Don’t feel guilty if life for you is pretty good. Yes, the pandemic has left wreckage in its wake. And it is not done yet. While you sip comfortably from your glass of champagne living, others are forced to drink deeply from the poison pond of stagnant swill. There is a bit of survivor’s guilt among those who have weathered the storm when their neighbors have been washed away. 

It helps to remember that life, while not fair, does have a way of balancing things out. Even the wealthy suffer from pestilence and death. No one experiences a life where everything always comes up roses. We all need to recognize that life is a wave with many ups and downs. If life is up for you, rejoice and ride it as long as you can. Just know that what goes up must inevitably come down again. 

When you are in one of those euphoric upswings, you could be missing out on opportunities to make it better. There are reasons to try to improve even a good position. It can better insulate you from the lowest lows. It can also provide a more secure future for your children when you are gone. So don’t just sit back and enjoy this moment of life that is very good. Do the following to take it all the way to 11:

Maximize Your Education

You’ve done pretty well for yourself in the field of occupational therapy. But you can do even better. Why not enter the Occupational Therapy Master’s Program at a leading university? You will become more valuable at your current level. And you will also become eligible to move up to an even higher position. Every company has things that need to be changed. You have no doubt been frustrated by policies and procedures enshrined by inertia. The people who could make changes are too busy worrying about other things. By moving up in the company, you can put yourself in a position to affect positive change.

There is also the matter of personal accomplishment. It is not really champagne living if your career plateaus well short of what it could. Why not climb as high as you can so you can do more good for your coworkers, your company, your family, and your community? Don’t settle. Dial your career up to 11 and change the world.

Maximize Your Home

This is a delicate matter because it is sometimes hard to know the difference between maximizing one’s home and buying an extravagant and wasteful McMansion just for the sake of it. You can shoot for a goal of having as much home as you need and appointing tasteful luxury to the space you have. A 10 bedroom home hardly makes sense for a couple with no intention of having children. You don’t need wasteful amounts of space to live in the lap of luxury.

While you are moving up in the world, go for a better method of packing and moving house. Get the royal treatment and let properly certified movers do the packing, moving, and unpacking. Military officers are afforded this luxury. It is the kind of white-glove treatment that everyone should have at least once in their lives. Let the move to your dream home be worry-free by turning over the responsibility to someone else. That privilege will cost you. But once you experience it, you will not want to do it any other way.

Minimize Your Eco-Footprint

While buying a luxury watch says a lot about you, buying an electric car and topping your maximized home with solar panels says even more. These are expensive ways of showing your social responsibility. But they also indicate that you are the kind of person who puts your money behind the values you say you have. Celebrities who talk about caring for the planet only to hop into there hummer that takes them to a private jet that carries them to their next appointment to talk about taking care of the environment have no credibility. Don’t be that person. Use your affluence to better practice what you preach.

Times will not always be good. So use the moment to get even more out of life while you can by maximizing your education, maximizing your living space, and minimizing your eco-footprint.