Read · 6 minutes
What good
actually looks like.
"Live your best life" is a slogan, and a slightly exhausting one. Here's a plainer version, for men who'd like things to be genuinely good rather than impressive.
There's a version of self-improvement aimed at men that is really just ambition wearing a dressing gown. Optimise, maximise, become elite, win the morning. It's tiring, it's mostly about status, and it quietly suggests your life is a project that is currently failing.
A good life is a much less dramatic thing, and when men describe one honestly — in a session, with nobody to impress — it's remarkably consistent.
What men actually name
- Sleeping properly, and waking up without dread
- Two or three people they can say anything to
- Work that doesn't follow them home every night
- Enough money that it isn't a background hum of worry
- Something in the week they look forward to
- Being the sort of father, partner or mate they'd want to be described as
- A body that works well enough not to be a constant negotiation
Nobody says "a bigger car". Not once. Which is worth sitting with, given how much of most men's effort goes into things that never appear on that list.
The trap of the moving finish line
Get the promotion and there's a better one. Clear the debt and the target moves. This isn't weakness of character — it's how the mind works, and it will happily do it to you for forty years.
The only reliable defence is deciding in advance what enough looks like, in numbers or in plain description, and then noticing when you get there. Men who never define enough don't arrive anywhere; they just keep going.
Try this instead of a goal
Describe an ordinary week you'd be content with, in about six lines. Not the best week — a normal one. What's in it, who's in it, what isn't in it.
Then compare it with last week. The difference is usually smaller than men expect, and made of about three specific things. That's the work, and it's a good deal more achievable than "living your best life".
Noticing counts as a skill
Some men are already in the life they'd have described and can't feel it. Usually that's exhaustion, or the habit of always looking at what's next, or something like low mood that deserves a proper look.
Worth testing before you go rearranging anything: if you were told to appreciate what you've got and it made you irritated rather than reassured, that's information. Sometimes the answer isn't a better life, it's sleep, or a conversation, or a GP.
Good is allowed to be ordinary
A decent week, people you like, work that pays and doesn't hollow you out, something to look forward to on Saturday. It doesn't photograph well and it is genuinely what most men are after when you strip the language back.
Aim at that on purpose and you'll almost certainly get there. Aim at "best" and you'll be aiming for the rest of your life.
Worth an hour of anyone's time.
Working out what good looks like for you, out loud, with someone whose only job is to ask better questions about it.