How Do You Define Quality of Life?

How do you define quality of life? For me, life is meant to be bountiful, creative, ecstatic, filled with joy and purpose. The quality of my life is determined by my mindset about what I do so I can tap into these things each and every day. Life is not meant to be about “just getting by” or “coping.”

Yet for millions of people, “just getting by” is all they know. They “just get by” with their jobs, their relationships, their health. In fact, these days, optimal health is becoming more of the exception rather than the rule in too many lives. Without optimal health, quality of life goes down, and when quality of life goes down, we are blocked from our greatest passions and our sources of creativity, the very things that make us feel alive and valuable.

Even more alarming is how too many doctors today define good health as the “absence of disease.” This kind of approach is similar to believing you are wealthy just because you have some money in the bank. Everyone knows that having money in the bank is not synonymous with wealth! You could have a dollar in the bank to qualify for this example, yet a dollar does not a millionaire make. Everyone also knows that being disease-free does not automatically put you in the high quality of life category, either.

Advertisements and magazines covers do an excellent job of showing us what an exceptional quality of life looks like: laughter, smiles, warm fuzzy feelings during the holidays, love, togetherness, fun, thin, healthy bodies, big houses, fancy cars, new clothes, smart children…the list goes on and on. Next time you visit the newsstand, take a look at what the magazine covers show. Bet you don’t see one cover that shows an overweight, unattractive person slouching and scowling or people sitting around on their butts zoned out in front of the television. That’s because those images are too familiar. We don’t want to be in line buying groceries and see reality staring back at us!

And yet…why are so many people dissatisfied with their lives or stuck in the same old rut day after day, year after year?

Perhaps it’s because these magazine covers and television ads stop at the surface and never take us deep into the marrow of our truest desires, the source of what we really want. Which is to wake up each morning and see the possibilities, opportunities, abundance, and exuberance that exist all around us. Which is to get out into the world and do things like build, create, transform. Which is to know for ourselves through self-validation that what we do matters, not because we are recognized for those things, or externally rewarded, but because we are happy for happiness sake.

These are the key elements at the center of a high quality of life. When we make a difference to others. When we are excited about what we do. When we fall asleep at night exhausted yet happy because we tapped into our passions and fulfilled our own dreams rather than someone else’s. I am not suggesting that it’s possible to avoid heartache, pain, tragedy…in order to appreciate the fullness of life we have to understand emptiness…but I am suggesting that having a high quality of life is a choice, one we each have the power within us to make each and every day.