Path Week 2: Go literal (Learn, Laugh, Love, Live)

Week 2 is literally a learning, laughing, loving, and living week for you!

The Philosophy for LYF provides a path to your better life. The path is broken into steps. Each step you take is an incremental improvement of where you were before. And each step you take builds off the previous steps to reinforce what you have changed.

A week is suggested for each step—long enough for you to meet the objective of each step, but short enough to keep you moving forward and gaining experience in each key concept.

This post provides more detail and a template for Week 2. If you have not started on the path to your better life, click here to start at Week 0.

Week 2 focuses on taking the four deeds of goodness (LRN, LAF, LUV, LIV) in their literal word associations and making a point to simply learn, laugh, love, and live every day. Direct these four actions inwards (to yourself), outwards (to others), or upwards (to elevations)—but never downwards. Applying these actions to your life will give you that next step into fully embracing and integrating the Philosophy for LYF framework into your life.

Use this second week to identify the many opportunities that exist around you to learn, laugh, love, and live and to do as many of them as you can. The only constraint: make sure that what you do aligns with the core values of goodness, open-mindedness, gratefulness, respectfulness, and courageousness.

At a minimum:

Learn something new every day that makes you a better person. It can be something that makes you a better worker, a better partner, a better friend, a better athlete, a better human being. Do not let a day go by where you did not learn something meaningful to you.
Laugh at least once a day. You can laugh at yourself. You can laugh with someone. Do not let a day go by without laughter.
Love someone or something and show it. It can be your family, your friends, your neighbors, your colleagues, or people who need your help. It can be a pet. Do not let a day go by without you expressing your love.
Live by doing your best. Do not go second-rate or mediocre. Make each day count, a day not just survived but lived.

Step 1. Before the end of each day, write down a brief summary of what you learned, what you laughed about, how you showed love, and what you did that you felt shows you “lived” (you can use your own definition of what that means.) Use the Week 2 – Go Literal template, one for each day. You may want to keep a notebook handy throughout the day and jot your actions down soon after they occur so you will not forget. It also helps keep the objective of this week in your mind. Do not let a day go by; at a minimum, write them down at the end of the day.

If at the end of the day you do not believe you have learned, laughed, loved, and lived, do three tasks:

First task: Reflect on what prevented you from learning, laughing, loving, and living. Did you spend too much time on activities that did not contribute to your well-being?
Second task: Reflect on the day and think about any missed opportunities to do these actions. Did you interact with someone you love, but not express love to him or her? Write down what you could do better tomorrow to make the opportunities more apparent to you.
Third task: Do something before you go to sleep for each action that you missed. Did not laugh today? Find a funny cartoon—look on your bookshelf, in a magazine, or online. Did not learn today? Read an informative article. Read a post on learnlaughlovelive.com.

Step 2. At the end of the week, review your notes. Do you see a pattern in what you did? Are all of these from a place of goodness?

A PDF version of the template may be downloaded by clicking here.