The idea for Good Life X didn’t come from a pitch deck, a government brief, or an international funder’s agenda.

It began with a simple but urgent question: Why do we keep seeing ourselves through someone else’s lens?

At the time, Sri Lanka was barely a footnote in global conversations about innovation. We were considered small. Irrelevant. Even by our neighbours in South Asia. A country known for crises, conflict, cricket, and beaches, but not for creative innovation, regenerative thinking, or system-shaping ideas. And, somehow, we had started to believe that story ourselves.

Much of our energy went into proving we could “fit in.” We built “me-too” ventures, copying models that worked elsewhere, often in entirely different ecosystems. Apps for problems we didn’t have. Startups chasing scale that couldn’t be ours. Our most brilliant minds were burning out trying to prove we were “good enough” to be included in someone else’s system.

Yet our real potential was right here all along: in our people, our land, our rhythms, and in the sectors often overlooked for innovation, agriculture, food, wellness, and travel.

Where others saw limits, we saw living systems full of possibility. All they needed was a new kind of enabling, language, and leadership, one that valued care, context, and connection as much as technology or scale.

That’s where Good Life X began. Not as a neat “solution,” but as a response. A refusal. A quiet but firm “no” to the narratives that said we were not enough.

And a louder, more daring “yes” to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, we had everything we needed, if only we looked at it differently.

The Good Life in context

But what exactly do we mean when we say “The Good Life”?

The Good Life is not simply leisure or luxury. Instead, it is the ability, and the conditions, to live a purposeful life. A life that is not just comfortable, but worthy of desire, by all.

The foundations of The Good Life are universal: Health and vitality, dignity, individual choice, community and trust, and the freedom to spend time, in work or leisure, in ways that carry meaning. A person living The Good Life is one who exercises uniquely human capacities: Striving for self-mastery, creating, exploring, and contributing to the improvement of the world around them.

This vision is not abstract. It is deeply relevant in South and Southeast Asia today. The 21st century belongs to Asia, and the pace of change here is relentless. By 2040, two-thirds of the global middle class will live here. Urbanisation, shifting diets, and rapid technological adoption are already reshaping the region.

But these trends alone won’t carry us forward. Without an active strategy, they risk deepening inequality, eroding cultural integrity, and depleting ecological systems. The next 50 years will be shaped by how we address food and energy security, climate change, urbanisation, and persistent social divides.

For Sri Lanka, the question is pressing: How do we claim our place in this transformation not as imitators, but as originators? How do we ground The Good Life in our own heritage, ecosystems, and aspirations? This is the systemic change we aspire to drive.

From acceleration to regeneration

In 2018, Good Life X launched as the first independent, sector-specific accelerator in Sri Lanka for tech and tech-enabled startups focused on nature-based solutions. It was a small beginning, but a radical one: We chose to build a future rooted in our own strengths, values, and context.

The work grew quickly and we began expanding to SMEs, corporates, and startups both locally and internationally, enabling the supply side of the economy to provide sustainable and nature-positive solutions. Not just through their products and services, but through the way they function at their core, the way they exist as businesses.

Partnerships with like-minded local and global allies allowed us to experiment and push boundaries. We didn’t just run programmes, we built tools. One of these was the Regenerative and Inclusive Canvas, Thrive, designed to help businesses go deeper, beyond sustainability, into regeneration.

This evolution was organic. In just a few years, Good Life X shifted from being an accelerator to becoming a platform and a catalyst. Today, we work not only across business sectors, but also across ways of thinking, integrating regenerative models into the economy, culture, and daily life.

Why the creative sector?

Since 2022, we’ve stepped into the creative sector, and people often ask, why?

The answer is simple: Systemic change is not purely technical. It is cultural. It is a narrative. It is emotional.

If we want to shift an economy from extraction to regeneration, we must also shift how people imagine what is possible. That’s where artists, storytellers, musicians, designers, and cultural practitioners come in. They don’t just illustrate change, they help us feel it, desire it, and believe in it.

The creative sector has the ability to translate the abstract language of sustainability into something lived and tangible. It can bridge the gap between policy documents and dinner table conversations, between climate data and personal choices.

And in Sri Lanka, creativity isn’t an imported luxury, it’s a birth right. It’s in our music, our dance, our crafts, our food, and our rituals. It’s a force that, if aligned with regenerative thinking, can help rewrite the story we tell about who we are and where we’re going. For us, it’s about reclaiming and reframing a narrative that is our own.

Looking forward

The journey of Good Life X has never been about building the biggest platform, attracting the largest investments, or chasing the latest trends. It has been about creating deep rooted change where Sri Lanka, and those like us, can see ourselves differently: Not on the margins of global change, but at its very heart.

It has been, above all, about reminding ourselves that we are not small players racing to catch up, but originators of knowledge, creativity, and resilience that the world urgently needs today.

And it has been about working with those who share that belief, whether they’re a smallholder farmer in Anuradhapura, a startup founder in Colombo, a global partner in Berlin, or a filmmaker in India telling stories about the future.

Good Life X began from restlessness, but it continues from possibility. From the conviction that regeneration is not a buzzword, but a way of living, working, and relating to each other.

We started by saying “no” to the wrong narratives. Now, we are committed to building the right ones.

Because in the end, The Good Life is not something we wait for. It is something we create together.

(The writer is the Founder Chair of Good Life X.)

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(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.)