How to Live Your Best Life – Today

Today is the first day of the rest of your life so make the most of it.

When you get up in the morning how do you feel? Are you excited for what is about to occur? Are you ready to face the day with the kind of passion and drive doing something you love? If not, do you at least have something in the day that you are looking forward to? Maybe it’s a particular task you love doing, or do you just look forward to it all be over with?

Simply put if you want to live your best life today here are some questions that can help you explore what you can do today to make this the best day possible (even if you’re hating life right now).

What are you waiting for?

Are you the kind of person who is waiting for just the right time to start making an improvement? Do you resolve to start that project, or go on that diet on Monday but then when Monday rolls around you find some excuse for why now just isn’t the right time? And this just doesn’t happen once or twice it’s a habitual thing? Well then congratulations, you’re like the rest of the human population that suffer from procrastination. In particular procrastination in putting off the things that will make a difference in your life for the better.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s something you want to stop; like stop smoking, or quitting sugar, or yelling. Or if it is a habit you want to develop like running more or being more positive.

Maybe you are like me and you’re a perfectionist, so you won’t start doing something until you know you’ll be able to do it perfectly – well I have news for you that’s just impossible.

Another one you may do is save your “good” things for later, be it clothes or food or experiences. But why?

Why wait to bring your best anything to the table? Why stop yourself from excelling and waking up being completely invigorated?

Can you do better with what is right in front of you?

Alright, so things right now in your life may be somewhere on the spectrum between absolutely terrific and mindbogglingly terrible. Either way, I’m sure that you can find at least one teeny tiny thing that you could do to improve the kind of day you have. By doing something small you can inch your day closer to the “My life is amazing” end of the spectrum each and every day.

If you are at work it may be a simple thing like smiling at a co-worker or asking how their weekend was, or when their next holiday is. Show some interest in someone else and you’ll find the value in connecting with another human. For a few minutes at each break, why not connect with another person you never know it might make your day a little less grey and make the other person feel appreciated.

You may decide to bake a friend a cake or write them a card.

You could do as little as pay someone a compliment.

All these things are small things that involve you interacting with others, but what about yourself?

What if you change your mindset?

Think about the difference those small improvements make to your attitude and approach to the day. What would happen if you started to change the way you thought about your life and certain parts of it?

To make today special allow yourself some alone time, quiet time, without distraction and noise. Turn your phone on silent and learn to listen to what you have to say as well.

Start to think about what could be better about your life right now? What changes could you make?

What can you change about the way you think about an area in your life that would change the whole way you approached the world?

Could you look at things from a different perspective?

Ask yourself, could you look at things from a different perspective and make a huge breakthrough/have a lightbulb moment and have your life be different because of that change?

Some may say no way, but it happened to me! After a series of events I was sitting listening to a speech someone was giving while I was considering an offer to be the chairperson for an organisation I volunteer at. I thought about why I was hesitating after so many people I respect had said I should do it. And what struck me was that I was waiting for someone else to in a different arena in my life to show the same kind of support for me that these people were showing. I was waiting for someone else to tell me whether I was good enough.

Essentially, I was giving my power away to others who may or may not care or know about the effect their decisions and attitudes toward me had.

That lightbulb moment was a long time in the making but I realized that was what was holding me back from making this decision to commit to the chairperson role but also from progressing in my life.

Every decision I made every action I took was in order to please someone else.

And it wasn’t as if I was unhappy doing this, actually, I was completely satisfied in many respects with helping others. But when it was paired with how I viewed myself and my place in the world and measured my success as a person there was a cost. My people pleasing behavior was holding me back from living the life I wanted.

I already kind of knew what I wanted but I was too afraid to go after it because I was trying to please others. I couldn’t help myself until I realize what the crux of my problem was.

How will your decisions alter when you have a new perspective?

Imagine if you have your own realization and you start changing the way you make decisions. Once you know what you want and why you want it you can more easily stand up to the forces in your life that tell you no.

For me once I knew what the underlying reason I was acting the way I was, I could start to view the world, and my decisions in a new light, from a different perspective. This perspective is one that puts my actioning things that are in line with what I want for my life first when it comes time for me to choose between different pathways.

Having this moment of self-realization, I actually decided that being the chairperson for this organization wasn’t what I wanted. And I had plenty of resistance from the people around me, they tried to get me to reconsider and I took the extra time to really be sure that this was the right decision for me.

But when it came down to it, I had to stand up for myself and make it clear that no, this is not what I wanted. I wasn’t willing to input the limited time and energy I had into that because at the end of the day it was one or the other. I could do this and be the chairperson or I could choose to invest in myself and work on building the life I’ve dreamed of instead of the life others imagine I should have.

How do you deal with the resistance?

When you start to speak up for yourself it can be intimidating at first because people will not expect you to say what’s on your mind. You may experience the kind of resistance that I did in learning to say no.

The right decision for you might not be clear at first, but with practice, you’ll learn that some decisions result in a happier more fulfilled you.  I know even now that I could have said yes and my life for the next year would have turned out differently. But it wasn’t the right decision for me for the direction I wanted my life to take.

For me, it was the complete wrong option because it would have meant me delaying writing this post for you to read right here. Right now, I am living my best life the one I always wanted and was too afraid to go for because I was waiting for the right moment and I wanted to do it just exactly right. I chose this option for me and no one else.  This way I made a choice that suited my goals and dreams, allowing me to live my best life right now and hopefully long into the future.

I now find it easier to say no to opportunities even if they are good ones in general because I have a particular goal in mind when these other things have nothing to do with furthering my goal.

Learning to live your best life takes time

It takes a lot of time and thought to learn to understand what makes you get up in the morning, what really makes you want to get out of bed. This is a process and what you want for your life can change. So reevaluating your definition of “best life” should be done on a regular basis. If you are waiting for a lightbulb moment to hit you and make things clear I’m afraid it’s not that simple. You have to seek out the answer, constantly question why you are doing things you don’t want to do and why you aren’t doing things you want to do.

Once you’ve done some analysis you can let your subconscious work away at solving this problem and one day you’ll have a moment of clarity, maybe not quite like mine, but you’ll realize what’s been holding you back.

You can then start to change your life with more purpose, but for now, don’t wait for the right moment, start doing the work and making the changes that make sense and feel right for you now. Later on, you’ll realize why.

But living your best life isn’t all roses all the time

It’s true that once you know what direction you want your life to take making decisions becomes easier, but not easy. There will always be life events that get in the way of you pursuing your dream at the rate you’d hoped in the short term. But if you keep at it day by day and don’t give up over the long term you will see the changes you wanted to make are starting to really be visible in your life.

Each and every day you have to make the choice to get up and do your best no matter the resistance. Remind yourself of why you wanted to achieve this goal. Make up post-it notes or big posters with your goal on it and have it everywhere. Keep reminding yourself not to give up because every small sacrifice is worth it, every inch forward is that little bit closer to where you want to be and who you want to be.

So if you want to make the most of today but you’re not sure how then ask yourself the questions…

What are you waiting for? Can you do better? And what if?

Be fearless and honest, and make today count!