There are three pillars which we live by and believe that almost everything can be categorised under which will lead to a successful life. Health, Relationships and Wealth, and in that order of importance.

Health

Without health everything can become miserable and hopeless. The first step here was mentioned in the intro, social media. Delete the apps or at least limit the time you are exposed to them, no more doom scrolling.

Social media plays a large role in unbalancing your mind. You will subliminally create opinions and view points on videos and articles you consume leaving you feeling down, depressed and anxious, all over topics and events that don’t actually matter to you directly and you don’t have control of.

Physical Exercise is proven to stabilise your mind which can be crucial in maintaining a level head, preventing anxiety and depression. Hormones are released which will leave you feeling good each and every time, Endorphins, Adrenaline, Testosterone, Serotonin and dopamine. Regular exercise strengthens your body, prevents ailments, increases movement, improves heart and other organ health and ultimately increasing longevity.

The hardest part is getting started. This is where discipline comes in. If you can just get your shoes on and get outside you have past the hardest part. And once you start walking, jogging, lifting weights you will find it feels natural to just keep going for 30-60min.

Food, you become what you eat. Most things you read will tell you exactly what you should be eating. But this is often to the extremes and unrealistic if you are just starting out on fixing your habits. If you can just add some lean protein foods and more fruit and vegetables that will be a good enough start. Often completely removing bad processed foods and changing your diet will leave you unmotivated and most likely lead to early quitting.

Sleep, the most important aspect of living a quality life during the day. Without sleep your body cannot recover and your brain cannot dispose of waste materials in creasing your chance of early onset dementia. According to studies at Health.harvard.edu people who slept less than 5 hours per night were twice as likely to develop dementia 

What is the key to a good sleep? Well if you nail the first three points of removing anxiety causing activities such as doom scrolling and then pairing it with daily exercise, sunlight and eating a moderately clean diet falling asleep and staying asleep becomes a breeze. To boost it even further ensure you don’t eat 2 hrs before bed, avoid sugar in your last meal and most definitely no social media. Put your phone in another room if you can.

Relationships

Life is dull if you can’t share it with others. This can be friends and family or even co-workers. The reason this point sits above wealth is because being wealthy without healthy relationships will still leave you feeling empty. Often you will find the happiest people do not have large amounts of financial wealth but are rich in relationships with people, nature, culture, religion and with themselves.

Relationships can include secondary situations. Such as how your relationship with going to work is and how you perceive yourself in different environments. A good relationship at work makes life easier, so much time is spent earning a living and if you go to work miserable each day it will leech into every other aspect of your life. You either need to change your perception and attitude or change where and what you do for work. A major help to deal with this is to practice the philosophy of stoicism. In summary stoicism has been around for thousands of years and is the practice of observing yourself and how you react in situations and environments. Not allowing your emotions to be dictated by other people or external events.

Other relationships such as with nature, cultural and religious relationships can all help provide meaning and purpose.

You need to find what relationships mean to you and where you spend your energy. Positive interactions will invigorate your day creating a positive chain effect into all other aspects of your life.

Wealth

If you have good health and relationships life most likely will already be quite enjoyable. Wealth is icing on the cake. This buys you more time to work on the first two points.

Aiming for endless wealth is an empty feeling. The real goal is to have just enough wealth to not have to think about spending. Ultimately reaching financial independence.  

To build wealth the simple rule applies, spend less than you earn and invest the difference. The larger the difference the faster you can reach financial independence. In the FIRE movement typically people will restrict and lower their spending to bare necessities only to reach FI faster. This may suit some but not all.

Another way to do it is to work more and increase your income. This could lead to burn out and is definitely not for everyone.

In between is probably the method that makes the most sense, slow down your spending and spend only on what you find is important, while also trying to increase your income without losing too much of your life.

Once you have a large difference you need to invest it into assets. An asset by definition is something owned that has value and expected to increase in value or provide income over time. This mostly refers to stocks or property but there are also others. Once you have decided on your way to reach FI the next hardest part is sticking to it and enjoy life on the way.