How Can You Measure the Quality of Your Life?
Do you sometimes wonder how well you are living? I want to give you the two metrics that I use to gauge the quality of my life. I call them first floor and second floor living.
Most people when they ask themselves “have I lived a good life?” look at their lives with the first floor in view. The first floor is performance-based: income level, savings, assets, freedom to travel, etc. To most people happiness is tethered to a dollar amount, an integer.
There is however something real that I would like to call the second floor. The second floor is unrelated to the first story. The second story is life lived in the reality of God in friendship. Jesus spoke of upper floor living. “And this is the way to have eternal life (aka “the good life”)—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth.” (John 17:2 NLT). Jesus is actually saying to us that an abundant life is a life lived in personally knowing God as Father. Here the metric in determining whether we have lived a good life how we have lived with him (faith) and what we have done with the resources he has entrusted to us (faithfulness).
Recently I had a conversation with a very wealthy, non-collage graduate, thirty-six-year-old man. I asked him what he thought the good life was all about. His answer? To travel the world on his boat. This guy has already hit it big in the first-story metric. He has tons of money, a beautiful girl friend, great health, even a 36-foot boat. I said to him that my guess was that after two years of traveling the world he would suffer from boredom. Anything that a person is leaning heavily upon that can be lost, cannot truly be the good life. What is it that a person can lean in on that cannot be lost? God.
Upper story living is not about us, but about the One who gave us our lives and the resources we have. Have I been trustworthy, faithful in stewarding what God has so abundantly given? Is so, we can say that we have lived a good life.
Do you enjoy being with the Father? Is he your source of joy and strength? If so, you live an extraordinary life, full of confidence and peace. Congratulations on second-story living.