How to Have the Best Life in Five Steps

Packaging, or branding in modern usage, is everything. Slap an attractive slogan on something and people will buy (or buy into) it with abandon. Tag something else with negative connotation and sayonara!

If I called this post “rules for a good life” you might have stopped at the word “rules.” Who likes rules? Plus a “good life” has a vaguely religious flavor to it. “How to” attracts people; they like being in charge of themselves and practical advice to accomplish things. And the “best life?” Nothing is more internet-savvy than that. Plus, five steps is easy enough to memorize: no need for a to-do app or summary sheet.

If I was ever going to write a post about “How to Have the Best Life,” it would go like this:

1. Decide for yourself what is most important and keep that always first in all you do. Otherwise you will squander your limited resources on less important things.
2. Respect legitimate authority. Regardless of your wealth, education, popularity, or power, there will always be those with authority over you: parents, teachers, police officers, sergeants, bosses, tax assessors, and so on. Some will have brief and limited authority (the clerk who gives you your driver’s license), others will have a lasting effect (your drill sergeant). To the extent they act legally and honorably, give them the respect they are due. Be careful not to place yourself in judgment over them: you know not what they do.
3. Harm no one. Certainly defend yourself and those around you. But always seek to defuse, de-escalate, and disarm rather than go nuclear. Violence in word or deed begets more violence, and once the cycle is started (and remember, the cycle only starts with the second act, not the first), all will suffer.
4. There are no victimless lies, cheats, or steals. We have an endless ability to rationalize and are quick to use it. But even if your offense is never discovered, you know what you did, and that affects you, so you (and the truth) are the first victim.
5. If you renounce only one thing in life, make it jealousy. There will always be people “better off” than you: richer, more attractive, luckier, more powerful, more popular. In most cases, they will not be more deserving than you in any sense. They will simply be “better off.” The more that bothers you, the worse your situation will be. It is truly wise to consider how much “better off” you are than others, especially in comparison to those whom you consider more worthy than you are!

These are not easy concepts to put into practice; if they were, everybody would do them. But they are a reliable guide to being happy. And what makes for the best life I cited in the title? How happy you are! Perhaps you recall the quote that “what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul” (Mark 8:36). This was everyday wisdom once-upon-a-time, but lost nowadays.

In fact I am sure some of you noticed that all my five points for your best life are simply a restatement of the Ten Commandments. Their original branding was excellent: brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses, written by God himself and etched in stone (which became a metaphor for permanence). But today some hear “commandments” and think “rules” and immediately rebel. Others see rules and start to lawyer them (what about double effect? “Who is my neighbor?” “what if . . . ?” and so on). But read them again, in your Bible or my summary above. What is really objectionable? What would fail to make you happier?

One of the retirement seminars I went to early on in my career had a session called the rules for a successful retirement. It was all about starting saving early, having goals, making plans for your time. Nobody stood up and asked “who are you to make rules for me?” No one objected to the concepts because there was no guarantee. No one asked “can we get by saving less and having more fun now?” Why not? Because the answer was obvious. The path to good (even early) retirement was well-trod: not easy, but well enough understood to elicit a set of rules that, like a recipe, reliably turn out.

Thus has it always been.