Before you design your life, get your foundations right first

Photo by Suhyeon Choi (Unsplash)

Have you ever felt that you'd like to be or do something different with your life? Or that you're not living up to your full potential? And I don't mean career, money, or success. I mean that feeling that you could spend your days exactly as you like, but you don't, because you probably can't. Maybe your mornings and evenings don't look anything like the routine you keep planning. Maybe you don't see your friends or family often enough. Maybe your hobbies have become "things I used to do". Maybe you're so tired after work that you sit on the sofa, pick up your phone, and scroll, scroll, scroll.

If that isn't the most common complaint on the planet, I don't know what is. A perfect life doesn't exist, but we can still make it a little better with each decision we make and each habit we start.

For me, the first step is clarity. We need to know what life we actually want to lead. The feeling has to come from within, rather than from someone else's highlights. What actually gives us joy, peace, meaning, and fulfilment? People have different ideas of what a good life looks like, but Self-Determination Theory suggests we all share three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. How you meet them is a different puzzle for each of us.

That clarity doesn't come easily. We're bombarded with ideas, suggestions and mood boards that look inspiring but belong to somebody else. Trying on other people's lives can help us find our own eventually, but I think it's the long way round. We get there faster by doing some self-knowledge work first, then experimenting with ideas that actually fit our values and who we are.

But not everyone is ready for the deeper stuff straight away.

Everywhere is nowhere

Around 2,000 years ago, the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius with a warning that could have been written for anyone with fourteen interests: the person who is everywhere is nowhere. He was talking about reading (flitting between too many books, never settling into any), but it applies to lives too. Before you can spread out, you need somewhere steady to stand. And you’re hearing this from a person who has these fourteen interests, 3 potential careers, and several passion projects on the side…

The ancient philosophers had a word for that so-called steadiness - ataraxia. Freedom from inner disturbance. When Epicurus was writing to his student, he described the goal of a happy life as health of the body and a mind free from turmoil. Which, you’ll very soon see, is pretty much a short summary of this whole stage.

My understanding is that what the ancient philosophers described as a calm soul, modern researchers describe in terms of our stress response. Because when our foundations aren't stable, our nervous system is in distress, and that affects not only our wellbeing but our thinking, clarity, and decision-making. This is also why we don't have the headspace to do proper values work. We might work on a life vision, but we won't see it clearly. Or we'll make a decision that feels absolutely right in the moment and then want to change everything six weeks later.

So the trick is to spend a few weeks getting the foundations stable first, so you can actually think.

The six foundations

I've identified six foundations I think are worth stabilising before deeper life design work. To be clear, the list is mine, not a research-backed claim. But each foundation is backed by research, and spending a few weeks working on the ones that aren't stable right now might give you a much better base for the self-discovery and life design that come later.

1. Sleep

This one isn't optional. You need quality sleep. The National Sleep Foundation's evidence-based consensus is 7 to 9 hours for adults aged 26 to 64, although it varies from person to person, so pay attention to your own body.

Regularly sleeping less than that has been linked to worse emotional regulation, more impulsive decision-making, and weaker self-control, in ways that can be measured within days.

So if you regularly sleep less than 7 hours, this is probably the first thing I'd try to fix. Will you manage enough sleep every single night? Probably not. But you can design your life so it happens as often as possible.

2. Movement

A recent systematic review and network meta-analysis found that exercise meaningfully reduces depression, with effects in a similar range to some established treatments. Walking, jogging, yoga, strength training, mixed aerobic exercise and tai chi all worked. Dance had the largest effect, though.

Good news for some: you don't need a gym. Current guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity.

If you don't like rigorous anything (hello), find a form of movement you don't hate and work towards your 150 minutes. 🙂

3. Nature

A 2019 study of almost 20,000 adults in England found that people who spent at least 120 minutes a week in nature were significantly more likely to report good health and high wellbeing than those who spent none. Below 120 minutes, no notable effect. At or above it, it did the trick. And amazingly, it didn't matter whether people took the "dose" in one long walk or spread it across the week.

Two hours a week is two 60-minute walks, four half-hour outings, or one cosy afternoon outdoors. Doable for pretty much anyone, even if you can't be bothered to stick your nose outside to look at some grass. :) If you currently get less than this, try going out more and see what changes.

4. Diet

The SMILES trial, a randomised controlled trial testing whether improving diet could help adults with major depression, found that a modified Mediterranean-style diet led to significantly greater reductions in depressive symptoms over 12 weeks than a social-support control group. The effect was substantial, but the study was small, so I wouldn't take it as proof that changing your diet can cure depression.

In the trial, the diet included whole grains, vegetables, fruit, legumes, low-fat dairy, raw unsalted nuts, lean red meat, chicken, fish, eggs and olive oil, while sugary drinks, fried food, processed meat and sweets were limited.

Something I've noticed in my own life: when I'm properly absorbed in a project or a hobby, I couldn't care less about food for ages. If I've prepared healthy snacks or meals in advance, I eat them when hunger hits and carry on with whatever I was doing.

My theory is that when we're immersed in something fascinating or meaningful, eating well gets easier because we don't need food to provide as much reward or entertainment. There's research that leans this way: studies have found that boredom can increase snacking, with researchers suggesting that eating can be a way to escape the unpleasant feeling of monotony. I haven't found anything that tests my full theory, though. That might just mean nobody has studied it yet! In the meantime, test it yourself. If you're constantly reaching for delicious but unhealthy snacks, add more projects or activities that properly fascinate you and see whether your cravings change. If they do, do more of those things. 😅

A note on alcohol: the UK's Chief Medical Officers don’t recommend drinking more than 14 units a week, spread over three or more days, with several alcohol-free days. That's a low-risk guideline, not a promise that 14 units is safe for everyone. :)

The 2024 Lancet Commission estimated that addressing 14 modifiable risk factors, excessive drinking among them, could prevent or delay nearly half of dementia cases worldwide. So cutting back is more than just avoiding silly nights and horrible hangovers. It affects how your brain works now and later.

5. Financial stability

Who wouldn't like financial stability? Some people aren't massively bothered about it, but I've yet to meet one who'd turn it down.

Research found that financial scarcity takes up a surprising amount of mental bandwidth. People facing a substantial financial problem performed worse on cognitive tasks while thinking about it, and the effect was much smaller when the money worry wasn't pressing. In other words, when part of your brain is constantly working out how to pay a bill, there's less of it left for everything else, including thinking clearly about your future.

I won't tell you to stop worrying about money, don't worry. :) But you can probably guess what I'll suggest instead. Make your finances a little more predictable: know exactly what comes in, what goes out, what you owe, and how much you need each month for an OK life, and try to put something aside for darker days. Once money stops being a mystery, it should become less of a worry.

6. Positive social connection

Epicurus had a line about this too, passed on by Seneca: before you think about what you’ll eat and drink, think about who you’ll eat and drink with. Friendship was so central to his philosophy that he built a whole school around living and learning together - a small community of people practising his philosophy.

The modern research agrees. Canadian Social Connection Survey found that around 7 to 21 hours of social time a week may be an optimal range for reducing loneliness, with around 9 to 11 hours linked to lower emotional and social loneliness. What I found interesting is that social loneliness kept decreasing up to around 20 hours a week, while emotional loneliness could start increasing beyond that!

We're all different, of course. Some people need more social time, others feel fine with less. The point is that we all need some regular, meaningful connection, rather than assuming we'll be fine on our own forever.

Quality matters most. A study on friendship found that the lowest levels of loneliness, anxiety, and depression tended to go with having three to five close friends you can rely on. But this is not, of course, some magic number of friends you now need to go out and collect.

It might not sound urgent, but the stakes are high. A 2010 meta-analysis of 148 studies and more than 300,000 people found that people with stronger social relationships had a substantially higher likelihood of survival, an effect the authors compared to well-established risk factors such as smoking and alcohol!

So social connection belongs firmly in the "essential" category. Having people to laugh with, talk to, ask for help and simply spend time with is part of a healthy life. You just need to find the amount and rhythm that work for you.

One more foundation: stress, and the people you live with

All six foundations affect our stress, mood, energy and ability to regulate ourselves. But if you're doing them all and still can't switch off, direct stress management is the next thing to try: meditation, breathing exercises, mindfulness, therapy, or simply creating more distance between yourself and whatever is constantly stressing you out. Research suggests regular mindfulness and meditation can reduce stress and anxiety, and you don't even need hours of practice to feel a difference.

And there's one thing that can undermine everything above: your close relationships. If you live with someone who causes you constant distress, treat that as part of stabilising too. You can get all six foundations right, and a home life that makes you miserable every day will still win.

The Gottman research found that patterns of negative interaction, especially contempt, criticism and defensiveness, are strongly associated with relationships breaking down. Contempt (eye-rolling, sarcasm, mockery, sneering, dismissiveness) is the particularly nasty one. If it's a regular feature of a close relationship (or your work!), I wouldn't try to meditate my way around it. Either address it directly and try to fix it, or leave. It's very hard to work on your life while your soul is being eroded every day.

And if you're in a really bad place at the moment, for example, with depression, anxiety, or burnout, please get professional help. What's here is a drop in the ocean. Cognitive behavioural therapy, interpersonal therapy, ACT, behavioural activation and short-term psychodynamic therapy can all help.

The hard part

One Roman philosopher called Boethius once sat in a prison cell waiting to be executed. Just a few years earlier, he had been at the height of Roman public life: one of the most senior officials in Italy, wealthy, respected, surrounded by family and friends, and deeply immersed in scholarship. Then he was accused of treason and lost almost everything.

In that cell he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, which became one of the most influential books of the Middle Ages. In it, Philosophy visits him in the form of a woman and asks him to consider what he has really lost. Even if wealth, status, power, and reputation disappeared, there were things that couldn’t be taken away: his capacity to reason, his character, and how he chose to live.

I think there’s something useful in that when it comes to designing a life. We tend to spend a lot of time thinking about what we want to add to our lives (the work, the experiences, the achievements, the people, the adventures, etc). We spend much less time thinking about what we need to make solid first in order to pursue these things.

Stabilising your foundations can feel like the least exciting part of designing a life. It might mean going to bed earlier, getting your finances in order, taking care of your body, spending time with people you love, or simply going for a walk while everyone else seems to be doing some grand things. It can maybe even feel like you're standing still. But those same things become much more important when life gets wobbly. Boethius had almost everything external taken away from him, and the only things that remained were what he had built within himself.

When might you be ready for the actual life design work?

Set the expectation now: you won't be transformed in week one. You might even find this boring and want to skip it. But you can try it for 4 to 5 weeks and see what changes.

There's no magic moment when you suddenly become "ready", but you can treat the below as a check-in you can repeat. Track the foundations for a few weeks, then check whether:

• your sleep, movement, nature, diet, finances and social connections have been reasonably stable for at least three weeks in a row

• your mood is reasonably stable and you're noticing some improvement

• you can imagine your life six months from now without feeling flat or overwhelmed

• you're not in any of the crisis situations that need professional help

If most of these are a "yes", you probably have enough stability to go deeper.

If several are still a "no", that's OK. You don't have to pass this stage before you're allowed to work on your life.😅 You'll just get more out of the deeper work if you give yourself a bit more time here. People and lives are different, and some of us take longer to stabilise than others.

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