Design is an area of study that includes knowledge on how to create solutions and facilitate things. In it, we learn what interfaces are. An interface is the part of a program that we interact with. These interfaces take care of the user experience and facilitating it. An interface is like a lamp switch. It is the part of the program (lights) that we interact with.
Interfaces are important because they define much of the experience users have, allowing us to have electric light in our homes without knowing how to produce it, how to get it to our homes, or even how to set up the entire electric system of our houses. We just flick a switch and, bang! Let there be light.
At the Elevate Your Best podcast we focus on talking about living an intentional life. How can we create a concrete vision for our future and intentionally manifest these experiences we wish to live in our reality? By applying the concept of interfaces we can better interact with hidden forces that influence our lives, shaping our reality. Through this understanding, we can better design our culture and find more authentic paths for ourselves.
It is like life is covered by interfaces we can choose to use consciously or ignore the fact that we interact with life through them. These interfaces are responsible for a lot of the experiences we live in life and the meaning we give to them. Being able to understand how we can improve on these interfaces through which we interact with reality can be a great asset to living an intentional life.
Invisible Forces In Life
The way we see things matters. It shapes our reality. There is a documentary on Netflix called Life In Colour with David Attenborough.
Among the many interesting things we learn watching this documentary is how tigers and their prey see colors, and how they are both mostly invisible to each other. The tiger is an invisible stalker after his invisible prey. They both survived by learning to interact somehow with these invisible forces through other means than their sight.
As humans, it might be good to ask ourselves: what are the invisible forces we are reacting to in life without knowing we do so reacting to them?
Much of our character development comes from our culturescape. These are beliefs and ideas that are accepted and seen as good practice by our peers and family. Some are ideas they have learned with culture without ever questioning. We live in an age of awakening where the question “why are things like this?” becomes ever more popular. This can create a sentiment of anxiety around finding one’s purpose and figuring out what our authentic self really is.
What is your culturescape?
During this whole process, we learn so much in our life from our:
- Education
- Social gatherings
- Working environment
- Religious organizations
- Clubs we join
- Events we participate in
One community may hosts all these activities. For many, our lives tend to have a professional career in the center, with other areas of it as satellites, gravitating around it.
We talk about tools like the LifeBook framework in the Elevate Your Best content. This is a tool to help us live an intentional life that focus in our careers and family areas, and to include at least 9 other areas of our lives. There is so much more to life than finding a career and achieving success in it to provide for our family. To learn how to better understand and reach progress in all these areas is where interfaces can help us.
Spirituality Is An Interface
Some of the options we have available for us can offer complete interfaces for life, like religions. We can find a whole program of values, purposes for our lives, and worthy causes to fight for. Religion has a huge cultural value in our society, and it evolved with the purpose of giving meaning to life. That is not a small task to accomplish.
There is a variety of religious beliefs around the world. Some of them are still very connected with their spiritual values and their power to give quality of life to their followers. Others have cultural knowledge passed on through generations, with mixes of real lessons and fictional tales to teach their culture.
When we start to identify with a religion, we decide to learn a whole set of values and commit to them. Depending on these values, this might greatly improve our quality of life. They usually come with centuries of common wisdom, yet depending on where we are in the world, we might also find abusive and intolerant values connected with religious beliefs and rituals.
Religions are like interfaces that facilitate our interaction with life in society. Depending on the things we wish to value in our lives, we might choose a different religion, or not choose one at all. We might learn from them all and put into practice what we believe to be fit for us. This path allows us to design our own life interface and establish our own values and how we wish to interact with life.
Culture Design
Just now we are starting to understand the real value culture has to society. Big companies are starting to design their own culture by publishing statements and values to the community and establishing parameters that will attract people that feel aligned with them.
As usual, we are doing in business what we neglect in society. It is necessary to design our culture and plan our life’s user interface. Thanks to tools we have available today like the 3MIQ, the LifeBook framework, Notion, and others, there are options. The average person can has access to tools to better understand themselves, discover their motivations, and set their goals in life. Learning to find their purpose and create a vision for their future is a step to our mission at Elevate Your Best: Live an intentional life.
Reprogramming Our Interface
At the Elevate Your Best we work to ensure that more people become aware of this. If a person is looking to improve their quality of life in any area of their lives, they need to find us. If a person is looking to live an intentional life, they need to find us. That is why we are here. As Life Vision Outfitters, we help you choose your path, provision you with the tools to get there, and act as a guide to ensure you arrive there. This all comes back to the Four Pillars:
- Preparation – Discover where you want to go, and what you will need to get there
- Commitment – Make a solid and clear statement to yourself and the world of where you are going
- Accountability – Track and check your progress on your way to that destination
- Celebration – Honoring the progress you have made towards that goal and extract the lessons
If you wish to hear our conversation on life’s user interfaces and how we can use this information in our lives, take a look at the Elevate Your Best Podcast #019.
At the Elevate Your Best we also work with the Lifebook framework. This framework is designed to help us as an interface to better plan and execute on our life vision. It opens us up to being actualized in all areas of life.
If you wish to know more about the LifeBook framework, contact us. You can reach us through our contact page or find us on LinkedIn.
