 2: Brainstorm Your Ideal Life

Canfield suggests that brainstorming what areas of your life are important to you and what you want them to look like will help you define your values. For example, what kind of relationships do you want, and what characteristics should they include? You can consider other areas like finances, leisure, or community as well. Then, write down 30 things you want to be, 30 things you want to have, and 30 things you want to do before you die.

Meanwhile, Burnett and Evans offer a way to brainstorm values that help you achieve the perfect work-life balance. There are three parts:

1. Write down your opinions on work. This includes everything you believe about work: what it’s for, why you do it, and what makes it good or bad.
2. Write down your opinions on life. This includes everything you believe about the world and how it works: what it means, what gives it value, how your life relates to others, the place of money in a meaningful life, and the value you place on fulfillment and experience. (You might draw inspiration from Canfield’s brainstorming exercise here.)
3. Consider how to integrate your values in both areas so they’re in harmony with each other.

Approach 3: Meditate With Your Ideal Self

In The Mountain Is You, Wiest suggests that you can define your values by engaging in meditation with your ideal self. First, find a quiet place, sit down with a pen and paper, take deep breaths to center yourself, and release any fears or negative emotions. When you feel totally relaxed, visualize the highest version of yourself sitting across from you. Then, take note of how they look, behave, speak, and communicate through their body language; what are they wearing, how are they feeling, and what do they do every day?

Next, listen to the advice that this ideal self wants to give you, even if it’s something you might disagree with at first. This advice should be uplifting, caring, and helpful. Now, imagine the particular aspects of this person’s life that allow them to live their values—where they’re living, what job they’re doing, the relationships they have, their daily tasks, their habits, and so on. Finally, imagine them giving you the key to that life—their life, routines, behaviors, and skills are now yours. This final step will put you in an “action” mindset that encourages you to enact the tasks and behaviors necessary to become your ideal self.

In addition to considering your ideal self's qualities, Shetty recommends that you think about the qualities that you look for and admire in others to reveal the values that inspire you.

Part 3: Commit to Living Your Values

Now that you’ve identified your values and what you want out of life, let’s explore different ways to start living in alignment with your values and make changes to your life.

1) Set Life Rules

Wiest says you must create life rules that will help you live in alignment with your values. These rules should represent personal commitments that you believe in and that will shape your life in the long term. For example, if you have a life rule to cut ties with people who regularly make you feel bad, you’ll live a life surrounded by positive people who encourage you to be your best self.

Life rules will encourage you to continually live in alignment with your values, and help you overcome barriers that may cause you to stray from your intended path. Living by your rules will ensure that you’re happy and always progressing toward the best version of yourself.

Making rules around all your values might be overwhelming, and having too many values may restrict your ability to commit to the things that are most important. Try choosing the two most important values on your list and prioritizing them, as Brené Brown recommends in Dare to Lead.

2) Align Your Goals With Your True Self

One way to commit to living your values is to choose goals that are important to you, and therefore feel more meaningful than the goals other people expect from you. Focus on the following three areas to set appropriate goals.

Focus Area 1: Enjoyable Activities

Pasricha suggests that one way to choose meaningful goals is to consider what activities you do purely for enjoyment. From there, increase your happiness by brainstorming additional ways to pursue these activities in different contexts or with different people. For example, if you enjoy writing, start a blog or join a writing group to create more opportunities to experience happiness.

Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project) builds on Pasricha’s advice: Once you’ve pinpointed your most enjoyable activities, set an ambitious goal that requires you to actively engage in these activities to succeed. Having goals that tie directly to what you feel passionate about will help you prioritize time spent on your interests and create more opportunities for similar uplifting experiences. For example, Rubin’s love of writing inspired her to set the ambitious goal of completing a 50,000-word novel in one month. Her work on this goal led to a number of opportunities that now allow her to pursue her love of writing as a full-time career.

Focus Area 2: Innate Gifts and Talents

Deepak Chopra (The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success) argues that you have innate gifts and talents that you’re meant to contribute to the world. You should choose goals that align with these natural tendencies because they’ll feel more meaningful and enjoyable to pursue. He claims that aligning your strengths and interests in this way creates the perfect environment for success.

Why Strengths and Interests Translate Into Success

According to research in the area of positive psychology, Chopra’s advice to align your goals with your natural inclinations rather than what you think you should do does indeed improve your chances of successfully achieving these goals: You’re more likely to feel motivated and experience an upward emotional spiral (increased feelings of happiness and satisfaction) when you pursue goals that genuinely interest you. This positive mental state allows you to access the best parts of yourself—your unique strengths and talents—and apply them to successfully achieve your goal.

Focus Area 3: Who You Want to Be

Shetty suggests another way to create value-based goals: Set intentions for who you want to be as you move through your day. He explains that focusing on who you want to be rather than on what you want to or have to achieve opens you up to experiencing life in a more satisfying way. For example, there are certain work projects that frustrate you. When you consider who you want to be as you complete them (calm, positive, productive), you switch from being frustrated to being calm and positive. This improves the way you experience your work and your ability to both enjoy and achieve what you set out to do.

The Link Between Intention-Setting and Self-Discipline

Research on the topic of intention-setting confirms that when you focus on who you want to be more than on what you have to do, you increase your self-discipline when faced with conflicting choices about how to behave. For example, you usually use brute force to get through your workload. This method rarely works and only serves to increase your feelings of frustration. On the other hand, when you intend to be calm when approaching your work, you switch your focus from how you wish your work would be (satisfying, easy) to how you want to be (calm, capable). As a result, you immediately know how to act when you’re tempted to throw a tantrum at your desk.

3) Establish a Schedule Around Your Values-Based Goals

Nir Eyal (Indistractable) suggests that one way to live better aligned with your values is to build a schedule that helps you prioritize them. This will ensure that you have time for the things that matter to you—which will make your life feel happier and more fulfilling. He recommends creating a schedule around your values in three areas of your life: you, your relationships, and your work.

1) You: Think about who you want to be and the qualities you want to have, and what value-aligned activities you can schedule. For example, if you value “mindfulness,” schedule 15 minutes of gratitude reflection in the morning. If you value “staying healthy,” schedule an hour-long walk every morning.

2) Your relationships: Make time for non-negotiable commitments to your relationships with your family and friends every week. For example, schedule device-free hours with your children every Saturday, a weekly date night with your spouse, and bi-weekly drinks with your group of friends.

3) Your work: Consider areas where you might reprioritize or cut out work tasks that don’t align with what you want to do and who you want to be. For example, if you value "creativity," allocate time each week for brainstorming and pursuing innovative ideas. If you value "continuous learning," schedule regular blocks of time for professional development or attending relevant workshops and conferences.

Shortform Resources

For more advice about living your best life, see the following Shortform guides:

• 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think, Brianna Wiest
• Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins
• Dare to Lead, Brené Brown
• Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
• How to Do the Work, Nicole LePera
• Indistractable, Nir Eyal
• Psycho-Cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz
• The Happiness Equation, Neil Pasricha
• The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin
• The Mountain Is You, Brianna Wiest
• The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, Deepak Chopra
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson
• The Success Principles, Jack Canfield
• Think Like a Monk, Jay Shetty