What does ‘living your best life’ really mean?

Its a phrase I’m sure many of you have heard of and maybe even use in your day to day life. I know I do. I often say it as a response to when someone has told me something good has happened to them, or they are going to try something new, or even when they are going to do something a little risqué. I’ll say “living your best life!”

Examples.
Person A: “You’ll never guess what I did today… Made my bed!”
Me: “Yes! Living your best life!”

Person B: “I handed my submission in on time.”
Me: “Yes! Living your best life!”

Person C: “It’s not even four o’clock and I’ve poured myself a gin.”
Me: “Yes! Living your best life!”

You get the idea. However, today’s ponder goes a little deeper to ask what does it actually mean, what does it mean to ‘live our best life’, especially when we consider that the term ‘best’ is not always a constant. At least I never consider it a constant. I think about the students I teach and how their best fluctuates, then I think of my own best, which also has a certain fluidity at times about it. What I mean is that the best you do on a Monday morning, is likely to be a different best that you bring to a Friday afternoon. In the same thinking, on a day when you’re struggling to get out of bed, your best is that you did get up out of bed, even though it was hard. This can be compared to the days when your friends, colleagues and family think you’ve taken up a new hobby of drinking rocket fuel because you’re so on it.

So, if our best is not a stable and predictable constant, can we still ‘live our best life’? What does our best life look like? I think in this instance, it may be helpful to consult Maslow and his hierarchy of needs as a starting point!

Abraham Maslow in 1943 created the motivational framework whereby he believed that people had needs and that those needs could be separated into three categories; basic needs, psychological needs, and self-fulfilment needs. When the needs are met in each category it allows you to progress to the next level of needs to be acquired. Ultimately achieving what I deem the same as today’s ‘best life.’
The triangle below helps to visualise the progression that can occur across the categories. With physiological and safety needs equating to basic needs, safety, love/belonging and esteem collectively equating to psychological needs, and finally self-actualisation forming the category of self-fulfilment.

So, using that trian of thought, best life would equal self-fulfilment? Right? I’m going to stick with that assumption. Therefore, it leads on to another question.

If your best life means the same as self-fulfilment, what is it you want out of life? I’m writing this from a place of privilege, so for me, fulfilment is creatvity, adventure, travel, seeing the world, engaging with people and places, all the while having security, such as familial and financial. I want to spend a life doing the things I love, with the people I love. Again going back to previous posts, finding joy, and play and imagination. Grabbing opportunities that are presented and trying new things. I think that is my best life. However, as I said earlier, your best changes, so therefore what looks and feels like my best life now, may not be my best life ten years down the line – it could be even better.

So, ponderers… I’m happy to conclude that self-fulfilment is the epitome of how you can reach ‘living your best life’ staus. Ask yourself – what do I want out from my life? In answering that, you’ll get a little hint as to how to ‘live your best life’, that is, if you’re not living it already!

This has been a SmartPonders.
Thanks for reading.
Steph x