Live Your Best Life at Calamigos
I think we can all agree that we want to live the best life we possibly can. Acknowledging this, we often sit passively and allow the world around us to determine our lives. I have been guilty of this over and over again, and everytime I have to laugh at myself. I know improving my life takes action, and I know the habits I have that make life harder. Yet I still sometimes fall into the trap of passivity and other poor practices. Because I am an expert on these issues, having lived through them time after time, I am going to share with you the habits I formed to cultivate excellence in every aspect of my life. Hopefully they can help you on your journey to your best life while living at Calamigos and anywhere else.
1. Wake up with the sun
The best and most difficult habit I formed while living at Calamigos was waking up with the sun each morning. The Aspen House was a blessing to me while forming this habit because of the floor-to-ceiling windows in every bedroom. I am a huge fan of sleeping and do not enjoy the process of waking up. But I do enjoy being awake, especially in the morning. There is a peace and stillness in the morning that does not show up at any other time of day. Everything is quiet as the sky and the trees and the wildlife all start to wake up with you.
Waking up early doesn’t just give you more hours in the day. Being awake around 6 or 7am helps prevent grogginess in morning classes. We are all paying a hefty sum to go to Pepperdine, so getting everything we can out of each class is essential. Getting accustomed to an earlier morning did take some practice, but soon my internal clock shifted and by the time the sun was peeking over the trees, my body was already waking me up, without the help of my alarm clock. Now, I am able to get up, do my morning routine, be active, and do some reading or reflection or even finish my homework before most of my housemates are awake. This allows more free time during the day to spend with my friends instead of having to work every time I want to do something fun. I highly suggest challenging yourself to rise with the sun for a few weeks, and just see how it improves each day for you.
If you cannot commit to waking up with the sun, at the very least, don’t sleep the entire day away. I always felt more tired after sleeping in for a long time than if I had awakened much earlier. This also steals time from your day when you could be getting important work done or spending time with people you love.
Summary: DO wake up early or DON’T sleep the day away!
2. Separate phone from meals
This habit was easier to form, and I immediately saw differences in my day because of it.
Whether I am eating a meal with people or by myself, I leave my phone in another room so that I can be present and eat mindfully. I found that when I had my phone with me at meals, I took much longer to eat, I would not enjoy them as fully, and sometimes I would accidentally ignore the friends I was eating with.
The longer I keep this practice going, the more I love it. Every meal tastes better, every conversation flows more smoothly, and I never once miss my phone. I think this has been great for my physical and mental health. By staying mindful, I can listen to my body to know when I am full versus still hungry, which keeps me from eating too much or too little for each meal. Also, having three built-in breaks from my phone a day has been especially helpful during COVID season, since being on my phone for long periods of time is so much easier than normal. This way, when I get to scrolling through Instagram or playing too many games, I have to take time away from my phone at some point to go eat. There are really no negatives to this habit. Give it a try!
Maybe committing to having every single meal phoneless sounds daunting to you. That’s okay! I would encourage you to try it out starting with just one meal, or maybe with snacks. Find a way to get away from that phone. If eating without your phone is just too big of a challenge, then at least take a five minute break from the screen for every 30 minutes of scrolling. This will have major benefits for your eyes, your posture, and many other aspects of your physical health.
Summary: DO eat meals away from your phone or DON’T scroll more than 30 minutes without a break!
3.Find a balance between here and gone
While Calamigos is beautiful and the Aspen house is comfortable, finding somewhere else to spend time is a necessity. At the same time, spending all your time away is not a great way to make a house feel like a home. Finding balance between being around the ranch and being away from it is really important but can be difficult to figure out.
In order to find this balance, I made sure to get off the grounds at Calamigos for a couple hours at least three days a week. Sometimes this meant going to the beach or on a hike, and sometimes it meant going to work or grocery shopping. Either way, I was ensuring that I was not spending all my time in the same place. This helped me establish some other good habits, like reading my Bible on the beach on some mornings and journaling more regularly when I would go sit outside at a coffee shop.
For weekends, it would have been easy to travel every single one, but I tried to only leave for the whole weekend about twice a month. By staying at Calamigos on some weekends, I grew much closer with my housemates, and the Aspen House started feeling more like a home. At the same time, sometimes getting away for a weekend is just what you need to reset and to take a little break from life, so I made sure not to be home too often on the weekends either.
This habit is more individualized because some people are homebodies, while others need more time out in the world. Introverts and extroverts will probably handle this differently as well, but I still think everyone should work on finding their perfect balance of home and away. If getting away from Calamigos as a whole is too difficult (maybe you don’t have a car), at least change around the spots where you spend your time. One idea would be to have a different place for attending class, a different one for doing homework, etc. Just find a way to get a change of scenery every once in a while.
DO spend time at home and away or DON’T confine yourself to one space!
4. Work for your friends
No, I do not mean that your friends should be your boss. What I mean here is that relationships take effort. Forgetting to put this effort into friendships is a good way to lose all the close relationships you once had, even if you and the friend have never had a single fight.
There are two ways this can show up at Calamigos:
First, because you are likely living with some of your close friends, it will be easy to settle into a routine with each other and lose the intention to continue deepening the friendships. After a few months of living together, my roommate and I realized we hadn’t hung out just the two of us in several months. We quickly planned a beach dinner just to catch up and make sure we were putting time into each other.
The second possibility is that you find yourself in a bubble. There are only so many students who can fit into the spaces here at Calamigos, so chances are, some of your friends will be a little bit farther away. Whether that means they are 15 minutes away at Avalon Calabasas or a 2000-mile drive to Pennsylvania because campus still isn’t open, they aren’t in your immediate space which makes it easier to neglect them because life at Calamigos is so exciting.
This habit is one that I am still working on and one that I hope to keep for the rest of my life. In order to maintain friendships with people near and far, establish a habit for reaching out to friends on a regular basis. For me, this meant texting either a friend from home or one who couldn’t come back to California once every week to catch up and at least let them know I was thinking about them. In the closer range, this showed up as specifically planning one-on-one hangouts with people that lived in my house or nearby also once a week. There were some weeks when this didn’t work out or when I forgot, but overall it has still improved my relationships.
If reaching out to so many people seems too difficult, maybe find one or two people to invest your time in during your time here. Whatever you do, just don’t become complacent in your relationships, because they will always take effort. This is such an easy way to cultivate a good community here at the ranch and to keep yourself connected outside of it!
DO work for your friends or DON’T become lazy in your friendships!
I say all of this from experience, having learned the hard way what to do and what not to do in order to live my best life here. I hope that you can learn from my mistakes rather than making them yourself. Make your own mistakes to learn from! Have fun growing here and take each lesson you learn to heart. I hope you begin to live your best life at Calamigos.