ARE THIS HABITS DRAINING YOUR OF VIBRANT LIFE?
Deep down you know that already, right?
Treating every day as though it’s “just another day.”
A good life always begins now, when you stop waiting for a better one. Yet so many people wait all day for 5pm, all week for Friday, all year for the holidays, all their lives for happiness. Don’t be one of them. Don’t wait until your life is almost over to realize how good it has been, or just how much potential you’ve had waiting for you every single day.
Paying more attention to the beauty and practicality of living a simpler and more intentional life. A life uncluttered by most of the meaningless drama, distraction, and busyness people fill their lives with, leaving us with space for what’s truly meaningful. A life that isn’t constant rushing, worrying and stress, but instead contemplation, creation, and connection with the people, projects, and work that matters most to us. By redefining our priorities, and building healthy habits to back them up, we’ve literally been able to change our lives.
The biggest cost of filling your life with needless distraction and busyness (assuming you don’t crash from the texting and driving), is a gradual long-term decline of your effectiveness and happiness. When you get in the habit of persistently dividing your attention, you’re partially engaged in every activity, but rarely focused on any one. And this dizzying lack of focus eventually trips you up and brings you down.
The solution? More presence and focus on what matters most — getting rid of the excess. The efficiency and effectiveness of your life relies heavily on the elimination of non-essentials, so you can focus more on your true priorities.
Waiting and hoping to “find” something to be passionate about.
Passion is powerful. Your inner passion will likely become a key source of your greatest achievements and your finest moments. The fevering excitement of love. The joy of getting in flow. The clarity of a purpose. The ecstasy of letting go and being one with the present moment. In a nutshell, this is what passion gradually does for you. Without it there is less potential in all walks of life.
Truth be told, if your life is going to mean anything to you down the road, you have to actively and passionately engage in it. You have to deeply invest yourself in activities that move you. But the key thing to realize is that almost any activity can move you if you let it. You don’t need some massive, life-engulfing passion to suddenly appear in your life. Because real passion comes from within, and the source of passion in your life may be as simple as having a job to do — a job that feeds your family, for example — and feeling really good about doing it right.
Of course, many of us are still hopelessly trying to “find our passion” — something we believe will ultimately lead us closer to happiness, success, or the life situation we ultimately want. And I say “hopelessly” primarily because, again, passion can’t really be found. When we say we’re trying to find our passion, it implies that our passion is somehow hiding behind a tree or under a rock somewhere. But that’s far from the truth. And if you’re waiting to somehow “find your passion” somewhere outside yourself, so you finally have a reason to put your whole heart and soul into your life and the things you’re working on, you’ll likely be waiting around for an eternity.
If you want more passion in your life right now, act accordingly right now.
Being too close and controlling every step of the way.
Acceptance is letting go and allowing certain things to be the way they truly are. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about improving the reality of your life; it’s just realizing that the only thing you really have control over is yourself and your thoughts about everything else. This simple understanding is the foundation, and only with this foundation can there be peace of mind and growth in the long run.
But how? How do you let go and change your inner state to one of acceptance?
Don’t allow your current troubles to cloud your thinking. Take a few steps back and give yourself the benefit of this distance, and then give yourself some great advice.
Perhaps this advice is to simply breathe…
As you read these words, you are breathing. Stop for a moment and notice this breath.
You can control this breath, and make it faster or slower, or make it behave as you like. Or you can simply let yourself inhale and exhale naturally. There is peace in just letting your lungs breathe, without having to control the situation or do anything about it.
