How to Create a Life Well-Lived

by Andrew Wood

Whatever your age, in this book I will challenge you to re-evaluate your life for the better. To ask yourself deeper more powerful questions about how you spend your time on earth. To think clearly about how you prioritize the things in life that are most important to you. To make changes and take actions that will enhance your experience, friendships and general enjoyment of life. To live with a passion, you might have forgot is even there...Do you feel you are you getting the most from your life, maximizing every single day?Are you passionate about your daily work or activities? Do you travel frequently and see many of the places you dreamed of seeing in the world? Do you feel time is running out too quickly on your goals or bucket list? Do you feel trapped in a situation that's holding you back? Would you like to ask better questions, take stronger actions and add more meaning, experience and color to your life? "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did so. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. "Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." - Mark TwainFour of My Close Friends Never Saw Their 50th Birthday's I was lucky in a strange sort of way in that one of my best friends died when I was in my early 30's. He was a world-class athlete and only 42 years old. It quickly brought home to me how fickle life can be at an age when few people think of death. Most of us pretty much take our lives and our health for granted until we get ill or someone close to us dies. Since Dave's death 30 years ago three more of my good friends one man and two ladies have also died of various forms of cancer before, they were 50. Randy, Trish and Donna all had a whole lot of life still in them. Only Randy smoked, the rest had a healthy lifestyle and just got a bad draw in the gene pool. There is not much you can do about that except get constant check-ups and try and nip it in the bud. Even when the prognosis was fatal none of them expected to die. Two were convinced their faith in God would save them, the other that natural healing could do the job. All were making big plans for their future "when they got better." The future never came. Donna never got to see Hawaii, although we practically begged her to go, even offering frequent flyer miles and hotels to make it easy. Too many great people die with the life still in them. While there is little, we can do with the winds of fate we can make sure we get more joy, experience and adventure in our lives. As Jon Bon Jovi so eloquently said. "I don't want to live forever I just want to live while I'm alive!" Creating Your New Life BlueprintYou are neither too young or too old to start living a more fulfilling life. Go back through the 50 questions from chapter four and review them. Answer the hard ones with zero based thinking and re-evaluate how you will move forward. Shun the idea of living a balanced life and go all in to the key things that you love with passion. Start checking off that bucket list, take more chances and most of all take action towards creating a life truly well lived. Your life! ONE THING I PROMISE...By the end of this book you will not look at your life the same way again...While the book is packed with stimulating ideas, it's an easy read with no chapter longer than 3 pages. To back up my point of view, I have dug deep into the biographies of some very accomplished people and quote them at the start of each chapter. I have added their pictures as well to give addition meaning to them and provide additional stimulation to you.

344 pages, Paperback

Published July 11, 2019

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Andrew Wood was born in Oxford, England, and grew up in the midland county of Shropshire. He immigrated to the United States in 1980 to pursue a career as a professional golfer. Unfortunately lack of talent held him back, and he accidentally found himself running a small karate school in Southern California. After struggling to survive for eighteen months as a small business owner, he decided to focus all his attention on marketing. This focus soon paid off, and he quickly increased his income to six figures while still in his twenties.

His initial interest in marketing turned into a passion, and he quickly turned the single school into a national franchise of over four hundred units. After selling out of the karate business in the late ’90s, he moved to Florida, where he founded Legendary Marketing, a business designed to combine his passion for golf and travel with his marketing expertise.

Author of over forty sales, marketing, and personal-development books, including Million Dollar Laptop, Legendary Advice, Making Your Business the One They Choose, Cunningly Clever Marketing, Selling Out Sell Everyone, Cunningly Clever Entrepreneur, The Golf Marketing Bible, and many more, Wood is considered the world’s leading expert in golf, resort, and real estate marketing.

Reviews

[Maria Morozova · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was by far the best self-help book I've read in a long time. It is divided into 2-3 page chapters, each focusing on a different area of life. The ones that stood out to me were about the importance of traveling, reading, taking time to think during the day, getting your finances in order, and being willing to pay for the experience of people who are further ahead than you (e.g. business consultancy, personal therapy, professional advisory, coaches). Here are some quotes that resonated with me the most:

The more you know, the more you can appreciate and enjoy music, art, history, language, wine and many other things that make life more enjoyable.

Never be afraid of paying big money to get the best possible advice as quickly as possible.

Increase the amount you read by filling your down time with learning time.

The average person spends more time thinking about what to have for dinner or what to watch on TV than what to do with the rest of their life.

You become what you think about.

Look at money as at energy credits. Money simply allows you to do more of the things you like and pay others to do many of the things you don't like.