The Art of Improvement｜如何书写值得一读的人生？

How to Make Your Life Worth Reading About

Usually, anything heard on mainstream radio isn't worth listening to, but today, they posed a thought-provoking question I liked. If you picked up a book and discovered it was your biography from birth to death, knowing that you can't rewrite the narrative, would you read past your current point in life? That's a great question! And when put to the public, the general response was "no," people didn't want to read how their lives played out.

But for me, perhaps oddly enough, I'd happily read it. What is it that's gotten me to this point? What do I think is essential to living out a life you'd happily read about? These are the questions I will answer in this video and provide you with a guide you can shape to write your own personal bestseller.

Be the Author of Your Life, Not the Victim of It

The truth is, most people are not choosing to be the author of their life. Rather, life is just happening to them. Their daily choices – both consciously and unconsciously – have them acting as a mere character in a story, with no idea as to how it will unfold. As Darren Hardy wrote in his book, "The Compound Effect," "Most people drift through life without devoting much conscious energy to figuring out specifically what they want and what they need to do to take themselves there."

This is why most people do not want to read the story of their life. Without any real direction behind their daily activities, every new page beyond their current point would simply be a complete and utter shock to them. In short, it probably wouldn't make for very good reading.

Getting away from this starts by asking 3 simple questions:

1. Where am I now?
2. Where do I want to be?
3. How am I getting there?

Once you know where you're going and how you're getting there, you'll be bringing a purpose to your everyday actions, you'll be heading where you want to go, and you'll have more certainty in your future.

Live a Life of No Regrets

A while ago, I spoke to a friend of mine who was on the fence about taking a year off Med school to travel the world. I gave him one piece of advice, "Whatever decision you make, ensure that it's one you can live with for the rest of your life." When I spoke to him again, he told me he'd taken the leap and was going to do it.

I asked him what pushed him over the edge: "If not now, when?" he said, "I'm not going to be young forever, I can't put a guarantee on the future. If I don't do it now, I might never do it and I couldn't live with that regret." To me, that's a great reason to do anything.

I've said in the past, "A good decision is one that leaves you saying, "I'm glad I did," not "I wish I had." But too often, people don't live with this mindset. People would rather do what's easy, or feels good in the moment, even sometimes they'll do something because it's what other people expect of them.

But these are all terrible reasons to do something and will likely lead to regret later on down the line. A lot of the pages will be read, asking, "What if?" "Why didn't I take a chance?" "Why did I make that decision?" Keep the end in mind. Make the present count for a well-lived future.

Establish Habits That Take You Where You Want to Go

A sure-fire way to write the pages how you want and achieve your ambitions is to build habits around what's important to the core areas of your life. Why? Habits take out most of the work. If you regularly do something until it becomes a habit (and the science says it takes an average of 66 days to acquire a new habit), the payoff from developing that habit is great: 


1. It keeps you on track of where you're going.
2. It simplifies your life.

As David Kadavy has said, "When you build a habit, you don't have to waste mental energy deciding what to do." Lock in habits so they become part of your life and you can basically ride your routines to where you want to go.

词汇表
mainstream [ˈmeɪnstriːm] 主流的；主流（思想、文化等）
thought-provoking [ˌθɔːt prəˈvəʊkɪŋ] 发人深省的，引人深思的
biography [baɪˈɒɡrəfi] 传记，生平
rewrite the narrative [ˌriːˈraɪt ðə ˈnærətɪv] 重写故事（这里指改变人生轨迹）
play out （事情）发生，展开，上演
oddly [ˈɒdli] 奇怪地，反常地
bestseller [ˌbestˈselə(r)] 畅销书
victim [ˈvɪktɪm] 受害者，牺牲品
unfold [ʌnˈfəʊld] （故事等）发展，展开，呈现
compound effect [ˈkɒmpaʊnd ɪˈfekt] 复利效应（指长期积累的微小改变带来巨大影响）
devote one's energy to [dɪˈvəʊt] 把精力投入到
utter shock [ˈʌtə(r)] 彻底的惊吓，完全震惊
get away from 逃脱，摆脱
be on the fence [fens] 犹豫不决，持观望态度，保持中立
live with 接受，容忍（不愉快的事）
take the leap 迈出这一步，大胆尝试
push someone over the edge [edʒ] 使某人下定决心，把某人逼到极限
down the line 后来，将来；完全地
What if 要是…将会怎样
sure-fire [ˌʃʊə ˈfaɪə(r)] 可靠的，必定成功的，万无一失的
payoff [ˈpeɪɒf] 回报，收益
keep on track 保持正轨，跟上进度
lock in 确定，固定（习惯、计划等使其成为常规）

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