Simple Tips to Live an Amazing Life!
Have you ever felt as though you should be getting more from life?
Do you ever feel tired, stressed out, or overworked?
Have you ever wondered how to live an amazing life?
Has your health and vitality suffered? Do you seem to be completely unable to get afloat? Perhaps you feel like you’re just treading water. All this can eventually start to get you down. This is not what we were promised. Maybe you always pictured that your life would be different. Many of us assumed we would someday make a lot of money.
Many of us assume we should have much more energy than we do. And we see people around us who seem to have what we want to achieve. We all know polished people who are confident, and who look attractive. We all know people who seem to have it all. So why can’t we have that? Why is life being so unfair to us?
Well, if you have read any other guides, you know this is where you are going wrong.
It’s blaming your circumstances, and it’s blaming other people. You have everything you need to live a truly incredible life right now. All that is missing is the right mindset to go about achieving it. You know what’s even more likely? You already live an amazing life! You already have everything anyone could ever ask for… but don’t appreciate it.
As we’ve learned over this series, your happiness and accomplishments stem from you. And more than that, they stem from your mindset and how you view yourself and your life. They stem from the drive to go out and get what you feel you deserve. And from knowing how you are going to go about doing that. In this simple guide on how to live an amazing life, you will learn how to make some simple changes.
You’re going to learn how to start fortifying yourself against challenges. You’ll learn to start appreciating all the things you already have. And you’re going to learn to master your life so that you can decide precisely what kind of person you want to be and what you will achieve.
What Are Your Priorities?
The first thing you need to do is to start reassessing some of your priorities. Many of us complain that we aren’t healthier, happier, or wealthier but we never do anything about it. That’s because, despite what we’re saying, we aren’t prioritizing those aspects of our lives. Let’s break down your current routine and see if we can assess the problem.
You’re telling people you want to have six-pack abs. You’re telling people you want to be a successful author or business owner. You tell people that your family means everything to you. Okay then. So, if that’s true, those are the things you should spend most of your time on, right?
Instead, what you will probably find is that your lifestyle looks something more like this:
Sleep: 6-7 Hours
Work: 8-9 Hours
Commuting: 1-2 Hours
Lunch Break: 30 Minutes
Everything else: ~5 Hours
And in those roughly five hours, you need to fit in, wake up, get ready for the day, wash dishes, do the laundry, and cook. Now, ask me again why you don’t have your desired lifestyle. You claim that your goals and dreams are your top priority, yet you don’t live a life that reflects that. This reminds me very much of the problem with modern politics.
So often, we are told by our political leaders just how much money they have managed to save. They’ll let us know how they have increased the dollar’s value. They’ll boast that they’re paying off the deficit. But is this how we should be judging their success? How about much more meaningful metrics like quality of life? Or happiness?
You’re doing the same thing in your own life. You’re pouring 90% of your effort into your work and leaving wholly exhausted. Of course, everything else suffers.
How it Got This Way: Analyze to Live an Amazing Life
Have you ever asked how things got this way?
The answer, while it might not be very pleasant, ultimately comes down to fear and indoctrination. It’s fear because we are often driven by fear of our partners leaving us. By a fear of debt. By a fear of not being able to put a deposit on a house. Of being single in our 40s and missing the boat to have children. This means that you are motivated by the stick rather than the carrot.
You are focused on running away from all the things you don’t want rather than toward everything you want. And this isn’t helped by the media or how we’re raised. This is where the whole ‘indoctrination’ part comes in. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m not here to tell you that this is a deliberate move by the government or anything similar. But it is nevertheless the way most of us are brought up. We are raised to believe that we are born into some debt.
We owe this debt to society, that hard graft and work is something to be proud of. Meanwhile, we are taught to want all kinds of things that are just out of our grasp. These include widescreen TVs, lavish properties, expensive-looking cars, and more. We work toward these things; we work because we’re afraid of debt and because it is what society expects of us. But let me ask you: is there any inherent value in work? Working toward a good cause is, of course, a good thing.
Working to support your family is likewise to be applauded. But those people who proudly state that they’ve ‘never missed a day of work!’ or who retire in their 80s, or who talk in a generally proud fashion about the work they did stacking palettes. It’s nice they’re pleased. It is. But here’s the sad part: if they didn’t come in, the world would keep ticking on without them. And even if it didn’t, the worst-case scenario is that someone would get a palette late.
Meanwhile, wouldn’t it have been much better if they had looked after their health? If they had spent more time with their family? If they had pursued a passion and written a beautiful piece of music? Work should be a means to an end, not a means in itself. Work only has value as long as the end product has value. And even then, it’s not worth sacrificing every other aspect of your life.
Lifestyle Design to Live an Amazing Life
The simple cognitive shift I want you to make here is that you are not living to work but working to live. It’s a cliché, I know, but if you follow that advice through to its logical conclusion, you find yourself with something akin to lifestyle design. Lifestyle design is a way of life that flips traditional notions of work on their head and instead focuses on building a lifestyle you can be happy with.
You decide what you want to accomplish and who you want to be, then change your career and other factors to fit that lifestyle. For many people, this will mean becoming a digital nomad. Thanks to modern technology, we do not need to work from a stuffy office or make a long journey to work. Instead, we can load up the computer and work from home.
This affords a fantastic amount of freedom, allowing you to work from wherever you like and whenever you like. Many people will use this by traveling the world with a laptop and working from coffee shops. That’s lifestyle design and being a ‘digital nomad’.But it can also mean something much smaller. It means looking at the promotion that comes with so much extra responsibility and asking yourself if it’s worth it.
Wouldn’t spending more time with your family and keeping your job be much better? Alternatively, maybe you take on that job, but you negotiate having one day off to get a whole day to yourself. Or perhaps you take on a part-time job and a side income instead. Maybe you conclude that to follow your passions, the best option is to become a garbage collector to be accessible by 2 pm. Need more money? Then get a smaller house!
It can even mean that you choose to move home somewhere that you’ll be nearer to work to have a shorter commute. A shorter commute means 30 minutes extra to yourself per day. Maybe you decide to pay for a cleaner so that you can have a beautiful home! There are so many variables here that you can play around with that you don’t need to take the most obvious route through your life. You don’t have to follow the predetermined path set out for you by society, and you don’t need to keep making life more complex and more challenging.
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Some More Changes to Live an Amazing Life
Choosing to design your lifestyle and take back control is one way to start getting what you want from life. But there are a few others too that will help you with this. One cognitive shift is to know your worth, to stand your ground, and lose the fear. Another cognitive shift is to recognize that time and money are both interchangeable. This latter point means that if you are getting paid more but working longer hours, you aren’t getting a pay rise.
This would only be a pay rise if you got paid more for working the same hours. So, if you’re being offered a profession up the ladder, but it involves staying later at work, there is an obvious answer: you’ll take the pay rise; thanks! This is where knowing your worth comes in. You see, many of us are afraid to ask for more money or are scared to increase our rates. We think if we do that, we’ll lose work, and we’ll end up homeless. Again, lose the fear. This doesn’t happen.
If you are providing an excellent service to someone or a good employee, then you can afford to charge more.
Think about how much they’re earning thanks to you and how much they’d lose if you stopped working for them.
You have the right to charge more. And not only that, but it is common for wages to go up regardless of responsibilities. So, if you need more money, don’t hesitate to ask for it. And if they refuse? Then, you look elsewhere for a new employer or new clients.
As Tim Ferriss says, ask for forgiveness, not permission.
Ultimately, you are worth what you think you are worth. If you put a price on your head that is too low, you can work incredibly hard for no reward. Keep looking. And keep learning. And here’s one more thing: don’t wait. Don’t wait for life to get better. Don’t wait until you’re old and retired. Because life always throws you curveballs, and the stars never align. The only way to live a better life is to start NOW. And don’t tell me you’re too old: you’re never too old to be the person you always wanted to be.
So if you’ve been putting off traveling because of fear, opportunity, and worry that life won’t be there for you when you return, it is time to buck up your ideas. Take charge and go now. This is the only way you’ll ever go. Work will be there when you get back. And if it isn’t? At least you’ve done something truly memorable and worthwhile. What could be more valuable?
It Starts With Everything if you truly want to live an amazing life
Hopefully, some of these tips will help you start getting more from your life by changing your priorities and going after what you want.
So, where do you start?
The answer is with everything.
What I mean by this is that if you want to be healthier and happier and live a generally better life, you must change everything all at once. We’ve discussed that your ability to change your life starts in the mind. But have you considered what affects your mind?
The mind has a limited amount of energy. Throughout these guides, I’ve asked a lot from you: to take more responsibility, to lose your fear, to practice discipline, and to stay motivated. All those things take energy. And if you’ve only got 5 hours outside of work to be productive, you’ll struggle. You’ll struggle even more if you’re highly stressed and burned out.
So as you start to put the emphasis a bit more back onto you, as you begin to focus on your goals and the things that make you happy, you can also look at how you can ensure you are charged and able to get the very most out of life. It starts with getting enough sleep, occasionally going out in the sun, and maybe taking vitamin supplements.
Later it goes on to more profound matters: learning to meditate and finding a passion. Surround yourself with the right people. Every aspect of your health and lifestyle will reflect how you feel and what you can accomplish. It would help to start small and build up the energy you want. Your circumstances might trap you, so find just that tiny crack of light.
That might mean getting more energy by taking a supplement in the morning. But if that gives you enough fuel to consider implementing systems to keep your home tidier and that gives you the mental space to start challenging your work-life balance… then it will all be worth it.
Wrapping up our coverage of how to live an amazing life
And finally? Learn to appreciate what you have right now. Because this is the ultimate key to happiness. The truth is that if you keep dreaming of that widescreen TV, then you won’t be able to escape the hedonistic treadmill. You’ll stay in the fight or flight mode and keep pushing and fighting. And looking forward to a holiday isn’t much better.
Looking forward to quitting your job isn’t that much better, either.
Do it now. Meanwhile, learn to focus on what’s already right in your life. If you stop and smell the roses and practice a ‘gratitude mindset,’ you’ll realize you’ve probably already accomplished a lot. And you’ll find that you already have many happy moments in your daily life. Live in those moments.