You Mean Everything to Me.

Here’s looking at you, kid.

“You have also been extremely–make that miraculously–fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result — eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly — in you.”

-Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

Give yourself a pat on the back, because right now you are participating in something larger than yourself. You are experiencing a mind-to-mind transfer in the form of words.

No one else on earth is experiencing this the same way as you are. No one can think of your thoughts but you. No one has experienced what you have, in the way that you have. No one’s vocal tone is the same as yours.

You have completely unique fingerprints. Completely unique! How crazy is that! There are almost 8 billion people on Earth these days, and something about you is entirely unique.

This entire system is dependent on you. I dedicate it all to you.

Now let’s get down to business. People these days are disconnected. Distracted. Disoriented. Dis-con-tent. I started The Well-Lived Life because I wanted to try to change that juuuuust a little bit.

To try to tip the balance towards the good side, so that we can make small, snowball-rolling-down-a-hill perspective shifts that eventually lead to happier, more fulfilling lives.

Here’s the sad but honest truth:

Our modern world doesn’t want you to be happy. It wants to keep you shuffling around, outraged, depressed, and fearful.

Then it wants to sell you things to (temporarily) alleviate those fears and anxieties. Things that you need to keep buying, with your hard-earned cash.

I want you to be more content. I want you to live a happier, more fulfilling life. I would love nothing more than to influence as many people as possible to stop buying stupid crap they don’t need.

If we started saving more of our hard-earned dollars and investing them, it would be a perfect act of revenge against those who manufacture and advertise said stupid crap we don’t need.

Billions of dollars have been spent since we were kids trying to create out-of-control spending habits in us. Trying to set us up from a young age to grow up spending irresponsibly, living at our financial limits, saving nothing.

We can fight back with our money and our happiness. We can become more mindful of ourselves and our spending habits, together.

I started this newsletter because I looked around and saw that I was happier, more financially secure, and less debt-laden than my peers. I didn’t come from money and I wasn’t doing anything radical. Cheaper booze, not taking out loans for things I couldn’t afford, not living right at my financial limit.

Many people I’ve encountered have asked me:

“How are you so happy?”

“How do you have so much energy?”

“How do you save to go traveling for months at a time?”

And I tell them. Then they nod at me as if I’m some sort of mutant, say “I wish I could do that”, then return to their lifestyles.

This is why I put this together for you. I want you to be happier and healthier. I want you to make contentment, financial security, and laughter at this crazy world a way of life. I want you to punch advertising algorithms in the face.

I’ll be releasing a series of articles I’ve written on contentment and the good life. I don’t think they’re gospel. These are simply the things that I’ve learned in my own short, crazy, beautiful life. Come along for the ride!

I’m no one special. I’m not wealthy, I haven’t experienced runaway success in any field (yet), and I didn’t come from money. I worked blue-collar/bartending jobs to get the money to travel and go to school. Yet I’ve been to 20 countries as a backpacker, and I graduated school with no student debt. I have things to say, y’all.

Thanks for tuning in! I love you, I appreciate you, and as I said, I couldn’t do this without you. I hope you’ll stick around. I promise never to waste your time with spam.

Much love,

Aaron.