Third and finally in the ‘Transform your life’ Series, is ‘Living Your Best Life: A Guide To Help You Level Up.’
Now that you know how to change your life drastically, or add minimalism to your life to make you more mindful, you will now find ideas on how you can develop yourself as a person, learn new things, grow and have a better quality of life.
If you haven’t read the first two posts, you can read them here:
A Minimalist Lifestyle: Live With Less & Be Your Best
How To Change Your Life With These 15 AMAZING Tips
Bonus read: How A Hygge Lifestyle Is Your Cure To Stress
When we hear the phrase, ‘living my best life,’ our minds snap to social media, particularly Instagram because that’s where we see the phrase quite often.
Often, ‘living my best life’ is a caption for an Instagram post showing someone’s green smoothie breakfast, or sunbathing in the beach. But just because that’s their version of having a best life, it doesn’t mean it has to be yours.
What I’m trying to say is, you absolutely can want that life of sunbathing in the beach and working for only fours a week just like those people on Instagram (that sounds amazing), but it doesn’t mean that you can’t be living your best life now.
You can live your ‘best life’ at any time, and there is no final destination for it. You don’t need to be chilling in a yacht to think ‘I’m finally living my best life.’ You can literally be working on your degree or you can be in the process of writing your first book and still think ‘I’m living my best life.’
That’s what the point of this post is; that you can live your best life at any stage of your life. And that the definition of ‘living my best life’ differs between each person, and that’s not a bad thing.
What does living your best life mean?
To live your best life, you should always be growing, you should have a peace of mind, a sense of meaning and purpose in life.
You should feel content with every part of yourself and feel excited about life.
It doesn’t mean that your life will be perfect. There will definitely be ups and downs but you know how to deal with it and you are confident that you can get through it.
Even if those downs stay in your life for a long time, having that belief that you can get through it and move past it eventually is living your best life. It’s because it shows that you can push past obstacles and get stronger from them.
The first exercise I want to set you is to pause for a moment and think about these questions:
Are you currently doing what makes you happy? Are you doing it because you genuinely want to?
If you say yes to those two questions, then that’s great. It doesn’t mean the work is over though, there is still so much more you can do with your life.
If your answer is no, read the points below and think about what you can do to change your current situation.
It won’t be a drastic change. For example, being stuck in a job and applying like crazy for another job but not being able to get an interview doesn’t mean you’re not trying, it may just be you need to try something else before you can get there.
In order to start living your best life, expect small and gradual changes, not huge ones.
Don’t feel disappointed at the thought of that; slow changes just makes the victories seem sweeter. 😉
How can you live your best life?
1.Work on your beliefs
Whether spiritual, religious or ideological having beliefs is what keeps us grounded. They are also what keeps us morally sound.
It doesn’t just have to be beliefs but also your principles. If you realise you’ve been slacking in terms of keeping your new house clean, but told yourself earlier that you wouldn’t allow that, follow it!
Staying true to yourself is essential to living your best life.
2. CUT out things that don’t give you happiness and do what you want
Related:
Twenty-Seven 30 Day Challenges Ideas To Boost You To Do Better In Life
Find Your Life Purpose & Unleash Endless Amounts Of Potential
10 Effective Inspiring Quotes For Women – GET MOTIVATED NOW!
3. Focus on your passions
Set some time each week to focus on your passions whether it be art, coding or watching some documentaries and increasing your knowledge!
3.Take care of your physical and mental health
4. Lead a more intentional life
Quick definition: intentional living is literally living your life with intention. Meaning doing the things you want, being present in every day surroundings and only saying yes to things that will bring you happiness.
5. Become more knowledgeable
During my research for this post, I didn’t see many points highlight the importance of being more knowledgeable.
It is extremely important to not only be aware of your immediate surroundings but also the world around you. Learn about new cultures, histories and peoples, and unlock the door to a new way of looking at life.
6. Have hobbies
Especially if you’re the extroverted type find hobbies that you can do by yourself!
Being by yourself is a great way to learn about yourself and become more independent and confident.
7. Less is more
Understand that having many things, or the latest items, or the most expensive products will not guarantee you happiness.
Buy less, and buy only when you really want it and know you will make good use of it.
8. Take those classes you’ve always wanted to take
…And please don’t say you’ll book them later. Everyone knows its just excuses.
9. Spare some time to do charity work/ volunteering
1o. Work on your relationships
Having a strong support system is important if you want to be your best self and live your best life.
Spend time with your loved ones and mend relationships that have gone sour.
Find a few people that you can completely trust and feel comfortable saying anything to. It’s important to be able to express your feelings and have a shoulder to cry on.
10. Experiment
Experiment with different jobs, hobbies, investments, interests-Â basically anything!
Even if you’re pretty content on what you’ve chosen to do, you can still experiment and try other things.
Who knows? It could take you through a completely different path that you didn’t think of before!
11. Have multiple streams of income
This should be more of a long term goal but it doesn’t mean you can’t live your best life in the process of setting up your multiple streams.
Having multiple streams of income is useful because you know you’ll always have a back up if something happens to one of them.
12. Experience new things – open yourself to new opportunities
One of life’s greatest excitements is the fact that you can experience so many different things, and that you don’t know what’s coming next in your life!
Embrace the unknown and live life to the fullest in the present. Push your boundaries and experience the world around you.
13. Meet new people
14. Visualise what’s to come
Visualisation is a fantastic way to get excited for the future (and thus, motivate you to get there). Picture what you will look like, where you live, what your life would be like, what your bank account would be like… (hehe) etc.
All jokes aside, first and foremost, think about how you would feel in that dream life.
15. Practice mindfulness and gratitude
16. Build your confidence
Having low confidence is one of the biggest disadvantages you can have because it stops you from pursuing things that have the potential to change your life.
Building your confidence will increase your self-esteem and jumpstart your self-growth journey.
Every day, do something that makes you more and more confident. Its crazy what you can achieve when you believe in yourself and don’t care what anyone else thinks.
Related:
The Only Confidence Quotes For Women You’ll Need! (Printables included)
17. Make lists
Making lists is a really entertaining way of keeping track of things. You can do a general to-do list but you can go further and do a book list, movie list, bucket list etc.
18. Look at things from a different perspective
Thinking outside of the box is a great asset to have and will change the way you approach life.
Don’t be judgemental and really listen when someone is explaining their point of view, especially if its different to yours.
19. Take one step further
If you really want that promotion at work, take one step further by making your presentation the best it can be.
If you’re scared of heights, take one step further and challenge that fear.
If you’re not getting that dream job despite trying many times, take one step further and think about why you may not be getting it and what you could do differently. Maybe you don’t have the correct skills/ experience? In that case, do some work experience before you apply for that job again.
20. Be the first to approach someone
21. Learn how to manage your finances
22. Save money (& create an emergency fund)
23. Set goals and follow through
Break those goals up into mini goals and do something every day that gets you closer to the final goal.
24. Embrace failure
Failure is just as important as success (if not, more important).
When you fail at something, the key thing to do is to learn from the situation and not to beat yourself up about it.
Over time, the more times you fail you’ll notice that you react less badly too. That’s a sign of resilience and will power, and you should feel proud at the fact that no matter how many times you failed, you still kept trying.
25. Find your purpose
26. Challenge yourself
27. Observe yourself
Observe your daily habits and find areas that you can improve on. To do this, jot down all the things you did today in your notes section on your phone, and give a rough estimate of how long you spent doing each thing.
You may realise that by the end of the day you’ve scrolled on your phone for three hours (though it felt like you were only on it a couple of minutes at time). Maybe you’ve realised that you snack late at night and that’s what’s making you gain weight.
Make some changes and do this observation method again in a couple of months to see how things have changed.
28. Let go of the idea of perfectionism
29. Get rid of bad habits
Living your best life does not mean you have completed all your goals and have loads of achievements and successes.
If you’ve completed everything, what’s left? What’s left for you to be excited for? What’s left for you to do?
There is no end goal to living your best life; the key is that you are enjoying the process of achieving your dreams – that’s what living your best life is.
Life isn’t a static process where you jump from one part to another and then jump to the next. Its a line that goes up and down and around and over.
Appreciate the journey, be patient and work hard. That’s all you need to do.
