What does it mean to live your best life? It’s different for each person, and it’s not all, or even mostly, about the money. It’s a matter of perspective. Sometimes life isn’t great, other times it’s pretty wonderful.

Transcript

K: So, lately I’ve been thinking about living your best life. I’m like, what does that phrase even mean? To live your best life.

C: You want to live my best life or your own?

K: See? Right? That’s what I mean because, like… okay, so this is something that I don’t know about you that I’d love to know. And as our listeners know, I love doing fact finding when it comes to you because I want to know everything about you. Did living your best life, that concept, change for you when living in the United States versus from living in Japan? And like… pre-child, post-child.

C: Absolutely.

K: Yeah, so I think that that’s like… an individual-bound but also culture-bound concept.

C: I don’t think it’s just culture-bound. I think it’s time-bound. I think it’s resource-bound. Because when I was living my best life when I was working at McDonald’s, it was very different than living my best life living in Japan and what I’m doing now.

K: See, for me, I think of best life as the best life that I could possibly live. But I think sometimes think that living their best life is living someone else’s life, and that always confuses me. Because I work with a lot of clients that are Instagram obsessed, right?

C: Right.

K: And I look at Instagram, and I happen to personally know a few Instagram influencers, and they’re not actually living what- the life that people think that they’re living. 

C: Right.

K: But they are living their best life, and they are doing a lot of things like… one of my good Instagram people, and I know we did a podcast about how we’re not doing social media anymore, yes we are back on the ‘gram. And we’ve been back on the ‘gram for a minute. But, anyways. So, getting to know them and seeing all the work that they’re putting in and all the effort that they’re putting in, and it’s always surprising to me that a lot of people think living your best life is not having any work. 

C: Mhmm.

K: (coughs) Sorry, my throat is so itchy today. 

C: So your throat is not living its best life.

K: No, my throat is no- actually I think it is because it’s super active and I think, for my throat, its best life is an active life. But it’s not making my chest or lungs happy.

C: Okay.

K: Yeah.

C: So, I think that if you want to say “well the best life possible” that word possible just for me as a math person is so damning. So, the best life possible would be to go buy the winning lotto ticket and then anytime I was feeling a little low

K: No, a lot of lottery winners are not happy. They’re not living their best life.

C: Yeah, but that’s because they haven’t gone out to buy another winning lottery ticket to fix their money problems. 

K: So you’re saying like every day having the winning lottery ticket, then that-

C: Just every time you feel like you’re running low on money.

K: Oh okay. So you think that if you had endless resources, because money is shorthand for resources for you, for those that don’t know you.

C: Yeah.

K: Money for you means resources. So you think a best possible life is most amount of resources?

C: Yes. In the theoretical sense.

K: Okay.

C: So what I’m saying is you can’t take the phrase “best possible life” in a theoretical sense. You have to look at it in a practical sense.

K: Okay.

C: So in a practical sense, it would not be living my best life to go spend all my money on lotto tickets because… I’m almost certainly not going to win, and then I won’t have all t