Are You Living Life Upside Down?

PGAL has taken me on a journey. I used to think being pretty good at life came from adhering to a scattered collection of good ideas, and that it was, in the end, not something you could really put your finger on. I have been shown otherwise. Through conducting interviews for this site, and through talking with people I admire, I began to realize what being PGAL was all about. You know what? There is a definition. I was wrong.

I’ll never forget when someone asked me if being Pretty Good At Life meant making a lot of money.  It really threw me off (and upset me) that this was the first conclusion a person would come to after hearing the phrase, “Pretty Good At Life,”  but isn’t that how society tells us to think?

I decided that I wanted to discover what it meant to be good at life.  I decided to look for commonalities in the people that seemed to me to be awesome, people I wanted to be like, people that everyone loved for that right reasons.  Even now, after all this time, the question still remained, why do some people seem to do life better than others?   Did they receive some sort of revelation?  No. They made a decision.  It’s not a revelation; it’s a revolution.

The revolution will be in our hearts

It finally dawned on me that the formula for PGAL was brilliantly simple.  Being good at life is simply about living life upside down.  Every PGAL story told so far is one of someone living in a manner that society does not understand, doing the opposite of what human nature tells us to do, and reaping untold rewards for it.  The stories featured on PGAL are inspiring because we all know how difficult living in this manner is. We need to understand that when we succeed, we push the world a little more towards a heavenly state.  As hard as it is to commit to daily changes, we need to begin to do the hard work to turn ourselves upside down.   We are all part of the revolution.

Join the revolution

The world is already upside down.   You just have to open your eyes and see it.   We all want to make right the wrongs of the world, but we have to start with ourselves.  We have to address our own hearts first.

The formula is simple, but as in all deep truth, the actual work to realize the formula is much harder, but worth it.  It takes wisdom, honesty, and community.  What is PGAL’s contribution to living life upside down?  PGAL will celebrate the following:

1. Giving vs. getting
2. Creating vs. consuming
3. Loving vs. hating
4. Forgiving vs. not forgiving
5. Thankfulness vs. ungratefulness
6. Selflessness vs. selfishness
7. Community vs. individualism
8. Courage vs. fear

Logically speaking, what other way to live is there? Hating?  Conforming to the status quo?  Isolating individualism?  Exploiting others? Endless consumption?

Living life upside down may be hard, even downright painful at first, but infinitely better than the world you create for yourself living right side up. Live life upside down.  I challenge you.  I challenge myself.  I don’t know the future, but I think it is going to be an adventure.  I can’t wait.