In December 2018, I holed up in a hotel room with a wall-sized window looking out at the woods. There, I spent three days taking stock of my life.
My personal life was in turmoil. Some of that chaos was of my own doing (the divorce that was then in progress) and some of it was beyond my control (my Dad’s hospitalization and impending death). I locked myself in the hotel room partly to assess how I had arrived at this point but mostly to figure out what I wanted my life to be like going forward.
What was most important to me?
What made me feel most alive?
What did I want to avoid?
I made huge mind maps, sat at the hotel room desk writing dozens of pages of notes, and covered a whole wall of the hotel room with post-its. I looked for patterns in the seemingly random thoughts that came to mind over those three days.
By check-out time, I had distilled these ruminations into a set of seven elements that are key to (my very personal definition of) a fully-engaged, well-lived life:
- Adventure
- Creativity
- Curiosity
- Financial sustainability
- Health
- Relationships
- Service
These topics have become central to my day-to-day life since then. They will be recurring themes on this blog.