How to Measurably Improve Your Quality of Life: 7 Steps

Your quality of life has to do with what you feel matters and what is truly significant for you.Which of your behaviors impact your quality of life? A few decades of research on what correlates most with quality of life gives us categories as listed below with a useful mnemonic of ‘PERMA’

We make many many choices every day that affect our quality of life, but most of our routines (how we start our day, what we choose to eat) and standard reactions (eating when we are anxious, cursing at other drivers if they frustrate us) are made on autopilot. Analytical thinking and planning is a good way to measurably change any of our autopilot habits (how we choose our food) or response patterns (how we respond to frustration while driving). Triggering cognitive thinking in time to make better choices is a fundamental skill. For example, if you can feel your emotions starting to take over, you have a limited window of time in which you can ask yourself strategic questions and make better choices about how to best respond to the situation.

What habits do you wish you had? How do you wish you could respond in challenging situations? What would a perfect day entail and what would you eliminate? Take five minutes now to write up short wish lists with what you would want in each category.

If you want to change a frequent daily habit, like eating healthier or exercising, partnering with people around you makes it easier to succeed. This becomes critical if their behaviors affect yours and vice versa – work together to design experiments you can try together.

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Evaluate the results of your experiments. Consider using a daily journal to capture your intentions for the day. Make a list right away in the morning and, in the evening, review and reflect on the results of the day. Each consecutive day, you can then make improvements toward achieving your goals. If you’re collaborating with a partner, make time to review results together. As you fall asleep and drift into an alpha state of consciousness, you may find your mind more capable of epiphanies on how to approach your goals in more productive ways.