How many times did you hear someone questioning what does it mean to live a good life and wondering how can you achieve it?
Depending on the source of your information, you might have come across videos, photos, and music showcasing super cars, exotic locations, or even running a successful online business with the help of a laptop from a sunny beach.
But is this everything there is when it comes down to “the good life” and how do you even know when you’ve reached a certain success?
In this article, we won’t be only discussing everything related to this topic – but we will also be showing you a couple of different ways you can take advantage of to improve your financial situation and experience greater success.
Therefore, keep on reading as you’ll find everything you need to take action right today for a better tomorrow! And believe it or not – this is going to be one of the posts no one will regret reading until the end!
What Does it Mean to Live a Good Life?
Question what does it mean to live a good life is often followed by how can you achieve it.
As we’ve mentioned earlier, there have been a lot of different ways to showcase “the good life”. Whether it’s a car, an exotic holiday, a beautiful home purchase, or designer clothing – these are the most common ways to showcase you’re living a good life in this modern age.
However, we like to believe that this isn’t everything there is to a good life. Also, some of the best things in life aren’t showcased for everyone to see.
The earlier mentioned ways of showing “the good life” are just shiny object syndrome. This means that everyone will have different living standards that will determine a different meaning of a “good life”.
Believe it or not, some people are not interested in luxury at all and they are not a determinant factor of the good life for them.
In fact, some people like to keep simple and living a good life is a combination of:
- Plenty of free time + a consistent stream income (preferably passive)
Therefore, once you have free time and you are “financially free”, you won’t have many things to worry about.
This will reduce stress and increase possibilities.
And that’s another reason why no one should judge “a good life” according to the shiny objects. Cars can be leased, homes can be rented, clothes can be bought (and returned).
However, having a consistent income (cash flow) which is possibly passive and a lot of free time for your family and friends are some things that are highly desired and often are hard to reach.
Being happy & healthy, doing what you love, and not having to worry about finances is a pretty good definition of living a good life.
The Question of Success
How do you know when you’re successful?
Is success something you achieve once or it’s something we’re constantly achieving through life? For some people, success is graduating from college and getting a high-paying job.
However, for others, success is having the ability to live on their own terms, not having to work a 9-5 job, or having the ability to run an online business by being location independent.
The question of success is always there. We’re all guilty of comparing ourselves to others and following some sort of a “standard” – but that’s exactly what we shouldn’t be doing.
Why?
We all start in a different position. No life is the same and everyone is going through different things in life at different times.
Even people from the same generation can’t compare to each other because no one chose the same path. Comparing the grades in a school, in the same class is fair since you learn the same things and it’s up to the effort you put into learning.
However, comparing your life “success” so far with some else life “success” isn’t sustainable.
This leads us to believe that success is a set of smaller accomplishments in life which helps us to have a purpose in our life.
And since we’ve previously explained how everyone has different liking’s and different lifestyles – no one has the same success.
Therefore, success is an internal way of measuring our effort, productivity, and goals reach. And this also makes us believe that there’s no line in life that we cross and become successful.
It also doesn’t happen overnight either. But it’s a set of habits, skills, and work-life that allows us to achieve some goals we set in our lives.
Everyone is successful in life – just in different ways.
If you don’t think you’re successful, here’s something you should do. Take a look back at your life and go way back. See how your life changed in the last couple of years, the last 5 years, and the last decade or two decades.
You’ll quickly be able to determine a huge change (hopefully for the better) and see how far you’ve come without realizing it.
It’s weird how it seems like nothing has changed since yesterday or since the last week – but when you look back a year ago, a lot of things have changed.
How Hard is it To Reach the Good Life?
Reaching a good life isn’t as hard as we all think it is. If everyone thinks of multi-millionaires or billionaires when they think of good life – of course, it can seem hard to reach such goals.
But a good life is different for everyone and even the smallest changes in our everyday lives could make a huge difference in the long run.
Reaching a good life is all about two things:
- Understanding what a good life means for you and set your goals to achieve it
- Taking the action to achieve it
Most people already know what their good life would look like. But if you don’t – here’s a good exercise you could do.
Try imagining your “perfect day”. A day where you would do anything you want from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed without having to worry about anything.
Imagining such day will tell you much about the definition of your “good life”. From there, you can see what has to be worked on – and this is needed because once you start taking action, you want to be taking the action in the right direction.
Setting big goals is great, but we highly recommend setting small goals as well. Bigger goals are great to look forward to, but they’re harder to reach.
In order to keep the motivation levels up and the feeling of success, you should have small, easier to achieve goals so you can actually feel when you make progress and move a step forward.
When it comes down to taking action – it’s all about trying to improve things in your life that you’re unhappy with the most.
For most people, it’s the financial situation and that’s exactly what we’ll focus on in this article. We’ve all thought at one time – if only we had just a bit more money.
Down below, you can find out how to achieve another level of financial success and get closer to your “good life” with the help of actionable ways to improve your financial situation.
How Can You Achieve the Good Life? (Success)
Achieving a good life is all about making the change for the better. It’s not something that happens overnight, but if you set your habits straight and you are dedicated to taking the action – you can set yourself on the path to the good life in no time.
We’ve detailed out 4 steps that will help you through the process from finding out exactly what you want to achieve, what you need to change, and how to take the action.
And then down below, we’ll show you a couple of ways you can take advantage of to start taking the action to improve the financial aspect of your life.
1. Find out What a “Good Life” Means to You
As we’ve mentioned earlier, a “good life” is different for everyone. Of course, almost everyone would love to enjoy plenty of luxury and shiny objects.
But when you go way past that, try to see what is truly important for you and what would you need to live out your “perfect day”.
Start small and see how far you can get. This will help you set both small and big goals which is exactly what we recommend.
Everyone is different and even though we can’t give you more advice on this – everyone has desires. Desire is what drives us to take action every day, and believe it or not – there’s something that keeps everyone accountable and even to go to a job that makes people unhappy.
But if we’re that mature to keep doing things we feel uncomfortable about – we have what it takes in us to take action and change our life situation for better.
2. Evaluate Your Current Situation
When you have small and big goals – it’s all about evaluating your current situation. How much time do you have on your hands?
What is your financial situation like? What would need the most work?
Is there something you have to work on immediately, and yet something that can be on hold for later?
We’re realized that what most people are struggling with is the financial situation. If it’s not the financial situation – it’s the lack of time situation.
However, that’s exactly why the next step is to think of ways to increase your income or generate a passive income stream.
3. Think of Ways to Increase Income or Generate a Passive Income Stream
When people think of increasing their income or generating a new income stream – they immediately jump to the conclusion that they need to quit their job.
In fact, it’s vice-versa. You don’t need to quit your job. Instead, you have to see if there’s a possibility to increase your skills or take on a bit more work to get paid for the same hours you’re currently working.
The next step is to think of additional ways you could take advantage of to create a new income stream (no matter how small or big of a stream).
The simplest way is to sell unused things on eBay and it goes from there.
However, it goes all the way to creating your own online business using any of the available business models (more on this below!).
4. Think Long Term
As we’ve mentioned – the change doesn’t happen overnight. However, the change is constantly happening, and most of the time – we don’t notice it.
That’s why it is important to think long term and don’t look out for “get-rich-quick” schemes. It’s all about putting yourself in the correct mindset of doing whatever it takes and staying consistent for as long as it takes.
This will help you especially if you’re creating your own online business. This takes a lot of time, effort, and hard work – but it’s one of the most rewarding ways of leading a good life.
Ways to Take Action Online Towards Achieving the Good Life
Whether you need more money or you’re in a position where you have money but you lack free time – the steps below are great ways to fix up your financial situation and help overcome it as an obstacle that’s stopping you from living out your “good life”.
Down below are just 4 of many possible ways of taking action online that will help you achieve a good life for a better tomorrow.
Affiliate Marketing
If you don’t know much about affiliate marketing – here’s a quick explanation. Affiliate marketing is a way of being able to join the company’s affiliate programs, help them promote their products, make sales, and earn a commission in return.
This business model has been around for decades and yet it became increasingly popular with the introduction of the internet.
Having the ability to read a huge number of people on the internet and being able to do it through dozens of various channels helps the process.
The most sustainable and long-term way is to create a website around something you’re passionate or knowledgeable about, grow it from there, optimize it for search engines, create valuable content, acquire organic traffic, and monetize your hard work through various channels.
Affiliate marketing is one channel you can monetize it through and we highly recommend checking out Wealthy Affiliate.
Wealthy Affiliate is an educational platform that teaches everything there is about affiliate marketing, but it also teaches all aspects of digital marketing and skills you could use with the help of their tools to create and grow your website.
It’s a long process, it requires a lot of time and hard work – but the greatest thing about it is that it can turn out into a passive income stream.
Freelancing
Freelancing is a great way to be self-employed (full-time or part-time) and monetize skills you haven’t used in a long time.
If you don’t think you have any skills, freelance writing might be a great way to get started making some active income online.
It has a low-entry barrier and you can practice & learn new skills as you earn which is a great way to grow your business.
Freelancing might not be everyone’s favorite way of making money online but if you’re persistent – it’s fairly easy to get started and find your first client online.
There is no cap on the earnings you can make since you can set your own rate, work with clients of your choice, and get help if you have more work than you can handle.
A great place to start learning more about freelancing is Location Rebel.
Starting an Online Store
If you’re creative and you can make some products everyone would love to have – the internet is the best place to sell them.
It’s very easy to create an online store that can accept payments for the orders. If you’re not very creative and you’re not creating any products – that’s okay.
You can look into drop shipping where you would sell popular products directly from the manufacturer, or you can always purchase fancy products at local stores for cheap and re-sell them online under your brand.
It’s a great business model if you don’t have a lot of time. Setting everything up can take some time – but then it’s all about the products and marketing strategy to get customers and orders in.
All you have to do is visit Shopify to get more information on how to start an online store and check out the available possibilities.
Getting a Remote Job
If you don’t think you’re ready to be an online business owner yet you’d like to take control over your life and you aren’t a big fan of your 9-5 job, getting a remote job can be a great step forward.
Remote jobs are increasingly popular and they’re ideal for everyone who wants location independence and maybe even the ability to work on their own hours while having the security of a contract.
This can be a great way to find a part-time job that will help you get on the right track financially.
You can start browsing remote jobs right now by visiting Dynamite Jobs.
Conclusion
Living on a fixed income isn’t great. Working a 9-5 job that makes you unhappy isn’t healthy.
Everyone keeps wondering what does it mean to live a good life and how can you achieve it – but no one is ready to take action.
The great thing about achieving a good life is that everyone is different so the goals are different. You know yourself and your life the best so don’t let anyone ever tell you that you can’t do something.
It’s all about evaluating your situation, knowing what your goals are, and taking the action in the right direction.
What is your biggest obstacle to achieving the “good life”?
Feel free to leave a comment or question in the section below, but we’d also appreciate it if you would share this post on social media!
All the best,
Barbara
Founder/Creator: Living On Lean Means💰