5 Tips to a Better Life

People often ask me how they can improve their life or how to get more out of life. I always respond that it is not up to me to tell people how to live better or how to get more out of their lives. That is up to each and every individual.

What is important to me, may not be important to you at all and vise versa. So to have some guru tell you how you can live better is nothing short of a scam. I know that sounds harsh but it is the truth. Being a Trained Master Coach, I have learned that neither I nor anyone else tell you how to live a better life.

I can, however, help you uncover what is important to you so that YOU can decide how best to live your life and get the most out of it.

I can also give you a few tips on how you can start that process right now.

There are many companies out there that want to sell you a lifestyle. They bombard us daily with beautiful advertisements that try to make us picture living in a certain kind of house or driving a certain kind of car or going on a certain kind of vacation or buying certain kinds of gifts to impress others.

Here is a question you need to ask yourself; are you working for a lifestyle or are you living your life? Yes, lifestyle and life are different and many people get them confused or even think they are the same thing. Just remember a lifestyle cost you money and time and is often dictated to you by outside forces. A life is what you do on a daily basis that makes you full of joy and love and happiness.

It has always amazed me by how few options people feel that they have. Equally amazing is the fact that they rarely consider how they might live their life differently. Figuring out your best life is not always easy. Simple, yes but easy, no. We often allow our minds to be cluttered with what others put in.

Yes, even I have fallen victim to outside forces and found myself asking, is this what I really want? The problem is, that question always comes after I have committed to buying or paying for a lifestyle boost. That question should always come before the purchase or commitment. Always.

Think about how you could live your life differently from today. Maybe a cheaper car, smaller house, a home in the country instead of the city or if you are the type, maybe an apartment in the city instead of a house in the country. Maybe you would like to grow your own food or be closer to a farmers market or just be able to afford to shop at a farmers market in the city. Choices are endless.

One way to help you figure out what you want, is to look around and see who is living the kind of life you want. Have lunch or dinner with them. Ask what they like best and least about their life choices. Don't be afraid to ask questions. If something is too personal, they will let you know. Ask them how they made the choices they have made and how they got to the point of living their current life. Take notes. Then go home and meditate/think on these things.

Lets face it, we are all products of our culture and our environment. Peer pressure and group norms add to our self confusion as does advertising and the false desire to get ahead (what does that really mean anyway) to get buy and so on.

Few of us really examine who we are. Its often much easier, at first, to live a role or have the perfect car or spouse or house. In fact I think its safe for me to say that most people haven't chosen their lives, they have only chosen their lifestyle and that lifestyle dictates their life or lack their of.

Its even possible that, in some fashion, your lifestyle has chosen you. You got the job you wanted but then there come certain “success expectations” that you feel you must live up to. Those expectations always cost you in both time and money. Then you find that you have to earn more money and spend more time earning that money just to keep the things that you have or to get to that next level of expectation.

The good news is, you can break this cycle by simply identifying what about yourself and your life is most fundamentally important to you. A Life/Executive Coach can help you with that as well.

Of all the nations on our planet, we Americans are thought to be the most individualist of all. We tend to do what we want and to heck with what others think. At least that is what we like to think anyway. But this trend of “doing your own thing” continues.

We have gotten better and better at doing our own thing over the past few decades. The entrepreneur movement in the USA is one piece of evidence. Today we have tools and technologies to afford to do our own thing professionally and privately.

Creativity and freedom are held in high regard and normalcy, whatever that is to you, is often scoffed at. You now do have the societal and cultural freedom to discover and orient around what is natural and normal for you because your normal may not be normal for many. Give yourself this freedom. Yes, think outside the box. Don't be hemmed or fenced in to any particular way of thinking. Always think for yourself and move in the direction that feels natural and normal for you especially if it is not what you are currently doing.

If you are living paycheck to paycheck and supporting your lifestyle more than saving money, then your lifestyle is too expensive. If you can't pay for your basic need for at least six months without drawing a single paycheck, then your lifestyle owns you instead of you owning a life. You are trapped in your current situation and you must keep working at the job (you may hate) you have in order to afford your current lifestyle.

Now, there is nothing inherently bad or wrong about a lifestyle, but I am pointing to the fact that if you cannot afford to stop your current job or method of income generation then your rate of personal development and exploration will be much slower and you may never come to realize the life that you always wanted to live.

Rapid personal development occurs when you have the time, space, reserves and lack of financial pressures to afford the ability to experiment with new ways of thinking and of living. For example, if you are living a wonderful lifestyle but you are close to the edge, you can't really afford to progress in some very important ways and you probably wont be free to take time off to pursue alternative life patterns.

Lifestyles are very seductive and entrap many people. People often get a lifestyle they wanted only to learn its expensive and comes with a lot of negatives. But once they get that lifestyle they can't get out of it without major financial setbacks or major embarrassment.

However, you can chose to rearrange your life so that it reflects more of who you are and what you truly want. The funny thing about getting what you really want is that it drives you to position yourself so that you are able to get even more of what you want. This in turn, eventually evolves into a life and lifestyle that many people did not think was possible. In fact it happens all the time, the big corporate, high pressure executive leaving the big city desk job to open a bed and breakfast inn in the country. He is extremely happy even though his pay may be much, much less than it was before.

That is the important thing. Being happy will bring joy not only to you, but to those you love and to everyone you come in contact with. Not to mention, when you do what you love and you become what you always wanted to be, the rest always falls into place and even when something stressful happens, you can meet that challenge with confidence and less stress than you ever thought possible. Now that is a life truly worth living.

I hope this article has inspired and helped you to go out and Live a Better Life.  If you found this article to be helpful, then why not share it with others.  If you would like to learn more about Life/Executive Coaching, then email me here. 

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