The Secrets to Having A Really Good Day
On my 25th birthday, I awoke alone and feeling miserable. I had realized that I was in the wrong intimate relationship, the wrong job, and the wrong career. My first cup of coffee that morning included troubling thoughts about life not measuring up the way I had dreamed.
After a morning run, I showered and then sat solitary at a dining table. The apartment seemed impersonal, without warmth or comfort. This new home, alone, did not seem homelike. Not only had I lost my fiancé during an amicable breakup, but our shared friends were choosing sides. I was both alone and lonely.
In this context, I realized that If my 25th birthday was going to end up a good day, despite all my troubles, then I needed to create a definition of what constitutes a good day for me. The criteria needed to be objective. I could not leave my assessments to transitory gut instincts or whims. Achieving my definition of a “good day” could exist outside of mere feelings or caprice. Rather, if I achieved each of my criteria, then I could confidently look back and declare a good day.
My morning run was when I began this important birthday and also my first defining criteria. A good day would include activities to maintain and enhance my fitness, whether jogging as a young man back then or walking 10,000 steps today as an older man. My fitness regimen would include resistance training and pushups.
Years earlier I had adopted pushups as a daily routine, and my benchmark became performing pushups equal to my age. At 25, twenty-five pushups presented no difficulties. Now in my seventies, seventy-plus pushups in a single set are more taxing. However, as I’m authoring this essay, I did one hundred pushups in a single set. Few men my age can claim this capability.
Being a Liberal Arts major in college, I learned to love learning, especially absorbing fields of thought far removed from my career in marketing and advertising. I love to learn about biology, philosophy, cosmology, and geology. Since human behavior underpins my professional work, I’ve always had a keen interest in social psychology. So I set as my next benchmark of a good day to be the joy of learning something new, whether through books and magazine articles or through intelligent YouTube videos. Reading just a chapter in a book or watching an hour-long video could be sufficient.
One driving force in my life has been creativity. My second career (following the field that became unsatisfying to me) was in advertising. I appreciated the challenge of creating innovative ideas about how a product or service could become most appealing to consumers. I searched for the unifying “big concept.” I have also written six published books and dozens of short stories and essays. Candid photography has always inspired me since buying my first 35 mm, single-lens, reflex film camera. Capturing profound images of the world around us has been sustaining for decades.
So, whether I create advertising ideas, author essays, or take photos, a “really good day” needs to include an act of creativity. I seek “flipping nonbeing into being” as existential psychiatrist R.D. Laing brilliantly described the creative act.
Finally, I had an ingrained understanding that “it’s not all about me.” When we’re depressed and lonely as I was on my 25th birthday, it’s easy to become full of narcissism. It’s easy to become self-focused and ignore the travails of others. Self-centeredness could not rule my working definition of a “really great day.” Others always need me, whether they are friends or strangers. So my working definition must include a small or large act of charity, whether it’s helping a friend or giving monetary support to established charities.
Thus, half a century ago, my younger self arrived at a clear and simple four-part definition of what constitutes a really good day. The 12-to-16 waking hours of a really good include:
1) Physical fitness: engaging in aerobic and strength training.
2) Intellectual pursuits: learning something new in expansive fields of thought.
3) Creativity: bringing something concrete into the world through the arts.
4) Charity: giving time and resources to others who need help.
Achieving my four criteria for “a really good day” is not easy in a single day. Accomplishing each measure takes time and focus. But living within the context of these special days is like everything else in human existence: excellence demands commitment.
Sometimes I conclude a “really good day” without consciously setting and achieving these goals. Today, as I write this piece, is an example. This morning I did strength exercises while watching the breaking news on CNN. I then attended a Zoom conference call featuring experts on the subject of aging with purpose, thus my intellectual stimulation for the day. Writing is another act of creativity defining this day. And later, I will be helping a neighbor receive outpatient surgery by driving him to and from the hospital. A small act of charity for me, but a major help to him.
When I crawl into bed tonight, I can reflect on my day knowing that I achieved my criteria and can allow this day to pass into history as a “really good day.”
Some days are more momentous than others when one of my criteria rockets to the top of my list of achievements. Sometimes it’s physical such as when I walk 20,000 steps in a single day. Sometimes it’s intellectual such as when I become immersed in a brilliant book by Neil deGrasse Tyson, the nation’s foremost astrophysicist. Sometimes it’s a creative act such as when I sit in front of a laptop and write 2,000 words in four hours, my fingers flying over the keyboard. And, sometimes it’s charitable giving such as when I functioned as an organizational board member to help recognize the public safety achievements of superior state troopers.
When strictly adhering to my four criteria and expecting more of myself, some days never measure up. I have not failed on these days of falling short. A really good day can still happen during events out of my control. For example, my friend Martin attended a concert to hear the band “Kansas” near his home in San Diego, and he became so moved by the experience that he purchased and sent us a box full of promotional gifts, from CDs to beverage mugs. That package became fodder for a really good day, especially because of the sentiments expressed by our friend.
My 25-year-old consciousness realized that I needed a definition of a really good day that could be fully in my control without surprises from others, such as gifts. Thus, even when I technically experience a difficult day, I can act and change the narrative for the day.
These insights and subsequent commitments have served me well across fifty years. When my next birthday rolls around, I know what quality of birthday I will have: a really good celebration of my birth.
