The Impeccable Life
No, not the perfect life.
In 5 years, you will arrive. The question is, where? Will you arrive at a designed destination, or an undesigned destination?
— Jim Rohn
I have been doing you a disservice. I have been wrong, and I am sorry. I hope you find it in your heart to forgive me. Here’s why.
The one thing that has been a recurring theme in my life, which has caused me to grow sporadically and also to share with you some of the things I have learned through my growth, is the community I belong to: Emprinte Readers Hub.
This is a community that has been responsible for more than 80% of the growth I have experienced in my life in the past three years, and even though I have mentioned this community in pockets, quietly and subtly across many newsletters, I am sorry I haven’t been very direct about it. I think that has been my way of protecting the place where I am being formed, no, the place where I am being transformed. Please feel free to explore Emprinte Readers Hub. But that’s not the focus of this newsletter.
There’s a reason why I decided to start this newsletter introducing you to the community is that, as I sat down to write this newsletter, every single subject, topic, and even idea worth sharing with you today, I could directly trace it to something we learned in the community, so, even though I will still be writing and sharing fish with you, because I do this for selfish reasons—my fulfilment, I thought it was best to show you where I catch the majority of my fish as well.
Since the beginning of this year, the focus has been on the inner life, on becoming the kind of person capable of achieving our aspirations. We learned about habits in January, read Atomic Habits, and even built a system to form new habits, which will bring us closer to becoming the person of our dreams.
We had learned the previous month from Jim Rohn that if we don’t change, nothing will change. For anything to change, we must change, and we have taken that seriously, built structures and systems that would make staying the same almost impossible. We want to be remembered as the ones who lived impeccable lives.
Now, ‘impeccable’ here doesn’t mean perfect. It means striving for perfection every single day, knowing fully well that it is a journey, like purpose, and the day we eventually achieve it is the day we are laid to rest. It means being impeccable with our speech, with our actions, our reactions, our habits, with our goals, even when no one else is watching.
Practicing impeccability is stamping your foot on the ground and deciding the kind of person you want to be, and then pausing in your tracks when you find yourself slipping into old habits, and retracing your steps. It is picking yourself back up when you eventually slip into those old habits, apologizing when you need to, and meaning every ounce of it, because it is not about anyone else. It is about you.
However, before I get ahead of myself, I’d better take a couple of steps back and explain exactly what I mean.
I like to think that we have different areas of life that culminate into one big whole. Our physical health, finances, mental health, careers, habits, productivity, our spiritual life, academics, and so on. Many experts have categorized it differently. Robin Sharma even split it into four: the Heartset, the Mindset, the Soulset, and the Healthset.
In all, regardless of how you choose to categorize it, for structure purposes, you can organize your life along these pockets, and when you do, you’ll find out that every single one of your goals, past, present, and future, falls into at least one or more of these categories.
Now, picking a category, setting a goal in that category, and choosing to go at it with the highest standards possible, that’s what it means to live impeccably. It is leaving no stone unturned. It is going at it until it is impossible to go at it anymore. It is saying that you will change something and actually do everything in your power to change it.
The impeccable life is the life that is fulfilled, and before long, achieves every conceivable thing. It is the life that picks a goal and decides to pursue that goal with the highest standards ever known.
We are currently reading the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, and it is no surprise that the first thing the author demands is to be impeccable with your Word. You must have heard time and again that your word is your bond, it is what shapes your environment and essentially transforms your life.
Being impeccable with your Word is as simple as refusing to say anything untrue or unjust, anything that is capable of casting aspersions upon someone else. It is instead, forcefully choosing to use your word for only that which is true, just, and kind.
However, impeccability, as you have seen, goes beyond words. You can be impeccable with your environment, making it look exactly like where you want to live in the future. You can be impeccable with your actions and reactions, constantly demanding the highest standards of yourself. You can be impeccable with every single goal across different areas of your life, doing that which you have decided is the right thing to do, for yourself, and for every party concerned.
This goes beyond one religion or morality, far from it. This is about you, and the kind of life you want for yourself. And yes, you must have heard it again and again, but you can design the life that you want to see in 5 or 10 years. Jim Rohn will say, no matter what, you will arrive. The only question is, where?
If you spend your days designing where you want to arrive at, by setting agreements and decisions with yourself and going at them with the highest standards possible, doing the very best with what you have and know, you will arrive at a well-designed destination; a destination designed by you.
However, if you don’t spend your days designing intentionally and showing up impeccably in all areas of your life, you will, in fact, arrive at a destination you didn’t design, living in a country you don’t want to live in, working a job you hate, married to a wife you never chose, driving a car you hate, and living a life you detest.
My only charge in this newsletter is for you to live impeccably. Allow impeccability permeate every single area of your life. Take pen to paper, design the life you want, break down that life into milestones, craft the goals to achieve within a given timeframe, and set action points that will get you that life, and then go at every single action point with the highest standards possible.
So that at the end of the day, the answer to that question would be, “I lived impeccably today. I pursued the highest standards, and today I got a step closer to the life I want for myself.” And then on days when you fall short, be impeccable about it. “Today, I didn’t make progress. I didn’t hold myself to the standards I set for myself. I will make up for it tomorrow by going twice as hard. I will live the impeccable life.”
You must now understand why I had to apologize at the beginning. This is just one tiny droplet of many things I have learned with Emprinte Readers Hub just this year alone, and I hope you find a community that does the same for you, a community that teaches you that a transformed life is facilitated by impeccability, and impeccability begins with truth.
To a life of impeccability,
Your Coach,
Abiola Okunsanya,
Handzinspired.
Thank you, sir! 👏🏾💯