#13: Lifestyle Design Part 2: A Framework For Happiness

Welcome back to episode number 13 of The Growth Booth, where today we are joined once again by my business partner, Steve Clayton. We are going to be building on what we discussed in Episode 12, which was an episode all about lifestyle design.

If you haven't checked that one out, head over to TheGrowthBooth.com, go to Episode number 12, and you'll be able to find some good stuff that we spoke about there.

In this episode though, I want to take it a little bit further and start talking about how people can get to, by design, a place where they are really happy with what they're doing in their lives. 

AIDAN

I know, Steve, you're someone who lives by the spreadsheet and unsurprisingly you've actually built out a bit of a framework that you use in your life. You've systematically applied this approach to getting more happiness, freedom, and fulfilment in your life. I thought we could dive into that a little bit here and flesh that out a little bit.

Where do we start here? What are the areas that you like to look at?

STEVE

Yeah, it's kind of silly. I'm kind of a weird paradox. I'm sort of a very introspective guy and I've always been kind of like a frustrated writer and sort of like an artsy kind in that way, but I'm also kind of like a numbers guy, a scientific planner, that sort of thing. When I think about this being introspective about what is happiness and how do you get to happiness, what's your recipe for happiness, unsurprisingly, I sort of said, "Okay, well, there must be some kind of like standard operating procedure I can apply." 

AIDAN

There's got to be a recipe for this, right?

STEVE

Yeah, some process I can fill out. I probably have thought about this way more than anyone else I know because I don't know exactly why. It's just kind of how I'm wired. I'm constantly saying, "Am I satisfied? Am I happy?"

I think the other thing is that I'm able to step outside of myself and others and look around and kind of see that there are a lot of people that are operating what I call just on "autopilot" and have never really done the work of introspection to sort of sit down and say, "Well, what really makes me happy and why the hell and why am I not doing that?"

I just see so many people who live a life of basically unhappiness. There's always an excuse. "Oh, yeah, I'd love to live somewhere warmer, but my job's here, my family is here," and some of them are reasonable excuses, but some of them aren't. At the very least, you should make a firm decision and not just let it happen to you.

Anyway, I think the secret to happiness, if you think about it, is pretty straightforward. It's like, "Hey, what are the things you love to do? You should do more of those things. What are the things you don't like to do? You shouldn't do any of those things." You should probably help others do the same thing, help others do the things they love to do, help others avoid what they don't like, rinse and repeat and reassess that, and you're done. It sounds pretty easy. Why don't people do that?

I think the reasons are that people don't ask themselves the questions. They don't have a framework for doing that. They don't know how to be introspective, and they feel like without even having an answer to what makes them happy, they feel like it's impossible to structure their life in such a way that they could do more of the things that make them happy and less of the things that don't make them happy.

I think that's what I see. What I started to do is I said, "All right, look, let's think about what are the areas that are important to dive into to make sure that you're living your best life, living your happiness." I kind of break it down by geography, your health and wellness, your family and friends, work, and then kind of everything else: hobbies, passions, interests, that sort of thing. 

I like to sort of examine each of those things individually and understand, first of all, before even worrying about putting a plan in place, just kind of understand, "Well, what makes me happy? What of those areas like for geography? What would make me happy every day? Where should I live that would make me happy every day?" that kind of thing.

AIDAN

Is that how you got to spending a certain portion of your time by the beach, another portion of your time at your house in South Carolina, another portion of your time in Chicago? Is that basically the outcome of going through that exercise?

STEVE

Yes, it is, and it changes, and that's okay. But yeah, for us, our recipe for geography is we love the city. We love Chicago, and we love the lifestyle of the city where you don't have a car and you can go out to a really nice restaurant and take an Uber and not have to worry about having wine with dinner and walking down the street and go into high-end shopping and that sort of thing. We love all the culture and all the urban stuff.

But on the other hand, there are things that I miss when I'm spending all my time in Chicago, like that I like sports cars. Sports cars are kind of a tough thing to have in Chicago. I don't have any in Chicago. I went through a period of about four or five years where I didn't own a car at all, and I missed it. 

We've got the urban lifestyle, which we love, but then we also love this low country Hilton Head lifestyle, the weather. It's much more temperate here, obviously. It doesn't usually snow here ever. It doesn't usually get below freezing, and golf and all that sort and the wide-open spaces and the different geography. I've always loved the water and the beach. I have mostly satisfied that itch with a boat, but I kind of reached the point where I was sort of done with that, so now I have a place in Florida that's on the beach. That's how we get our beach fix.

AIDAN

Do you sort of regularly or semi-regularly sit down and go through these five categories, which I think you said were geography, health, wellness, friends, family, work, hobbies, interests, and everything else? Do you regularly make that an exercise to go through it once in a while?

STEVE

I do, probably too much, because you can do it a little too much. I think I do it a lot on geography because, as you know, since I've known you, I've lived in full time in North Carolina. I've lived full-time in Key West. I've lived full-time in Chicago. Then I've lived in this split scenario. Then sometimes I've had a boat, which I've treated like a floating condo, all sorts of different places, actually, sometimes out of the country and in the Bahamas and stuff like that. I do the geography thing a lot, but I've slowed down on that.

It's been like maybe three years since I've been in this cycle of these three places. I'm getting older too, but I think I've sort of found my sweet spot. It's a great sweet spot of being able to "Oh, I'm tired of suburbia and having to get in a car and drive to go get milk. All right. Let's just jump over to Chicago for a long weekend or something and enjoy that."

But to answer the question specifically, yes, I think it's important to do it regularly. I think for geography probably people shouldn't do it as often as I do it, but maybe kind of a once-a-year check-in is probably a pretty good thing to do just to make sure that you're still because things change. Your recipe for happiness today is clearly not going to be the recipe for happiness in five years. I mean, it just isn't. Things change, interests change, your health changes, that sort of thing.

AIDAN

I think a lot of people just get on autopilot. I think you mentioned that earlier. One year goes by, another year goes by, but you never stop to ask yourself the question. I think when you do stop to ask yourself the question about "What would make me really happy with regards to my family and my friends and where do I want to be for that?" that's when you can even start to think a little bit outside the square. Because if you don't live in the same place as your family, but you want to see them regularly.

In my case, I live in Argentina most of the time. I've got the rest of my family on my side is in New Zealand. Now, there are different ways I can see them. One is I could go to New Zealand. Another is I could fly them out to see me. Then when they do that, I actually have a really good set up here where I've got a place they can stay, and everything else is all sort of set up.

When you really start to sort of think outside the square a little bit, there's a lot that you can do to make yourself happier in those categories. One thing that I know you've started doing this year, Steve, and it's probably because you've sort of been rebalancing the different areas, is not working on a Friday.

On Friday, you want to get out on the golf course or spend time with your friends and family or something, whereas in the past, maybe you wanted to be working. I guess this is the outcome of just rebalancing those things. I guess over time, that changes.

STEVE

Yeah, that's a great example. It's something I definitely decided on. It just made sense for me and it's made a difference. I don't always make it, but I do often enough, so it works out really well for me, and it's made a big difference in my quality of life.

AIDAN

What's the process that you sort of go through to flesh out these things that are important? Do you have an example of some questions that you would ask yourself around hobbies and passion? How do you sort of get to where you ultimately want to be with deciding on what you want to do and don't do?

STEVE

Yeah, I think each of these areas, some of them are easier than others, right? I mean, like health and wellness. I guarantee you most people know what they should be doing, but they just don't do it. Women are better at this than men, but just getting someone who can sit down and say, "You need these screening tests, you need this, you need to be at the right BMI, cholesterol, blood pressure," and all that kind of crap, so it's not the easiest one to do, but it's one of the easier ones to plan.

Family and friends, I think that you probably need to start to dig a little bit deeper. For example, are there friends or family that you think of often that you don't see? Are there friends, maybe on Facebook from your past that you wish you could have more of a relationship with? Do you have too much of a relationship with some of your family? I guess it's not just a matter of like, sitting down and going, "Oh, well, who are the closest family to me? I better move near them." That's not what we mean here. It's really digging deep and asking several layers of questions deep to sort of fare it out. 

"Gosh, yeah, it would be great to be able to have more of a relationship with my best friend from high school." I'm actually struggling a little bit with that right now and just trying to figure out how to make that better. He's my best man at my wedding, and we don't see each other as often as I'd like, by any stretch. We're both trying to sort of figure out ways to make that better. But if I were to be given the task of "Write down all the family you need to be close to," that wouldn't have come up. You need to ask those questions.

I think oftentimes there are a lot of passions that go unrecognized. If we shift gears and talk about hobbies, passions, interests, that sort of thing, I find that there are a lot of things that people got involved in as kids, like maybe in 3rd to 9th grade, that kind of a timeframe, that's are true passions...

AIDAN

You were like building your own casino at that stage, weren't you?

STEVE

Yes, I was, but yeah, that's one passion... 

AIDAN

You're not like a gaming mogul anymore?

STEVE

Not so much gambling, but the entrepreneurial side to it. But the other thing I was doing at that age was I was doing a lot of writing and like a lot of writing. I had written a whole series of adventures for our class that our teacher would allow me to read to the class. It was kind of funny because everybody had characters, but then I forgot all about that, and it was like a big thing. Like I was like a big author in my 6th grade. I was infamous for that, and it was a real passion for me, and I really loved it.

Then I forgot about it for, I don't know, 30, 40 years, something like that, whatever role you are in 6th grade. Through this process, I kind of circled back into it and said, "I really want to rekindle some of those passions that were really important to me back then, like writing." As you know, I got involved in writing a screenplay and a movie that's actually out there. I have an IMDb credit for co-writing a screenplay and that sort of stuff.

Also, flying was a big thing for me. Many decades later, I went back and got my pilot's license and flew for many years. I think that there are a lot of unrecognized passions that we had back then that would make our lives better if we could rekindle that passion.

AIDAN

I think if you try to take that idea and build it into something that's systematic in your life, one example that comes to mind is I sort of plan out my weeks and my months, and I set a longer-term goal, and I sort of work backward and figure out what do I need to be doing this week so that in a few months' time I'm achieving such and such. One of the things I actually do when I'm in that planning process is I do make little objectives or reminders really to reach out to my best buddies who are all over the world, and I find it really good.

It may sound a little bit funny, you're scheduling to re-join your friends and stuff, but in my case, it's just so easy that the weeks go by and the weeks turn into months, and then it's like, "Oh, man, I haven't spoken to my buddy for a couple of months," whereas I get it in my calendar, I plan that I'm actually going to be talking to them, catching up with them or whatever, and I actually do it. It forces me to keep finding the opportunity to tap into those things that really make me happy.

I think the last question that I really wanted to get your take on here was when you're doing this process and when you're sort of fleshing out the things that make you happy, and maybe this is one that relates more to possibly more to the whole work side of it and especially online business, do you put any sort of deliberate thought into strengths and weaknesses and maybe getting help with things that you don't like doing?

Like, for example, I don't want to necessarily be out there creating a huge amount of written content because I know that there are a lot of people that are a lot better than that than me, and I'd rather be doing something else. I can sort of prop that up by hiring people to help me with that, experts, or for example, right now I'm in the process of getting a new office, and I'm going to be building it from scratch, essentially. I've got lots of ideas, but I'm definitely not the best person to take those ideas and turn them into something that can work. I'm deliberately getting help there.

I guess going back to the question, strengths and weaknesses, do you sort of look at them when you're going through this process? 

STEVE

Yeah, and I think particularly when it comes to setting up your work environment, life, which is what you're talking about, there's a direct correlation between the things that we're good at and what we like to do, even if we don't see it most of the time. Most of the time, people don't like doing things that they're not very good at, except me. I like to play golf. I'm not very good at golf, but that's the exception that proves the rule, but it's true.

I think that people have a really hard time understanding what their true strengths and weaknesses are. I think it's one of the most important things that you can nail in order to be successful. Because if you keep sort of hinging success upon the areas that you're weak, you're going to keep failing. You should rather make sure that success is hinged on the areas that you're strong on and get help in the areas that you're weak. 

I find that there's this sort of iterative process when you're evaluating your work life to figuring out what you enjoy doing, what you don't enjoy doing to what your weaknesses and strengths are. They're sort of all just mish mashing there and asking what your strengths and weaknesses are, what you're good at, what you're not good at, what you like to do, what you don't like to do starts to get you a better picture, even if you're not good at really understanding your strengths and weaknesses of what they actually are.

You come to the conclusion and it's like, "Oh, yeah, I really do hate that and I really suck at that. That's maybe why, and so I better make sure..." because we can't all be good at everything. There's always things there are always things that are critical to be done to be successful, but you're not good at. They're just different for each of us, but there are always those things. You've got to figure out a way to get help that's usually the only solution is you get help for those things.

AIDAN

Yeah, I think that's been really good. I think if you're sitting there listening to this and you want to consciously build more of that happiness into your life, if you think back to what Steve said at the very beginning, if you think about the things that you really enjoy doing and do more of those and consciously think about things that you'd rather not do as much of and do less of those, you'll be off to a good start.

If you want to drill down a little bit more and just to help you get started drilling down, consider those five categories of geography, health and wellness, friends, family, work, hobbies, interests, or passion. If you actually put pen to paper and start writing these things out, I think you'll be amazed at some of the things that can come out of it.

It will tie in nicely with what we spoke about in Episode 12 of putting all of this together to try to build lifestyle freedom and your dream lifestyle and ultimately more happiness into your life.

Steve, thank you so much for taking some time out here again today just to share a few thoughts. I am going to get you back one day so we can talk more about the casino and the basement strategy. I guess you can't go to prison when you're 16.

STEVE

No, I know I was like about twelve because I know when we moved from that house. Actually, I must have been younger than that, but I know I wasn't older than twelve, so I'll have to go back and figure that out.

AIDAN

You knew about counting cards or something? 

STEVE

Yeah.

AIDAN

Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here, Steve. You can, as always, get the show notes by going to TheGrowthBooth.com and looking up Episode 13, you'll be able to download PDFs, transcriptions, summaries, and follow us on social media as well. You'll see links to our social media channel on TheGrowthBooth.com.