Living Life to the Nines

I’ve coined a new phrase and philosophy called “Living Life to the Nines.” Doesn’t that conjure up all sorts of positive connotations? We’ve all heard the phrase “dressed to the nines,” which means being dressed extraordinarily well. How about “cloud nine” – that blissfully happy place on top of the world?

“Living Life to the Nines” is a concept and a practice. It’s about taking hold of your life, setting goals and aiming for complete satisfaction in everything you do. Whether you already have written goals or not, this exercise can help you create and organize the measurable goals you know will impact your personal and professional success.

Managers of technology systems strive for something called the “5 nines,” which means they are up and running 99.999 percent of the time. Wouldn’t it be great if all areas of our lives worked as efficiently as that? Even if you end up at 99.987 percent happiness, that’s pretty darn great!

Businesses provide customer surveys that ask for honest opinions, rating satisfaction on a scale from one to ten (1-10). When they use the system as a powerful feedback tool, it helps them run more effectively. How would you operate if you always wanted to get a 9.0 or better?

This leads us to how to Live Life to the Nines. You start by rating yourself. Take a moment and rate your level of satisfaction in the following areas:

1. career and/or business
2. personal finances
3. health and fitness
4. intimate relationships/romance
5. family
6. friends
7. fun and recreation
8. your environment (home, office, car)
9. spirituality

Now set a goal in one, two or three areas to raise your score to 9 over the next 90 days, and set a reminder to revisit your list and see how you scored – periodically taking a “snapshot” rating and setting new goals, until you get ALL 9’s (or until it doesn’t matter what the score is, because all areas of your life are awesome!) Not only will this support a robust goal-setting and achievement structure for each area of your life, but you’ll find that as you buff up one area, other areas get uplifted almost automatically.

Aim for goals that are a stretch, but not completely out of reach, and share your goals with like-minded, ambitious people or someone who you know will help you achieve what you are truly capable of doing.

And let me know how it goes – I ‘d love to hear from you as you get your nines or help you as you go for it!