'Intuition to Action' Series - Life Metrics

Metrics for life?

"How do you measure your life?"         

Do you intend to measure your life?

If you answered yes, you are on the right bus. Let's get on and see what we want to explore today...

The good news is, there's no one set of metrics or the values to them that should dictate your own precious life in the making.

It's a default setting to follow the majority of what the society has unwittingly imposed an unscripted ways of measuring our self worth, successes, experiences, learnings, failures, joy, fulfillment, purpose, meaning, love (BTW, Love is NEVER romantic alone, we are lovers of the every pixel of the Universe - humanity, music, nature, animals, fellow humans, strangers who share a story/a sentiment and this list is limitless to be in LOVE) and more...

I took a few example areas for which metrics can be thought through for ourselves.

If we don't think of them, define them, customize them, we'd invariably lean into what the society has decided for each other and think that's some norm to comply with and meet the oversimplified / imaginary scale that will never show us the true self worth in the end.

So, how do we go about creating a dent and take the reins, reclaim the personal power and strength to define our own life metrics?        

1. Realizing that there are no standard life metrics that we need to subscribe to. Check ?
2. Identifying a set of key areas that matter the most to us for our life metrics. Check ?
3. Organizing - List them, Order them, prioritize them. Check ?

For me, the most important ones (not ordered here and not exhaustive either...)

Self worth ?; Family ?; Success ?; Relationship with money / fame ?; Challenges / Battles fought ?; Relationship with the world ?; Feedback ingestion ?; Quality of your expressions ?; Skills, talents, Crafts and uniqueness ?; Emotional and social intelligence ?; Humanity, kindness, compassion for fellow others ?; inner locus of control ?; self-awareness ?; Ability to understand others' viewpoints and miseries ?; Values and Principles ?; Learnings and perspective building ?, Failures ?; Value creation ?; Joy ?; Purpose ?; Love ?        

4. Defining each ordered metric area. Note: There's no objective definition that fits all of us. It's important to define what each of those mean to you, how do you see yourself in each of those, how does the world perceive / perception deviation from your truth of existence, what makes you feel good about the metric area, what specific tangible, intangible (thought structures, perspective building, mental fortitude, discipline etc.,) you can think of.

5. Building each metric slowly, steadily, incrementally, atomically, logically, methodically, practically, realistically with careful execution. Note: YOU are not on others' timeline and schedule to meet their definition of you or the idea of you. QUIT this immediately. YOU are on your own timeline.

6. Practicing each area per your definition, rigor you want to bring on each of the areas...

7. Refining each area on a daily basis.

It may seem like a lot of work, but much of it is mental work, organically building who you are, being gentle with yourself as on date, ability to shut down the evil forces charging at you during storms, the ugliness of others' opinions to surpass the dark moment etc.,

The above methodical steps don't take time actually. It's all mental and are intrinsic to human intelligence. We are only giving a structure to make it all palatable for more confident approach to making yourself the CENTER to rebalance at any given point in time.

They only need good mental modeling, clarity of thought, take one thing at a time, don't overwhelm with all this as a one-shot exercise or a project to deliver to. yourself, but grow naturally into it and remind yourself there's a method and elemental way to live life very vibrant to bring bountiful joy and jubilance no matter what happens on the outside.

Example metrics in other areas to give a perspective difference:

1. I could complete a 10,000 steps walk every day. This is a daily goal and metric to check off ? But over time, I measure the rigor, in what amount of time, I complete the work, this gives you rigor ? Whether we want to improve it or not OR simply being able to walk on the worst possible day, is a choice I make. And on a given day, it might be hard to even get out of the bed, walking 10K steps that day is a HUGE win, not so much of the rigor.
2. Living a longer, healthier life is a metric. How well I want to live, how purposefully, how honestly I presented myself, how many lessons I learned are good sub-components of this metric - HOW LONG so far ? And then the rigor is, if I'm able to transform myself into a much better version than I was 3.5 years ago and took the steepest learning curve of my life, I see myself as a champion who not only survived, thrived and inspired others.

With the above, I hope you are able to relate and go about creating a set of mental models using this framework as it applies to your life, monitor, track and measure periodically and make adjustments as you see them fit.

Don't take them all at once.

Don't set overambitious goals and suspend it altogether. Doing something simple and little is highly rewarding and needed.

Don't beat yourself up. Be gentle but steadfast, self-disciplined with convictions to your own goals.

Don't compare yourself with others. It's not wise to track your uniqueness against someone who may not be able to live even for a day in your life parameters. Your strength should never be compared, swapped or even thrown as a challenge for others.

The beauty is, YOU can see the difference in yourself when you bring this framework in some form or shape. (consciously or letting it flow as it goes).

The beast is, evil and negative forces constantly trying to meddle, muddle, challenge to bring insecurity, fear, anger, lowering confidence by forming evil clusters for no good reason. OR it could be a your own mind in self-sabotage mode. STAY away from this kind of groups and this kind of mindset consciously. They will fade out and fall out on their own in time.

DIY exercise for you:

1. Have you been measuring your life in any areas that matter to you the most? And if so, are you satisfied with your progress?
2. What elements, lifestyle habits, disciplines have contributed the most to your transformative success? Can you repeat the same in other areas slowly towards a high gear qualitative life for yourself?
3. Did you observe how your good life / self-improved version automatically created positive ripple effects in the world around you? If so, can you take a pause, recognize and celebrate all your accomplishments, small and big wins and amplify your JOY factors?

Hope you found my frameworks and perspectives insightful enough.

Thoughts? Questions? Drop them in the comments, we'll explore.

About the Author:

I’m Veda Konduru, a former AI tech founder, data scientist, technology product architect with an academic excellence in science and technology with an overall 20+ years of subject domain career experience..

Inspired by some events in my life, I set myself off on a quest for exploring the role of natural intelligence, the human mind’s underpinnings, in the age of AI, and made significant strides in the past few years and I’m here to help others on a similar journey.

In short, An artificial intelligence architect NOW turned into The Mind Explorer.