I had a recent assignment to connect with a couple of people to ask them a bit about their definition of “quality of life”. I know I’ve thrown the term around a lot in conversation, and with my clients. I don’t know that I’ve ever pondered it enough to define it, or define exactly what it means to me.
Of course the first thing I did, as I do anytime I’m looking for the answers to life’s questions...I Googled it.
Google says: qual.i.ty of life - The standard of health, comfort, and happiness experienced by an individual or group
“The standard” - Well, that makes it subjective, so the definition will be different for everyone.
Nature - important to me
Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office has even categorized things for us with quality of life indicators:
Income/Jobs
Housing Conditions
Health
Education
Environmental Quality
Personal Security
Civic Engagement
Good food - Also important to me
Work/Life Balance
Being the humans we are, we are always reassessing. One friend I spoke with made the observation that her quality of life indicators changed when moving to Bend. For instance, easy access to nature is an important quality of life indicator for her now.
We all have different standards and expectations. Those might change based on circumstances. For instance, the current pandemic. Supply chains are slow, jobs are hard to fill, some of us are drinking a bit more. There is a drop in expectations of packages arriving quickly, restaurants staying open, and being sober.
It all comes back to our values and what is most important to us. Accurately defining your values and staying true to what is most important to you (i.e. living according to your values) will always push you in the direction of a good quality of life. Not living in line with your true values? Your quality of life, and happiness, will suffer.
It won’t serve you to try to live your life according to what you think another values, or what some group approves of. I’ve struggled with that in the past. I’m sure many of us have. I hope that this spatter of words moves you to think of what’s most important to you, write it down in a list, and reference it often. Do a thing every day that fills your soul according to that list, and I imagine you’ll thrive instead of just survive. How lucky are we that we even have the capacity to ponder this.