Life can sometimes provide a number of challenges you’re forced to hurdle. The key to a calm and collected demeanor lies in the way you live your life.
Here are some tips that you will get you started on the path to living your best life right now.
1. Stay healthy!
This may seem like the most common one, but that’s because it’s growing truer with every waking moment. With the influx of fast food, we face in our lives, eating healthy is becoming harder.
Choose granola or fruit instead of candy or chips. Pick a salad instead of that burger. Eating healthy is easy to do, but hard to start. Thousands of websites online are dedicated to helping you live a healthy life so don’t say you can’t find the information to get started.
2. Read every day of Your Life
“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
Reading not only keeps your mind sharp but it opens you up to new ideas you may never have thought possible. Visit the Amazon bestseller list and find a good book to read. Even if you only read as little as 10 pages a day, you’re still making a process and on track to read a book a month.
3. Listen to classical music
Classical music can help your brain perform at a higher level and it brings you away from the monotonous music you may listen to daily. While you may not notice it, most music nowadays is actually written at a third-grade reading level.
Most classic musical composers are so smart, they skipped the third grade.
4. Get outside
Nothing amazing will happen to you while surfing Pinterest photos of someone on an exotic getaway. To live an amazing life, you need to get off the couch and out into the world. Which leads us to our next tip…
5. Travel as much as possible
Not traveling as much as humanly and fiscally possible is like living your life in a box. You know the box well, you like the box – it’s a cozy box.
But that box won’t show you the sights of an endless ocean off of a cliff thousands of years old, or ancient cities in thick jungles, or pyramids that stand watch in a giant desert, or cultural festivals that bring hundreds of thousands of people together for one common purpose.
If you don’t get out of your tiny box, you’ll never know how other people live their life.
6. Learn something new every day
Whether you are in school or not, you need to learn something new every day. A brain that isn’t challenged can be like a rock in a forest – over time, as it stays untouched, moss starts to grow on top. Pretty soon it’s unrecognizable.
Whether it’s a new fact or a new word, learning something new every single day can help brighten your mood and give you something different to talk about with your friends.
7. Give some of your time
Volunteering can be a hell of a drug. Helping those less fortunate than you, or in need of help, can be enlightening. You will meet new people, learn about new situations and feel great for having helped someone do something they couldn’t do alone.
“The best antidote I know for worry is work. The best cure for weariness is the challenge of helping someone who is even more tired. One of the great ironies of life is this: He or she who serves almost always benefits more than he or she who is served.” – Gordon B. Hinckley
8. Find a new hobby
Doing the same thing all day can cause you to stagnate. While you may love it, you never know what you may love. You could have a green thumb and love to garden, or you could have a knack for languages and love reading classics in their native tongue. You never know until you try it out.
9. Live in the moment
While you’re reading this article, you’re not living in the moment. The movie Yes Man has a positive message in it – say yes more than you say no.
Obviously, don’t do dangerous things, but if you’re the type of person who finds that they say no to social gatherings more than they say yes, change that. Get out of your box and meet some different people.
Experience new foods and places and live the real definitions of wonder and awesome.
“Forever is composed of nows.” – Emily Dickinson
10. Spend more time with loved ones
Time is fleeting and you never know how much time you have left with someone. You’ll feel more fulfilled and overall a better person spending time with family and friends that you love, and you know love you, than trying to get likes on social media from people that don’t care about you.
11. Get off Social Media!
Social media has spiraled into something that the forefathers of the internet never saw coming. It consumes people’s lives nowadays and isn’t healthy.
Put down the smartphone. Try and do something without posting it on snap chat. Have a thought that doesn’t find it’s way on Twitter. Get some fresh air!
Looking at your phone for 10 hours a day is not healthy and will lead to real health issues down the line, such as a morphed spine.
“Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.” – Clay Shirky
12. Stop Procrastinating
Procrastination is just a coping mechanism for those with anxiety who think that they can’t perform as well as they want to in their mind – this is a proven fact and has been written about more places than here.
Stop waiting for something to get done. You’ll be amazed at how much you can actually get done when you do it right away. Then you’ll have more time to explore new hobbies.
13. Cook more for yourself
Cooking is a great way to relieve stress and focus your mind and energy on one task for a short period of time. The aromas can be relieving as well.
While some may see cooking as a “women’s thing” or not fun, that is just simply flat out wrong. Some of the best chefs in the world are men and cooking can be extremely self-satisfying and fun at the same time.
“Until I discovered cooking, I was never really interested in anything.” – Julia Child
14. Discover your life’s purpose
This one is a bit harder and more abstract. Finding what you were meant for in life can be difficult. Take a look at all the things you enjoy doing. Pick one that really stands out – where if there was a job for it, and you had to work a 9-5, you wouldn’t mind in the slightest. Hell – you wouldn’t even take a day off.
Think there’s no job for you? Take writing for example. If you enjoy writing in your free time, take some writing classes. It’s not just there to write books.
Corporations nowadays are inundated with those who can’t write because they’ve spent too much time dumbing down their language using acronyms on social media.
There’s copywriting, copy editing, screenwriting, marketing, content writing, internal communications, press releases, business writing, etc… You see my point? Just because you don’t think there’s a job for the thing you love, doesn’t mean that there isn’t. You just need to look more.
15. Be positive, not negative
This is something that is necessary for a good life. While it’s always talked about, very few actually live it to the core. The cup isn’t half full or half empty – it’s whatever perception you have of it.
Take this to heart, because living a positive life can not only change yours but change others around you as well.
“It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses, we must plant more roses.” – George Elliot
16. Learn how to manage your time well
A lot of stress comes from poor time management. The reason for this is because people get worried that they didn’t get enough done, or that the thing they got done is wrong because they rushed it.
Learn what takes precedence in your life and what doesn’t. Work, family, and friends come first, while other hobbies that don’t really contribute to your life as much, such as playing video games, come last.
17. Above all, enjoy the small moments
It’s not always the big moments that contribute to a great life. Seeing a sky filled to the brim with stars, watching a flock of geese cross the road, or seeing a small child learn how to tie a shoe are all moments that remind you that life is excellent, no matter what you’re doing.
“We’re so busy watching out for what’s just ahead of us that we don’t take the time to enjoy where we are.” – Bill Watterson.
Image courtesy of hyena reality at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Image courtesy of moggara12 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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