Introduction

No matter how much we pretend to know what is coming for us in life, the truth remains: life could take a drastic turn at any moment, throwing us off our tracks unexpectedly and confronting us with things we may not be prepared for.

This happens both on a small scale in everyday life as well as on a big scale where the consequences of these unexpected changes can be much more severe.

To me, it seems that this guaranteed uncertainty in life causes especially young people to be anxious about their lives and the uncertainty ahead of them.

But how does one preserve a level of stability in face of our sometimes more, sometimes less uncertain futures? And how does one build the confidence to step into this uncertainty without hesitation or fear?

School certainly never gave me the answers.

In my previous post about building a Toolbox for Life, I have already written about these same questions and the Toolbox for Life surely is the most fundamental system for ensuring a baseline level of stability, even in extreme times of drastic change or devastation.

This post does not compete with the Toolbox for Life. Instead, it is a sub-strategy that could be added to your Toolbox for Life for ensuring stability in everyday life and building a lifestyle and behavior baseline in a somewhat stable day to day.

This post covers...

1. 🏛️ What setting a baseline means
2. 📈 The benefits of setting a baseline
3. ✍️ An exemplary baseline
4. 🌍 Conclusion

What Setting a Baseline Means

Setting a baseline is fundamentally simply asking yourself the question: What do I want my standards in my everyday to be? This refers both to physical circumstances as well as your behavior and general headspace.

Additional questions that result from this are: What foundational activities and habits do I want to be a part of my everyday life? What do I want my baseline behavior to be like? What are baseline expectations I have both of the quality of my life physically and mentally and of my own behavior both referring to actions but also reactions to things happening around me.

Setting a baseline means having answers to these questions, being aware of them throughout the day and having an idea of how this baseline can be met practically.

The Benefits of Setting a Baseline

Personally, I believe setting and clearly defining a baseline in life is really important for two reasons.

The first reason is that having a baseline is like a safety net which I know I can always refer back to should things get out of hand. Knowing that if I hold myself accountable to this baseline and if I prioritize meeting it, I can be pretty certain things are at least going to be ok and are probably even going to be pretty good, it allows me to be confident that whatever tomorrow throws at me will not cause me to crumble completely.

The second benefit of having a baseline is that making it a habit and just the standard to live a pretty balanced life, makes it easier to actually live that life. This is of course just a mindset aspect, but by not overly glorifying a balanced life, it seems much easier to make it a reality, as it feels like less of a challenge - it's just the standard.

An exemplary baseline

The following is how I would roughly define my own baseline. As time has passed, some new points have been added, others removed, others changed.

Just like myself, my baseline changes as I reorient myself in different phases and as I refine my understanding of what is important to me and what isn't.

This list is just to give an example of what a clearly defined baseline could look like, not what it should look like. Obviously though, it would pointless to define a baseline that harms you.

🛏️ Points related to physical circumstances:

• 😴 Sleeping 8 Hours every day
• 🗄️ Having a tidy room 90% of the time
• 🫧 Cleaning my room/bathroom properly once a week
• 👕 Wearing fresh clothes every day
• 🪥 Following my 4-step tooth brushing routine morning & evening
• 🧼 Following my 4-step skin-care routine morning & evening
• ❄️ Taking a cold shower every day
• 🛏️ Changing my pillow case every night
• 💧 Drinking at least 3 Liters of water every day
• 🥵 Working out and properly sweating at least three times a week
• ⏰ not going to bed later than midnight with few exceptions
• 🥦 eating as clean as possible (whole separate topic itself)

🧠 Points related to behavior and thoughts:

• 💚 Prioritizing my health with few exceptions and being strict with it
• ✋ Saying no to things I am not interested in
• 🗣️ Trying to avoid direct lies
• 📝 Doing my best to only focus on my own tasks & responsibilities
• 👨‍⚖️ Taking full responsibility for my actions
• 🧘🏼‍♂️ Trying to not let circumstances I can't control disrupt me
• 👀 When I look at people, saying "bless you" to them in my head and avoiding pointless judgement
• 👔 behaving as professionally as possible
• 🐉 facing problems or fears directly without unnecessary hesitation

Conclusion

Ensuring stability in an uncertain world is a challenge and unfortunately school does not teach how to prepare for this uncertain landscape called life.

Setting a baseline is one of the strategies to try to ensure such a baseline stability in life by providing a set of action and thought recommendations to help us feel and act our best in everyday life so we are as prepared as possible for unexpected difficulties to show up.