It’s looks different to us all.

It changes over time.

However I believe this one question can help you work out ‘what happens next’ in your life.

This might lead you to retirement or it might lead you to a chapter of your life which is your own unique version of ‘what happens next’. However, answering this one question will help you get closer to your ideal life more quickly than you normally would. I’m also going to give you a practical example of how I’ve used this question in my own life, talk about why you need to think about this question on a regular basis, and provide three practical tips to help you answer the question.

Firstly, let’s start with the question. Here it is…

“What does a “life well lived” practically look like for you today?”

It’s a big question. One that deserves some thought, but one that is designed to highlight the fact that your “life well lived” is unique, and will change. It also highlights the fact that all the evidence points to the fact that a “life well lived” is more about freedom of time than freedom of money, although clearly your financial wellbeing and economic circumstances will play a part in whatever that looks like for you.

I’ve use this technique to reassess my life, think about my time and realign my commitment to my physical, social and community wellbeing and I can categorically say my wellbeing is definitely higher because of it.

Now, I’m not ready for retirement any time yet. The fact that I enjoy work and get immense satisfaction from it means it still plays an important part in the right mix for me. However when I look at the other elements of my life, it has meant that I do a 4 day week, reducing my time working and more time allocated to spending time with family and friends, as well as looking after my physical wellbeing. However I also know that mix will change over time, which is why I believe it’s important to continue to ask yourself that question.

We’ve already talked about the fact that it’s a big question. However I promised I’d provide three practical tips to consider what a life well lived looks like for you…

The first one is to use our What Happens Next Framework.

This framework has been designed to help you think about specific areas of your life and examine whether you’d like to improve your wellbeing in each of these areas. So here’s the exercise I’d recommend you do…

Step 1 is to score yourself in each of these areas out of 5. The good news is we can help you with that. On whathappensnext.life we’ve got a great free quiz which gives you an indicative score in each of these areas.

Step 2 is to look at what you’d like these scores to be ideally. Whilst you might suggest that all of these areas should be ‘5 out of 5’ the reality is that you’re going to have aspects of wellbeing that today you care more about improving than others. So let’s focus on these.

Step 3 is to take incremental action towards improving these areas, focussing on how you spend your time in each of these areas.

For example, a few years ago, I realised that my social wellbeing was low. I’d lost connections with people I really liked because I wasn’t donating the right level of time and effort into maintaining these relationships. Knowing there’s a disconnect between your wellbeing in a specific area and what you’d like it to be allows you to do one thing. Take action.

Number two is to look at how you spend your time, and involves asking yourself three more questions…

“What’s your ideal day look like?”

“How would you practically fill your time in your ideal week?”

“What would your ideal year contain in terms of the things you want to do?”

Thinking about these questions allows you to do one thing. Create the time. Look at the upcoming year and putting the time in the diary now.

Again a practical example of how I do this, is I decided in 2025 I want to travel for a month around Asia with my family. That is in the diary today.

My experience is that often things you don’t commit the time to do become “shoulds” – I “should” do that but then time runs out…I want you to live a life well lived with more ‘musts’ in your life.

However, I appreciate that we need to consider the money. The reality is that where we are financially needs to be taken into account when we’re planning our ideal life. As a financial planner I know that money is the element which often holds us back.

It’s why I’ve done a bunch of videos on this subject, starting with this one, which talks about the one thing most people ignore when it comes to their financial plan they really need to consider – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fOL6I1hJmM