15 Traits of a Good Life (2023)

Let's start the new year with a bang! The A-Lux lady is still enjoying her holiday break, so I'm here to take over this one for her. But no worries, she'll be back next Sunday. You will never guess what you don't plan for, so it will serve you well to learn what are the 15 traits of a good life. Welcome to Alux, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired.

Number one: a supportive family. There are only three things a man needs to cross the threshold: a supportive and loving family, owning the roof over your head, and predictable income. These are the three essentials. Without them, life is stressful. Your family is your refuge, your family is your peace and strength. When you come back home, you should be at peace. You should find support, encouragement, and above everything else, love. Someone who feels loved has all the reasons to be grateful for the life they have.

In the book "A Man's Search for Meaning," Victor Frankl reached the conclusion that he who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how. Your family is that why. Without it, existence feels shallow and superficial. If not even your family supports you or loves you, then it's a task to find a reason to support and love yourself. If you do have a loving family, know that you already won a race. Most people are still fighting towards.

Number two: quality friends and relationships. This expands on your inner circle of trust and vulnerability. A good life is one spent surrounded by people you don't have to pretend to be someone else around. Ask yourself how many friends like that you have in your life. If you do have them, treasure them and don't let the relationships go to waste. People assume that lifelong friendships just happen, but as with everything great in life, they require work, attention, time, and maintenance. One cannot live a good life alone, for the only source of true happiness is the one we share with others.

Number three: lack of money problems. Financial stability and material comfort. At Alux, we're known for keeping it real. It's hard to find peace and happiness if your child is starving. Money might not buy happiness directly, but it sure as hell keeps misery away. Money solves money problems. Once you get there, you've got the rest of your life to solve the problems money can't solve. A good life is one without financial stress, without financial worry. Just imagine what it feels like to wake up every single morning without ever worrying about bills, debt, rent, or any other expenses.

A good life is not only one where you have escaped money problems but one with enough money to be able to enjoy life truly—eat great meals, travel the world, help your parents, friends, and loved ones. Money might not be able to buy you truthful relationships, but it does buy you a quality mattress, a comfortable home, and a safe car for you and your kids. A good life is one where you can go after the things you want without financial barriers or time constraints. We really believe that you can do anything you want with your life, but let's get you rich first—it's much easier that way.

Number four: physical and mental well-being. A good life is one where your body doesn't hurt. A good life is one where you wake up rested and refreshed. A good life is one where you have energy and mental capacity throughout the day. A good life is one where you enjoy being alone with your thoughts. How many of you can say that they’re there already? You might not realize this, but the way you experience the world changes based on your physical and mental well-being.

Food tastes better when you're healthy; the same goes for nature, weather experiences, and even sex. For some reason, our generation treats physical and mental well-being separately, like they are distinct in every way, shape, or form. When in reality, these two are interwoven, one with the other. You're in poor physical shape because your mental life is suffering, and your mental life is suffering because your physical body is in rough shape. Pick whichever of the two you find easier to manage and get it working towards improving its status. You will see its effects bleed into everything else in your life.

Number five: growth. If there's one thing we've learned in the past 30 years, it's that we derive meaning from purpose. Life expands while you're growing, and the opposite is also true. The moment you stop learning or evolving, life begins contracting on you, and you feel trapped, smaller and smaller. The biggest challenge you will face in this life is continuous growth. A good life is one where you're inspired by others instead of envying them.

A good life is one filled with curiosity and genuine interest. A good life is one where you have mentors that keep you honest and focused on what is really important in life. What if you could be mentored by the absolute best in the world in their respective fields in a personalized manner? Well, last year we launched the A-Lux app, where we do just that. We spend time with incredible people, distill their knowledge, and deliver it to you in 10 minutes per day coaching sessions. That way, you get only the things that we know will actually serve you. Go to alux.com/app right now and download it. The next update will make the Alux app your secret tool in getting to the good life in 2023.

Number six: a healthy routine. Remember waking up rested and refreshed? A good life implies the continuation of that state of being. A good life is one where what you do throughout the day adds to the quality of your existence instead of diminishing it. If you start your mornings with a donut, a smoke, and Red Bull and you do that consistently, what do you expect your reality to be like? It’s simple cause and effect. Your body and your mind use whatever you give it as fuel, so pay attention to your routine.

Pay attention to the small things you do every single day, for that is where the big changes in your life await.

Number seven: lack of involuntary stress. Longevity and the perceived quality of life are closely tied to how much stress we experience. Stress is being in two places at once, one physically and one mentally. We are the most stressed-out generation, and it shows—they’re all going up: anxiety, stress, a race for money in a society where the cost of living and education is outpacing economic growth, while the news portrays a world that’s constantly burning. Millennials and Gen Z know that they will statistically have a lower quality of life than that of previous generations.

A good life is one where you can escape the news cycle. A good life is one where the only stress in your life is the one you put on for growth purposes. This generation literally wants to turn the world off for a while so it can regroup. Stress is the trash of modern life; we all make more of it, but if you don't dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life. This is why a good life is one of the hardest things to accomplish for this generation. If a good life means you’re taken care of and can take care of those you love, what happens to everyone else? Not only does a good life remove involuntary stress from your life, but it also means that you have the ability to remove stress from other people's lives or at least aid them in the process.

Number eight: lack of clutter. They told you more is better until you realize that you have no more breathing room left because you filled every part of your life with stuff you don't need or which are not conducive to your happiness or fulfillment. Clutter is the enemy of peace—a cluttered home, a cluttered mind, a cluttered business—it's all just a vehicle for chaos, and chaos leads to stress. A good life is one where you have what you need when you need it. A good life is one where you don't feel that you need something else to feel complete.

In order to get there, start by de-cluttering every aspect of your life: declutter your relationships, declutter your goals, the expectations you set for yourself, and declutter your environment. Give yourself room to grow, evolve, and thrive. Here's the most valuable thing you will hear today: if you take a really great seed and plant it in toxic soil, the plant will never flourish. Do you blame the seed or do you blame the soil? You are a great seed; stop blaming yourself and instead focus on what kind of soil you're planting into.

Number nine: finding ways to express yourself creatively. We are all creative persons. You might not think of yourself as creative, but there are certain parts of your life where you find pleasure in the act of doing something—that's your creative soul at work. It's the art of doing things; that’s the creative part. Without it, we're constantly feeling that something is missing. Creativity is the highest form of hope. Without creativity, your life will fall into the benign. A good life is one where your genius is allowed to shine. Once you discover your gift and realize you can live off of it, your entire existence changes.

It's true that you're finally giving birth to who you're meant to be.

Number ten: purpose and meaning in life. A good life is one where, given the opportunity, you would live it over and over again. A good life is one where your existence matters. Those who do not live life are not worthy of it. Don't waste the opportunity that has been bestowed upon you. Here's how to find purpose and meaning in your life:

1. Try everything and solve yourself. Remember that a sinking ship can save no one, so until you're happy, safe, fulfilled, and successful, you can't guide others to it. It's hard to pull someone up if you're standing below them.

2. Once you get yours, help those you love to get to safety. Their security will remove pressure off you to provide for them.

3. Lastly, have an impact on those you can help. The more we spin this wheel of life, the more we realize that we derive purpose from work and from being a change agent.

Here's how it worked for us: we made ourselves rich, then we took care of our inner circle, then we gave it away for free to the masses. Alux is a movement. We are on a mission to really change the lives of one billion people through education. This is why you subscribe to this channel; this is why this kind of content is free for everyone who's looking for it. We're not stopping there, and we're taking you with us. Thanks to everyone who went to alux.com/app and subscribed to us, we were able to build a school last year for a community of sixty thousand people in Uganda. We'll link to it in the top comment.

Number eleven: living peacefully and experiencing the moment. We live in our minds, and for most people, the mind is not a comfortable place to be in. Living in your mind prohibits you from living in the present. For no matter where or what you're doing, your mind will always think about tomorrow or the future. A good life is one lived as a sensorial being. Here’s what that means: whatever you do, focus on your senses. What does the cone feel like in your hand? What does the ice cream feel like on your tongue? What does the water feel like on your skin?

Focusing on your senses allows you to bring yourself to the present moment. Say yes to things and see how they make you feel. A good life is one where you experience it fully. What kind of life is it if you only live for the weekend? What does that say about us as a society where five out of seven days of the week we're mediocre in our misery just so we can feel a tiny slither of peace on Saturday evening? What kind of life is it where you dread waking up on a Monday? This is a great opportunity to ask yourself what kind of life you wish to live.

Number twelve: no longer feeling the internal need to compete for status. This is the year you'll forget about status games. You don't need their approval; you've outgrown it. A good life is one where you’re being content in the small things and realizing you don't need fame or riches to be happy. The way you win in life is by forgetting everyone else and focusing on yourself.

The moment you compete with no one, no one will be able to compete with you. You're not in a race with them; you're in a race with yourself. Others can exist in your universe, but they do not alter the amount of effort or positive outcome you can have for yourself. You achieve a good life by realizing it's okay for others to have more than you have, as long as what you do have you perceive as more than enough.

Number thirteen: letting [ __ ] go. A good life implies freedom, and there are many kinds of freedom for you to pursue. One of them is freedom of the past. Most people are unable to enjoy the present or plan for a proper future because their past weighs so much. It's hard to go far if you're chaining yourself. Forgive your parents; they did what they could. Times have changed, education has changed. You're dealing with a different set of problems and worries than their generation had to.

It's not an excuse, but blaming them for how you turned out will not improve your reality. Only you can. Others may have wronged you; you might have lost time, money, and effort. Once you've done what you can, move on. There's no reason for the past to hold up your present.

Number fourteen: connection to nature. Remember the seed and soil example earlier? We believe a waking up of an entire generation is happening. We're being drawn to nature. We can no longer tolerate the concrete, the dust, the toxins of an inefficient society. Do you feel it too? The need to be somewhere in the mountains, being able to really breathe, or near the beach where the sun shines on your face while your feet are in the water, walking through forests, eating fruit from the tree—all of it contributes to what a good life is supposed to be.

We found the secret to a good life from a geographical perspective. These are called the Blue Zones, certain parts of the world where people not only live substantially longer than everyone else, but they're happier, healthier, socially thriving, and mentally stable longer than anywhere else in the world. Here's a map of the five Blue Zones humanity has documented. In all five of them, connection to nature, good climate, and proximity to water play an important role. Learn from this.

Number fifteen: stop caring about the life script. You go through life imagining that it's supposed to go a certain way. There's an old religious quote that says, "If you want to amuse God, tell Him your plans." Stop waiting for your life to start. A good life is one where you're already in it—not wanting to get to the start line. This concept, this image of the life you want that you've so carefully crafted in your mind, is actually your reason for misery.

For now, you have a desire, and desires are contracts you make with yourself to not be happy until the desire is fulfilled. You might be living an incredible life already, filled with opportunity, but because it doesn't fit the mold you set for yourself, you consider yourself unfulfilled. This is your life, this moment right now. Wake up from the New Year resolutions illusion and make today be worth living. If you do, it won't be long until you realize that's how you live a good life.

Now it's your turn to contribute to the conversation. What have we missed in our list? What would it take for you to live a good life? Share your valuable insights in the comments.

And since this is the first video of the year, of course, there's going to be a bonus for those of you watching until the end, including a book recommendation bonus. Nobody can tell you what a good life is for you; you have to find it yourself. Spend your whole life doing it, for it's the journey towards a good life that counts as a good life in itself.

We've already finished reading our first book this year, and it's a title we've been postponing for a while called "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." We'll link to it in the description, or go to alux.com/freebook, and if you sign up, you can get the audiobook version for free. Early on in the book, there's this quote we've been pondering: "What is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"

Deep down, we all know what's good for us and what isn't. The list you've gone through today is what we've been able to pull from our own identity and experience, and the more we went through it, we realized that all of them are fundamental human needs. This video is valuable because it's objective. This year, we continue being curators of deep knowledge for you guys, and maybe a few changes will be coming soon.

Before we really end this video, here's what different philosophies see as a good life:

• Stoic: a life accepting the way things are.
• Hedonist: a life of happiness.
• Consequentialist: a life that brought about the most possible good.
• Nietzschean: a life worth living again and again and again, a life that fulfills its purpose.
• Golden Mean: a balanced life.
• Calvinist: a life lived as described by God.
• Contractualist: a life that we can all agree is good.

Pick the one that makes the most sense to you and then just go out and live it. If you're committed to building this kind of life for you in 2023, please write the words "good life" in the comments. Let's see how many of you are ready for this journey!