5 Ways to Live Your Very Best Life
Rev. Dr. Kitty Boitnott, NBCT, RScP
Heart-Centered Career Transition and Job Search Coach | Stress Management Coaching
Your ability to achieve your goals and live your very best life depends largely upon the choices you make throughout your life. Once you know what needs to be done when you have a goal you want to achieve, you do it. Take decisive action If you find yourself doing something detrimental to your goals like procrastination, you stop it.
Whether you choose to give up or persevere in the face of challenges is up to you!
Too many of us fail to recognize this single difficult truth, however. We sometimes let ourselves think we are victims of circumstances. We believe that because we weren't born with the privileges that others have, we are somehow at a disadvantage. We think we didn't get the same breaks as others, maybe. We don't have the same opportunities to succeed. Blah, blah, blah.
If you want to live your best life, you have to be willing to make your own opportunities.
What if Oprah Winfrey had decided that because she was born poor in Mississippi, staying poor was her destiny in life? Many of the most successful people in the world were born without privilege. They had to work for what they wanted.
Tony Robbins left home as a teenager and is self-taught in the ways of human psychology. He has a talent for honing in on how to help others overcome obstacles and barriers in their lives, and he has made millions of dollars in the process. He could have let himself think that because he had led a difficult life that success was out of his reach. But he knew he was responsible for himself and his own success.
And you are likewise responsible for your own success.
You can bring your vision for the kind of success you want to fruition only if you want it badly enough. But don't think it will be easy. In fact, truth be told, it wouldn't be worth having if it were too easy to achieve, would it? You have to want it, and you have to want it badly enough to set aside your fear and your hesitation and go for it.
Take Colonel Harland Sanders for example. Harland Sanders did not become a multi-millionaire without experiencing many setbacks in his life. He had perhaps more than his share of disappointments. And he experienced mulitple failures in his life.
Harland's circumstances forced him to begin taking care of his siblings, together with his mother when he was only seven years old. By the age of 14, he was working as a farmworker. He continued taking up odd jobs throughout his young life as a way of surviving.
Sanders eventually owned a motel and a restaurant.
Both businesses were destroyed in a fire.
Despite his many early failures and the harsh conditions of his life, he never gave up. He kept going.
Things began to look up for Harland when he discovered a special chicken recipe for fried chicken. His recipe was so popular that it became globally known as the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC).
Colonel Sanders was 50 years old by then.
His name, symbol, and legacy remain even now, decades after his death.
"It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default." — J.K. Rowling
Master The Art Of Living Your Best Life by Going for Your Goals No Matter What
Perhaps you haven't brought your most cherished ideas to life yet because you have not yet mastered the art of sticking with your goals in the face of difficulty. Once you learn how to do that, accomplishing your goals will be easier to achieve.
Here Are 5 Ways You Can Do to Start Living Your Best Life Right Now
1. Embrace the challenges that come your way.
Embracing challenges, tests, or trials is a great way of realizing your potential. They help you determine how far you are willing to go.
Some of the world's most successful people are those who kept going despite challenges. They made their most significant breakthroughs by moving through one failure to another. J. K. Rowling of the quote above is a perfect example. Before she became famous and a multi-millionaire as the author of the Harry Potter series, she was a poor single mom struggling on welfare in the UK. But she was a writer and she kept writing until the inspiration for Harry Potter came to her.
And even then, twelve publishing houses rejected her first manuscript for the first Harry Potter story. So success did not come to her easily. But she did not let those rejections stop her. And thank goodness, she didn't. Millions of kids have become avid readers because they engaged with the Harry Potter series.
The moral behind the success of Oprah Winfrey, Tony Robbins, and J. K. Robbins and scores of others who have reached success is simple.
The only way to fail is to give up.
2. Live your truth each and every day.
Living your truth means living out your life the way you know you are meant to. Do what you feel you are supposed to do with your life. Stick to your vision. Refuse to live your life the way other people think you should.
This can be especially difficult for some. If you are gay and come from a conservative family, you may fear risking their love and approval. Yet, if you don't live your truth, you will live a miserable existence.
We each have a truth that we own and have every right to express, whatever it may be. Be brave and own your truth, whatever it may be.
Living your truth is probably the first principle of living your best life.
3. Believe in your ability to succeed against the odds.
"I am not qualified to do this," "I'm not smart or good enough," "Only a genius can achieve this." The minute you give in to thinking these thoughts is the minute you can forget about accomplishing your goals. They will sabotage any effort your make because you don't believe in yourself.
Your ability to attain your dreams depends on whether you set aside those thoughts and push through them. Everyone has these thoughts. The difference between successful people and those who fail is that they act on their convictions in spite of those thoughts.
It would help a lot if you trusted that you could succeed and then work on improving your skills or talents to you get where you want to go.
If you have doubted yourself lately, shift your mindset. Start believing in your ability to succeed no matter what.
4. Change your perspective if you need to.
Winners know how important it is to change their viewpoint when things don't turn out the way they wanted. Instead of dwelling on "I have failed too many times to keep trying," focus on, "I now know what not to do to avoid making the same mistake twice."
Your outlook on life is mostly the key to your being able to live your best life.
5. Constantly seek ways to improve yourself.
Living your best life is not just limited to knowing the basics of living like a winner. It extends to constantly improving on your success so that you can grow and expand your success beyond your wildest dreams.
This means constantly improving yourself academically and professionally. It means advancing your knowledge to learn the best ways of tackling your goals. It also means avoiding mistakes that you could make along the way if you aren't careful.
You have this one life to live.
You weren't born so you could squander it on self-pity or believing that everyone else has the ability to succeed in life except you.
If you have a burning desire to achieve something in your life, the biggest obstacle in your way keeping you from success is probably you. But you have the power to decide to go for your goals and make them a reality. They may not manifest themselves overnight. That's okay. It's to be expected that it will take time. Just don't give up.
Whatever it is that you have a feeling you should be doing with your life, go for it. You only have this shot. Don't waste it.
Until next time.
P. S.
Hey, are you a teacher who is experiencing an overload of stress right now?
If so, I want to invite you to a special webinar workshop entitled, "Stress Management Tools for Teachers" that will be offered live on Saturday, October 17th at 2:00 PM EST.
In this presentation, I will be offering tips, strategies, and techniques for how to adjust your expectations of yourself and others and how to take some of the pressure you may be feeling off your shoulders.
I will also be offering tips on how to take better care of yourself. You need to remember that self-care is not selfish.
I know that teachers are under a tremendous amount of stress right now, and few, if any, of your administrators are able to help you mitigate it or reduce it. They are dealing with stressors of their own.
At the end of the day, however, YOU are responsible for how you manage and relieve your stress. You may need some pointers, though, and that is what this presentation is all about.
I will be talking about...
7 Strategies for Making it Through the Pandemic and Keep Your Sanity
- Work on your mindset. (It’s all about attitude).
- Adopt health(ier) habits (stay or get) physically strong and well.
- Take control of your environment at work and at home.
- Work on managing your workload more effectively.
- Consider adopting the "5-Second Rule” (Mel Robbins).
- Start setting healthier boundaries at work & home.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it.
If you want to learn how to better manage your stress, this is the presentation for you!
Click here to register: https://event.webinarjam.com/register/18/77l4rag
Kitty
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