Moving the Needle: Get Clear, Get Free, and Get Going in Your Career, Business, and Life!

Chapter 6Getting Clear by Creating Your Ideal Day and Ideal Life

The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours—it is an amazing journey—and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.

—BOB MOAWAD, coauthor of The Secret of the Slight Edge: How to Get Out of Your Own Way

Back in 2000, our family embarked on a midwinter getaway to Mexico's Playa del Carmen, located on the Yucatan peninsula 40 miles south of Cancun. It was an ideal vacation and gave me a unique opportunity to reflect on where I had been in life and where I was going.

A friend had recommended that I read a book by Bob Buford titled Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance. I dove into Halftime while I relaxed on the warm sands of Playa del Carmen's tropical beach and the kids frolicked in the water.

Buford's insights struck a chord with me. From his perspective as a successful cable TV pioneer and venture philanthropist, Buford wrote that your forties and fifties—the midlife years—are a great time to pause and consider how to make the transition to living the ideal life.¹

Buford outlined several exercises in the book, starting with examining where you think you are in life and where you want to be. I was supposed to take my time doing this—maybe a few ...