Make your own list

Good morning gorgeous, it's so lovely to see you on this steamy summer morning. Grab a mug of coffee, it's time for our chat. A note on designing your life.

A few years ago my friend Drew did a TEDx talk called The List, and it changed my life a little bit. In it he challenged the notion that we’re all supposed to follow this prescribed path:

Go to kindergarten and play nice, go to school to get a good job, work hard to get a promotion, get married, buy a house, get promoted again, have kids, get promoted again, retire, and then turn around and make sure your kids do the same thing.

That’s the list a lot of us have in our heads, the list to achieve success— so we go for it. We follow the rules and start checking off boxes. We start hustling for the education, the good job, the promotion, but at every milestone, we find that we’re still searching. We think “maybe the next box will do it” and keep going. On paper, we are starting to look good, but for some reason, it doesn’t feel good.

This is because the list is someone else’s determination of what success should look like. It’s how your parents, or your boss, or the neighbourhood you grew up in defines success, not you.

We’re buying groceries off of someone else’s list, expecting them to nourish and fill us. No wonder we’re still hungry.

Here’s the thing: you need to make your own list.

You get to decide what matters to you. Will the promotion, or the house, or the car make you happier? Maybe, but it’s a serious question you should ask yourself before you keep it on the list.

If you don’t know what should be on your list, that’s OK. Look for moments you feel full, satisfied, lit-the-fuck-up and write them down— now you have the start of your list.

Remember, you get to architect your own live. You get to choose what matters. Sit down today and start writing your list, it might just surprise you.