We’re coming up a new year, and we all know what that means.
We’re all going to resolve to become better, right?
We’re going to eat better and get fit. Maybe learn a new language or instrument. Invest more wisely and perhaps even change careers or start a business.
Maybe we should do all of the above together.
After all, making meaningful change in your life is tough. Studies show that less than 25% of people stay committed to a goal after 30 days, and only 8% actually accomplish what they set out to do.
First of all, we need SMART goals. In this case, SMART means:
- Specific: Well defined, clear, and unambiguous
- Measurable: With specific criteria that measure your progress toward the accomplishment of the goal
- Achievable: Attainable and not impossible to achieve
- Realistic: Within reach, realistic, and relevant to your life purpose
- Timely: With a clearly defined timeline, including a starting date and a target date. The purpose is to create urgency.
From there, you need a few other crucial elements:
- Information: Whether you want to get fit, invest better, or start a business, it’s important to have credible insight into the latest science, trends, and techniques so that your efforts are effective and sound.
- Motivation: Getting started is more than half the battle, but often life intervenes and threatens your ability to keep going. Making your goal achievement process more like a game with incremental rewards ups your motivation significantly.
- Accountability: This is the big one. Committing to someone that you will achieve your goal ups your probability of actually doing it to 65%. Having ongoing accountability interactions with people you’ve committed to increases your odds to a whopping 95%.
All of the above provides a great description of Well + Wealthy, a brand new Further membership community debuting in early 2022. We’re designing a supportive environment where you choose your specific goals — and we achieve them together.
We’ll be talking more about Well + Wealthy in the coming weeks. Plus, we’ve got a special ebook in the works that will be the beginning of the “credible information” aspect.
Feel free to hit reply and let me know what you think. Otherwise, more soon!
Keep going-
P.S. New to Further? Join us here.
Food Voodoo
A lot of people are hyper-focused on the biochemical and physiological aspects of food. Call it over-nutritionalizing, over-intellectualizing, or over-sciencing. Whatever name you give it, it’s characterized by an almost obsessive interest in the nutritional and physiological aspects of a given food.
Superstition, Sciencestition, and How to Stop Overthinking Food
To Everything There Is a Season
We all go through different phases in each of our careers. At midlife, you’re likely moving into a new season of your choosing. Some now want to downshift, or prioritize family. And others want to reinvent themselves entirely.
Career Seasons: Choosing a Role Based on the Lifestyle You Want
Be Excellent to Yourself
One common critique of perfectionism is that it kills creativity. New research shows that shooting for greatness, rather than perfection, can lead to higher creativity and increased openness to experience.
Striving For Perfection, Rather Than Excellence, Can Kill Creativity
Support System
When it comes to your health, being willing to give social support to your spouse, friends, and family may be just as important as receiving assistance, a new study suggests.
Giving Social Support to Others May Boost Your Health
The Italian Job
Last week we talked about the dream of moving to Italy coupled with opportunities to buy real estate on the cheap if you’re willing to renovate. Now let’s hear from people who have done that very thing to discover what it’s like.
Tips on Buying a Cheap House in Italy from Those Who’ve Done It
The Ancient Art of Scaling Back to Upscale Your Life
By Trudi Roth
I’ve had many epiphanies since my mom died last summer. Among the most poignant is about the legacy of stuff.
A bit of a hoarder, my mom’s drawers and closets were jam-packed with a lifetime of accumulation. About 95% were things I almost never saw her wear, use, or enjoy. We gave away or trashed nearly everything within a few weeks, saving just a few items for posterity.
I’m more of a minimalist, but that doesn’t stop lifestyle creep. While research shows decluttering boosts mental health – greater focus, improved sleep, and decreased stress – living more fully with less entails a mindset change, not just periodic purging.
As is often the case, an ancient approach holds the key to cleaning up our modern act.
The Danshari Method
For centuries, the Japanese have embraced the concept of “Wabi-Sabi” – finding beauty in simplicity and grace in aged, well-loved things.
Danshari is a contemporary take on living simply. Popularized by author Hideko Yamashita, it’s a practice that transforms your relationship with things in your physical space and inner world.
The word expresses three ideals: refuse (“dan”), dispose (“sha”), and separate (“ri”). The focus is on what you gain, not what you’re losing, as Yamashita explains:
Danshari is very different from minimalism, and a Danshari-ist is very different from a minimalist. They are similar but different. If minimalism is an attempt to minimize, and a minimalist is someone who excludes things, then Danshari is the appeal of optimization, and a Danshari-an is someone who chooses things.
The trick is to select wisely, which is easier to do when you know Danshari’s rules of releasing.
5 Simple Rules
The key to mastering the Danshari method is to take action daily to restore harmony and balance by getting rid of what doesn’t serve you. This goes beyond physical things; apply the five rules to digital life and even interpersonal relationships.
- Occupation: Avoid completely filling spaces in your home – shoot for 80% occupancy to free physical and emotional space in your life.
- Replacement: Only bring new things home to replace old, useful things that no longer work.
- One-touch: Keep what you use frequently easily accessible, so you can grab and go in a movement or two.
- Autonomy, freedom, and ease of use: Organize your space vertically for enhanced feelings of harmony, order, and cleanliness.
- Automatic gear: Create an “automatic mechanism of order” – a designated place for everything.
Getting rid of my mom’s stuff meant letting go of nostalgia and sentimentality. That’s hard, so Danshari advises releasing with gratitude. And there is much to appreciate: by removing excess, you clear a path to explore and expand your life with a fresh outlook.
The Danshari Method: Declutter Your Life and Be Happier (Exploring Your Mind)
further: flashback
True Confessions, 1986
While the Go-Gos just made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it’s Bananarama that holds the Guinness World Record for the highest number of chart entries by an all-female group. But it was their cover of Shocking Blue’s Venus that became their only US number one. (YouTube)
further: sharing
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