Devote yourself to something greater. Essential to a life lived fully is devotion to some work or purpose greater than yourself. How you define that work is completely up to you. It might be providing for your family, pursuing an art, worshipping a higher power, or giving back to your community. Find something that you can throw yourself into completely.
- Try to be great at something. You don't have to be "the best" at everything you do, but devoting yourself to one thing and trying to reach your fullest possible potential is an integral part of living well. Know some guitar? Practice more. Decent with cars? Rebuild an engine. Like kids? Be a great parent.
Work hard. Whatever it is you choose to do on a daily basis is
completely up to you, but you should work as hard as possible and be the best
version of yourself in light of that work. Take pride in what you do and carry
yourself upright. If you're unhappy or unsatisfied in your job, quit as soon as
possible and seek employment elsewhere. You only live once.
- Alternatively, you might choose to look upon your "job" as peripheral to your true calling. Walt Whitman worked as an ambulance driver, but was arguably the greatest of American poets in his "true" life. That doesn't mean he looked upon his ambulance work as secondary, though.
Set goals for yourself and actively
work toward them. What do you hope to accomplish in
the next five years? The next ten years? Setting goals and feeling as if you're
actively improving your life and moving toward some attainable goal creates a
sense of purpose and drive in lots of people. If you're one of them, Try to
write down meaningful goals for yourself and hang them in your workspace, or
your living space. Remind yourself at the end of each day what you've done to
work toward that goal. Celebrate even little things.
- If goals make you squeamish, forget them. Live day to day. Carpe diem. If you're going to avoid thinking about the future, though, make sure that you're living each day to the fullest. At the end of each day, stop and ask yourself if you're really doing what you want to be doing, if your lifestyle makes you happy, and if you're satisfied in it.
Find out what you have a talent for. It's nice to be good at what you do, especially if you're
the type of person for whom positive feedback is important. Go into a field or
career that you have some innate talent for, regardless of the prestige or the
financial gain of it.
- Don't go into a field for the money. If you're unhappy but financially secure, cultivate hobbies to which you're particularly talented. Take up sports or music and devote your free time to these pursuits. Remember Whitman.
Make
mistakes and learn to live with them.
No one does everything right. Dwelling on failures, though, is a good way to
keep yourself down in the dumps and living less than a life. Let your failures
act as fuel in your ambition. Learn from mistakes and do better next time.
