025 – Craig Ballantyne – Design Your Perfect Life
Author - The Perfect Day Formula
Craig Ballantyne is a man who simply wants you to have the perfect life. In his book, The Perfect Day Formula, Craig outlines a set of simple, practical steps to help you imagine, design and live the life that is perfect for you.
In this episode of the Team Guru Podcast he talks us through those steps, the principles they are based on and his philosophical approach. And he addresses the thing that he sees as the paradoxical truth about life:
Freedom = Structure.
Craig is a lively, genuine, passionate communicator. His advice is practical and his philosophies are benevolent.
If there is any part of your life that you long to improve, this is the episode for you.
Enjoy.
Lessons Learned
Here’s what I took from the episode:
Craig’s Mission
- Craig’s message is not about telling you to live life his way – it’s about helping you to work out who you are, what’s important to you and how you can design your perfect life
- Control your life by owning your day
- Craig’s work is a modern adaptation of Stoicism – a philosophy that is more than 2000 years old
- Comparing yourself and your life to others is the greatest source of unhappiness in the world today
- Know yourself and live life according to your principles
- Control what you can – cope with what you can’t – concentrate on what counts
- Before taking the steps of The Perfect Day Formula, Craig asks his readers to accept what seems, at first, as a glaring contradiction
Structure = Freedom
- Building structure into your life, your day, allows you to achieve the freedom you want – to give you the time to focus on what counts – family, friends, free time, health and hobbies
More Rules in My Life?
- Think of rules as an operating system for your life
- Most of us have rules – but they remain vague and ‘flexible’ unless we write them down, articulate and commit to them
- Having rules allows us to rely less on will-power
7 Rules You Need in Your Life
Tell the world about your rules – it will help you live by them. No one wants to be a hypocrite.
Create a specific rule that’s right for you around these 7 themes:
- Have a consistent wake up and bed time – this is the platform for taking control of your life.
- Have a health rule – perhaps about your diet or how often you exercise. Be specific.
- Be productive in the morning – get up 5 – 15 minutes earlier than you do right now. This will give you the opportunity to start your day ‘on the front foot’. Be proactive, rather than starting the day behind the eight ball, rushing, reacting, not able to think and plan.
- Focus on building your wealth/growing your career/increasing your professional knowledge – again, be specific. 15 sales calls before lunch. Write 1000 words before 10 o’clock…etc
- Be aware of what not to do – the traps in your life that you are likely to fall into that move you away from your true goals – e.g. I don’t check personal emails before 7 pm. I don’t Facebook open on a window on my computer
- Be social – for those who are too involved in their work it’s important to ‘come up for air’. To spend time with family and friends, to engage in hobbies and free time. Create specific rules such as: I don’t check work emails after 6 pm. I don’t work at all on Sundays.
- Be good – set in your code of conduct a rule about how you give back to the world
During the podcast interview Craig gives some wonderful examples of each of these rules – some great ideas that will help you put them into action in your life – allowing you to control your day and design your perfect life.
Just one of Craig’s many great articles on taking control of your life
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