These are the only 4 things that matter in life (your blueprint for fulfillment)

Growing up I accepted whatever adults told me to be true, because at a young age, I didn’t yet have the ability to think critically, and challenge the narratives that were fed to me.

The narratives I believed were that you’re supposed to grind your way up the corporate ladder, as you get older you’ll naturally get fat as a result of your metabolism “slowing down,” and the mark of a successful life is a 4-bedroom home with a white picket fence and a German-engineered car.

As a child I thought this was just the natural order of the world and that adults had this whole life thing figured out, but as I got older I began to see that most adults have absolutely no idea what’s going on and are really just in survival mode trying to stay afloat.

This has caused so many people to live imbalanced lives that are rooted in chaos and scarcity, because the narratives that everyone was told to follow don’t actually serve people’s best interests.

• 88% of adults in the United States are metabolically unhealthy.

• About half of all adults in the U.S. have no sense of purpose or higher calling in life.

• Almost 60% of Americans have trouble forming deep connections in the post-COVID world.

• 2/3 of people in the workforce are disengaged from their jobs.

These are just a few of the countless symptoms that come from following the rules.

But don’t let me tell it to you. I want you to think about your own pain points in life, and then think about how many of your problems were fueled by following the prevailing narrative.

In my 20s, I was in the corporate rat race, trying to pursue a career that I wasn’t even passionate about. I was extremely out of shape with no regard for my physical, my cognitive, or my mental health. I was trying to fit into social circles that didn’t inspire me to become my highest and best self.

It took a lot of experimentation throughout my thirties to completely transform my life to where I’m now living here in Europe where my life is way slower, more connected, and more peaceful overall. I’m now as healthy as ever, spending my mornings exercising outside while getting fresh air and plenty of sunlight. And I’m doing more purposeful and connected work as a solo entrepreneur helping mid-career professionals find alignment in their own lives.

So in this article I’m going to give you the philosophy that I’ve followed for optimizing my life so that you can also stop living in survival mode and start to REALLY enjoy all that life has to offer by being fully present.

To get the most out of this article, instead of passively reading, I want you to actively read by taking a pen and paper and taking notes. You can start by writing down these four words…

Spirituality, Relationships, Health, and Craft.

These four words are important because if you forget all the narratives you’ve been taught in the past, and you simplify your existence down to just optimizing these four areas of your life, then you will fundamentally transform your life for the better.

You’ll stop putting energy and effort into things, ideas, and people that introduce chaos into your life, and you’ll start to focus your life energy on the truly transformative elements that serve as a gateway to your highest and best self.

These four areas of life are the key to what I call “Harmonic Living.”  This is the goal. This represents the ultimate state of existence.

Before I go into detail, I want to first make sure you understand the concept of the flow state, which is key to harmonic living.

To keep things very simple, the flow state is the state of consciousness where you are fully present, and the pursuit of a higher goal becomes frictionless because it’s connected to a greater purpose that gives you an unshakable motivation to push through challenges.

Some will argue that the flow state is the highest state of consciousness, and the more you are in a state of flow, the more fulfilled you will be in life.

“The happiest people spend much time in a state of flow – the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Flow is more than an optimal state of consciousness . . . it also appears to be the only practical answer to the question: What is the meaning of life? Flow is what makes life worth living.” — Steven Kotler

Harmonic living happens when you unlock a perpetual state of flow in all four of the foundational areas of life that I mentioned before. It’s a lifestyle where everything comes together so that your life naturally flows in the direction of inner peace, of creative expression, of deep fulfilment, etc.

Now let’s go over each of the four in more context.

First is spirituality.

You may be thinking of spirituality as some type of “feel good” thing that doesn’t materially impact your life, but it’s quite the opposite. To be spiritual is to know own’s self, and believe it or not, most people don’t actually know who they are.

When you ask someone who they are, they’ll tell you their name, where they’re from, what they do for a living, etc… all things that are external…. But to know one’s self is to be deeply aware of the conscious entity that exists within your physical form, and to understand how your consciousness is connected to the greater universal fabric.

In simpler terms, it is knowing your subconscious mind.

This is extraordinarily important because about 95% of your entire existence happens in the subconscious mind. This means that if you have any aspirations to live a harmonic life, you must tap into your subconscious mind for the answers.

I talk all the time about how it’s essential to know your purpose, your vision, and your values before you can do anything else in life, and these things all come from some form of spirituality.

Your spirituality is a sort of guidebook for your life. It is the blueprint by which you will interpret the world, and make decisions. Your moral compass is dictated by your belief systems, which in turn, provide you and your life with a sense of direction. 

It can range anywhere from having a meditation practice all the way to being a devout follower of a particular religion, but the idea is that if you find a way to regularly tap into your subconscious, the mere act of existing becomes a sort of flow activity.

This gives you the presence of mind to make the best decisions for yourself, and navigate life with clarity, which is really important considering the countless distractions and decisions we face which can put us off course from pursuing our life vision.

Let’s move onto relationships.

I’m talking about this because the people who come into your life will for sure shape your perspective on life.

You may think that you are a sovereign individual who thinks for himself or herself, but you, me, and everyone out there are humans, thus we are highly social beings. Other people rub off on us no matter how hard we try not to let that happen.

Your interactions with other people very subtly alter the default programming of your subconscious mind. So if you are aware that every interaction with someone feeds into your subconscious programming, it stands to reason that you should be very intentional about who you interact with the most on a day-to-day basis.

If you’re around people whose actions are grossly misaligned with you’re moral compass as dictated by your spirituality, then you cannot achieve harmonic living.

People who bring low vibrational energy into your life must be kept at a distance, and people who bring high vibrational energy into your life should be an integral part of your life.

If you’re around people who have a negative disposition, then you’ll also start to view things through a lens of negativity.

So pay extreme close attention to your relationships, get the wrong people out of your life (or at least limit your interactions with them), and spend more time cultivating relationships with people who elevate you. And remember that relationships are a two-way street, so you should also be sure to bring value to other’s lives in whatever way you’re able to do so as well.

The main point is that if you are mindful of your relationships, you ensure that the people you interact with regularly are creating positive energy in your life, and you make the investment to cultivate meaningful relationships then you’ll have the basis for unlocking a state of relationship flow that’ll naturally push you to operate on a much higher frequency.

You’ll naturally become a better parent, a better friend, a better business partner etc., all of which are necessary for a truly grounded and fulfilling life.  Do not under any circumstances, lose focus on nourishing your relationships, because failing to do so will ensure that you will never find true fulfillment in your life.

Next up is health.

The saying goes that health is wealth…. The unhealthier you are, the more you life will suck. Plain and simple.

There is no amount of money, or status, or luxury items in the world that can make up for losing your mind and body.

Unfortunately, the current narrative says that health is mostly an afterthought, and the primary form of managing health is by spending hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars a every month for health insurance, and then going to the doctor (usually for meds) when something goes wrong.

So what you need to do is change that narrative and start looking at your daily life as your first line of defense for managing your health.  Make the investments for eating a quality diet, getting regular movement and resistance training, and giving yourself space to be in a good mental place.

Go beyond simply following the doctor’s orders, and become the CEO of your own health.  Spend time learning about different health philosophies, read a few books about a wide range of health topics ranging from diet, to exercise, to mental health, and then formulate your own philosophy on health.

Your health should not be delegated to others.

Also, your health is not a destination, it’s a journey.  And the sooner you begin to look at health as an exploration, the sooner you’ll be able to turn the act of optimizing your health and wellness into a flow activity.

When your health is optimal, when you feel good, you have energy, and you’re cognitively sharp, you’re able to be fully present with yourself, with others, and with life.

Lastly is your craft.

You can call this many different things. Your work. Your profession. Your career. Etc.  Essentially, it represents your contribution to society.

For many people work is something that they are not passionate about, and this is deadly because a life spent working a career that is not connected to your higher calling literally kills the soul.

We all may need to work the occasional job that we don’t enjoy, but too many people have made a career out of doing something that they don’t actually feel called to do. They just accept it as a fact of life and eliminate any possibility of actually pursuing their calling.

In the book The Alchemist, Paulo Cuelho describes your calling as your “personal legend,” and he goes on to say:

“Unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them — the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.” — Paulo Cuelho, The Alchemist

But in Robert Greene’s book, Mastery, I think he really homes in on this concept with what he describes as “primal inclinations” and your “life’s task.”

“You possess a kind of inner force that seeks to guide you toward your Life’s Task — what you are meant to accomplish in the time that you have to live. In childhood this force was clear to you. It directed you toward activities and subjects that fit your natural inclinations, that sparked a curiosity that was deep and primal.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

What both are getting at is that from a very young age, there were certain things that naturally spurred your curiosities, and there are life pursuits that you feel compelled to explore, and it is your obligation in life to follow said pursuits. 

This is a fundamental key towards harmonic living, and you must not fall into the trap of playing it safe by limiting yourself to a career that is neither connected to your life’s task, nor fulfilling in the slightest.

This is really difficult to do because the standard narrative says to go to school, then land a “secure” job with a nice compensation package, stock options, and benefits, despite that path bringing zero fulfilment to your life… or even worse, bringing dissonance (the opposite of harmony) into your life.

So focus on aligning your craft (career, work, etc) with your grander vision for life, and not only will you save yourself a lot of unnecessary suffering but you’ll also set yourself for achieving a sort of flow as it relates to your career.  You stop working because  you “have to” and start working because you are compelled to manifest something that is greater than you.

Now that we’ve gone over the four key components, let’s talk about how you can implement them in a practical way.

Before I touch on this, I want to say that those who’ve purchased CerebriX have access to an A.I. workflow that guides through this process in far more detail that I’m about to explain here. So if you’re interested in that, then click here to access the workflow for this essay along with many other workflows designed to help you formulate solutions to your biggest problems in life.

Continuing on….

If you look at life through these four lenses, and you base all your actions and decisions on accessing a state of flow in each, then you literally have the formula for a deeply fulfilling life.

It’s really simple in theory, but obviously it’s not so easy to implement. This is where systems come into play. I’m a big fan of using systems to streamline your path towards basically anything, and harmonic living is no different.

A very simple system that you can use is to audit your life across these four domains, and identify key actions that you can take to access the flow state.

There are a lot of components to unlocking the flow state, but I’m not going to get into the specifics of that because that requires much more than just a single blog essay. I’m actually building a premium course that’s all about unlocking the flow state and harmonic living, so that’s coming soon as of the time of me writing this.

But for the purposes of this essay, I tapped into CerebriX to create a simple framework that’ll put you on the right track as far as unlocking the flow state in each of the foundational domains of life for harmonic living.

Essentially, you want to assess each of these four most important domains of your life, and ask yourself the following questions for each?

• What’s most important to me and how does it connect to my vision?

• What am I doing that distracts from my vision?

• What can I do to align my life with my vision.

If you go through this simple exercise then you’ll be able to cut through many of the distractions that are creating dissonance in your life, and you’ll get far more clarity on where you need to place your focus for a more fulfilling life.

This is the key to unlocking Lifestyle Harmony which, in my opinion, represents the absolute highest state of existence in the human form.

If you want to explore this idea further, then you can schedule a 1-on-1 consultation with me where I will guide you through this process so you can cut through the distractions and really begin to focus you life on what really matters. 

Or you can pick up a copy of CerebriX which comes with a database of workflows, including one for this essay that’ll help you unlock flow in these four foundational areas of life.