Blueprint for Best Life: Elegantly Distilled

In my years as a psychiatrist, I’ve made it my passion to collaborate with my patients on building beautiful lives. I’ve distilled the roadmap into three essential elements that I share here. The privilege of witnessing and participating in this journey with others is truly a gift I receive in return.

The Three Pillars of an Exceptional Life

1. Self-Care: Your Daily Constants

Self-care forms a consistent string of pearls throughout your day. When optimized, it includes nourishing your mind and body with wholesome food, moving, and prioritizing adequate rest and sleep. This creates guard rails that actually do not shift on day-to-day basis. They should become habits.

2. Work: Your Purposeful Engagement

Work (or studies, whatever your day occupation would be) is the distraction from worries, occupies your time, purposeful, meant to be the peaceful and practiced portion of your day. You can keep it challenging and adventurous and optimize it to be on autopilot mode. That way, it remains as the stabilizing part of your life giving you a sense of independence on all counts.

3. Leisure: Your Daily Differentiator

This crucial element must vary each day and requires planning to distinguish one day from another. Consider leisure in three tiers:

• Micro-fun (daily): Enjoying pets or children, reading, cooking, arranging flowers, watching compelling shows, or working on small creative projects
• Medium-fun (weekends): Indoor or outdoor entertainment, social gatherings, or spending time to dream and make actual plans for larger adventures yet to come. A reset day can be a great welcome at times.
• Macro-fun (occasional): Travel and more significant adventures that provide memorable experiences that take up more days outside of daily routine.

Without careful attention to designing this leisure component, life becomes either burdensome or repetitive—endless “ground hog days.” This particular part requires active planning (unlike the first two points) and is not an automatic part of your day or life.

Once you’ve established this triad, you’ve created a foundation for exceptional living. Life events will inevitably intervene. However, with this elegant baseline in place, you can foster a family culture enriched with meaningful substance that withstands all challenges. You create a beautiful rendition well-lived in our short time on the planet Earth. Let’s enjoy the ride for an amazing experience.