If you didn’t know already, Live Your Best Life is Oprah’s tagline and ever since the discovery of the “Oprah Effect” Live Your Best Life is everywhere.

This is what Oprah Winfrey encourages all of us to do; especially women. And, today, Live Your Best Life is being shouted to us by so many different people it’s getting pretty hard to ignore the message.  And, honestly, why would you? That’s some pretty good advice.

Any marketer with some stripes on their arms will tell you that from a Marketing Point Of View getting to know Oprah is a MUST.  Understanding her brand, means understanding her.  And, after all, Oprah is at the “Heart of OWN”.

To me, it doesn’t seem right that her magazine says Live Your Best Life.  Especially with a Big letter O splashed across the magazine.  I think a much better tag line would be Live Your Optimal Life.

But, that’s just my opinion.

However, it did get me thinking about if there really is a difference between living your best life vs. living your optimal life.  After all, those two words are pretty much the same according to most thesauruses.

So I did some research.  And I found a very slight but significant detail distinguishing the two.  Optimal refers to ideal conditions that lead to a favorable outcome. However, ideal is unattainable in most instances, and this is why there is optimal that is the next best after ideal. So we talk about optimal conditions (aka BEST) and not ideal.

I wondered how Oprah, who struggled with her “physical” self for so long could be “in the zone” but then I learned that love of an activity can get you into the zone or flow state, and so can love of someone else, and/or love of an idea, or philosophy.

It’s the genuine concern for others that allows a hero to sacrifice his or her life for someone else. That kind of love leads to “ego loss” or the loss of a sense of self. When you cease to exist as a person, anxiety and doubt disappear and you become one with the situation. It is love of self, or self-concern, that destroys performance.

Optimal Thinking is the language of our best self. It empowers our highest self to take charge. We ask the best questions, obtain the best solutions, and make the most constructive decisions in every situation — and eliminate “if only..” from our lives!

In today’s competitive world, many positive thinkers still think in mediocre terms and settle for second best. Whenever you think suboptimally, it costs you time, energy, joy and money. You function at your peak when you think in optimal terms. Optimal aka. Ideal Thinking — not positive thinking — is the mental basis of peak performance.

Reading books that promise unrealistic results is a waste of time. We are all searching for a better lifestyle and we want to believe that the outcome we seek from a given publication is possible.

So what does it take to create The Optimal Life? It starts with a belief that things can be better and that you have the innate power to make things better, no matter what it takes. It takes an open mind, a genuine desire to change, a personal commitment to improve the quality of your life, a willingness to accept total responsibility for your current state of health, the ability to take action, and the discipline to stick with it . . . even in the face of adversity.

All the information in the world will not heal you from your current illness, keep you healthy, or prevent you from developing some disease. It takes action. The road to optimal health and healing is an experiential and uniquely personal journey of self-discovery.

Live and Learn. We all Do.

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