I first heard of Marshall Goldsmith and the book The Earned Life in a podcast interview in The Knowledge Project (see Other resources) and liked a lot of his way of thinking. He mentioned a few books in the interview and when browsing I choose this one to give it a try.

Let’s now see more about the book The Earned Life.

This post is part of the series Learnings from books where my goal is to share what I learned from the book that I read. It is a mixture of review and summary with a bit of my opinion and point of view. But, as reviews, these learnings can say more about me than the book itself, so I trust that you the smart reader will take it with a grain of salt.

Learnings from The Earned Life - Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment

The book is good, some sections are better than others, but in general, it is a good read. It highlights the idea of living with purpose and measuring our life by the effort and actions that we take regardless of the outcome, as it can be affected by many variables.

What is an Earned Life?

The official definition by the book is:

We are living an earned life when the choices, risks, and effort we make in each moment align with an overarching purpose in our lives, regardless of the eventual outcome.

I struggled a bit with the idea of the Earned Life because the purpose part makes it tricky. Some people have a very clear purpose in their life, like being a good parent, making a difference, etc. While I like to make a difference, I still struggle with what is the purpose of my life.

The “Earned” means that we have to strive for it, that the “Earned Life” is not given to us freely, we have to fight for it, the book list three requirements of something truly earned:

  • “We make our best choice supported by the facts and the clarity of our goals”
  • “We accept the risk involved.”
  • “We put out maximum effort.”

I think the main message is that we have to be explicit and intentional about our lives, not just let it happen. But don’t expect a trophy at the end, the “reward of living an earned life is being engaged in the process of constantly earning such a life.”

The Every Breath Paradigm

This paradigm comes from the Buddhism concept of impermanence, the notion that the emotions, thoughts, and material possessions we hold now do not last. They can vanish in an instant - as brief as the time we need to take our next breath.

So each new breath, you are a new you, not the same person that you were a minute before. Everything that you have right now is a gift from the previous you, and you can do anything with it. It also means that whatever the previous you earned, was their merit, not yours. So you have to earn again, you have to earn your life at every breath.

The power of not having choices

This is not a new concept, I heard it a few times already, but it is a nice reminder that our brain has limited energy and every choice that we make takes a bit of it. Basic choices that don’t align with your goals use energy that could be used for something that is really important.

I started a few years ago automating and simplifying my choices as much as possible, this way I can focus on things that really matter and not spend a lot of time and energy on things that don’t make a difference.

Avoid regret, choose fulfillment

Regret in the words of Kathryn Schulz is “the emotion we experience when we think that our present situation could be better or happier if we had done something different in the past.”

According to the authors, regret is the polar opposite of fulfillment. The idea is to minimize regret, as it is not possible to eliminate it completely.

The Daily Questions

The most useful and practical thing that I got from the book was the daily questions. The daily questions try to fix the problem that most of us suffer that we have well-meaning intentions for changes, but our execution is usually poor. As the author says. “We are superior planners and inferior doers.”

What are the Daily Questions? They are a few questions that you pose to yourself when you want to change something in your life and you reply to them every day (that is where the daily part comes from). The most important part is that when answering then, you are not measuring the outcome, but the effort that you put toward it.

As the author says: “The key: Each question begins with “Did I do my best to ..” followed by a specific goal such as “Set clear goals?” and “Exercise?” and “Not waste energy on what you cannot change?””

A few examples are:

  • Did I do my best to exercise?
  • Did I do my best to be fully engaged?
  • Did I do my best to find meaning?
  • Did I do my best to be happy?

You can choose whatever you want to focus on.

When replying, you do it on a scale from 1 to 10 where one is the minimum effort and 10 is the maximum effort.

The power is that when you do this daily, you are remained of your goals and can measure them. At the end of the week, you can average the daily values and will see how much are you working or not on achieving what is important for you.

Favorite quotes

These are my 5 favorite quotes from the book.

“We are superior planners and inferior doers.”

“Live your own life, not someone else’s version of it.”

“The reward of living an earned life is being engaged in the process of constantly earning such a life.”

“In creating a great life for yourself, accept the fact that long-term achievement requires short-term sacrifice. But don’t go overboard on delayed gratification. Stop to enjoy the journey. Life is a perpetual marshmallow test, but there’s no medal for accumulating the most uneaten marshmallows. You might as well be hoarding regrets.”

“If you try your best, you have not failed, regardless of the result.”

Other resources

This section is extra and here I compliment the post with content from other sources that resonate with the book.

  • The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish Podcast Episode #142 Marshall Goldsmith: The Essentials Of Leadership: “…We discuss the surprising lessons he’s learned coaching some of the best CEOs in the world, where confidence comes from, common mistakes leaders make, why changing behavior is easier than changing perception, how to change others’ perceptions when you change your behavior, the three words that kill any conversation, the relationship between intensity and consistency, and so much more.”

These are my learnings from the book The Earned Life - Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment, written by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter. A special thanks to Vancouver Public Library (VPL) for allowing access to the book for free.

Happy reading!

Liked this post? Check out other posts part of the series Learnings from books where my goal is to share what I learned from the book that I read. It is a mixture of review and summary with a bit of my opinion and point of view