Who Am I?

My name is James. I've spent the last 20 years helping people improve their lives in one way or another. I've been a social worker, a campus mentor, an adjunct professor, and a therapist. I currently make my living as a life coach and writer. I teach classes about dealing with anxiety and how to meditate.

What Is This?

The Simple Ways to Have a Good Life Club is, at the minimum, a monthly newsletter that focuses on exactly what the title implies: a simple way to have a good life.

Along with the newsletter, I also write about journaling, gratitude practices, creating and maintaining routines, and just about anything else people ask me to write about, so long as it is genuinely a simple way to have a good life.

Why Did I Start This?

In all my years in the helping professions, it always struck me how so many of the most important things we can do to enjoy our lives are simple and doable. We like to complicate things because it makes us feel smart (and gives shady influencers something to sell you), but these things rarely improve our lives in significant ways. I like sharing those simple things that change lives.

Apart from this, counseling and coaching have become more and more expensive while also becoming more and more difficult to get started with due to professionals being overbooked. I did not create this to take the place of counseling or coaching, but I wanted to create an alternative that offers simple, safe things that we can all do to improve our lives, the vast majority of which will not cost you anything beyond time and energy.

What Do You Get?

Like I said, for $7 a month, you will get the Simple Ways to Have a Good Life newsletter. Each newsletter dives into a simple way to have a good life with a way to practice it and an example of how this thing can improve your life. The newsletter also includes journal prompts to help bring these practices into your life in a concrete way and ends with a reminder that you will die someday because there aren't many things that are more important to keep in front of us.

I've written and sent this newsletter out to my mailing list for four or five years now, but I wanted a place where I could consolidate all the things I want to write about in one place. I'm excited to add more things to the Simple Ways to Have a Good Life Club as ideas come to me and as people tell me what they would like to hear more about.

What If I Don’t Want to Give You $7?

That's cool. I understand it. I am in the process of archiving old newsletters here on SubStack, and those are free. I also have a podcast, resource library, and blog that are all available for free on my website. I think you could use those resources and improve your life without ever paying me a dime, and I'd love to see you do that.

Subscribe to Simple Ways to Have a Good Life

It's all in the title. Straightforward, uncomplicated, and achievable ways to have a good life.

People

I've spent the last 20 years helping people get right with life. I share everything I've learned here.