Most people are not happy.
It’s a powerful truth about our world that I explored in my latest motivational video Love Your Life—featuring Gary Vaynerchuk, Jim Carrey, and Steve Jobs—which is a visual explanation of how to step into an incredible life full of passion that you thoroughly enjoy.
The video starts out with some hard-hitting stats: 1 in 3 Americans suffers from extreme stress, depression affects 6.7 percent of adults, and only 1 in 3 people report feeling very happy (respectively pulled from The American Institute of Stress, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, and from Harris Poll).
The point of these eye-opening stats is: most people in our country are NOT waking up to passionate lives full of joy, wonder, excitement, and fulfillment. Most people are NOT waking up to awesome lives that they LOVE.
Because to love your life is a rare phenomenon that only a few of us have achieved. It is rare. But it’s not a luxury.
Don’t get it twisted. Loving your daily existence is not reserved for the special few of us.
Loving your life is for absolutely everybody.
That’s right. With the right strategy, work, effort, and patience, you too can wake up to an epic, awesome, and phenomenal life that you LOVE with all your heart.
The following are four ways to do that.
Here are four ways to love your life:
1) GET CLEAR On What You Want and Go After It
A passionate life is one where you wake up every single day, seven days a week, to people, places, relationships, and work that you absolutely LOVE. It’s a life that matches up with your deepest intentions and desires—a life that you live purposefully with design and intention.
The best way to describe a passionate person is: someone who wakes up everyday to a life that they have intentionally created—someone who is reaping the rewards of a life that they deliberately designed.
So in order to become one of those people, in order to love your life, you must get clear on what you want and go after it. Because the only path to living your dream life is through getting clear on your intentions!
So sit down, grab a pen, grab some paper, and get clear on absolutely everything that you want for yourself.
GET CLEAR ON WHAT YOU WANT.
As you jot down your goals, intentions, deepest wishes, and fantasies, you might discover that you want relationships, career opportunities, and lifestyles that you hadn’t even considered before.
You might discover that what you truly want is a life of service to your community as the founder of a nonprofit. Or you might find out that what you actually want is to travel to every single continent and country in the world meeting as many people as you can.
That’s why getting clear on your intentions is so important. You might discover things about yourself that don’t currently understand right now.
Writing down those wild, crazy, and ambitious life-plans will open up a pathway that leads you to a life full of passion that you LOVE.
2) TAKE ACTION Everyday Towards Creating That Life You Love
So now that you fully understand your what you truly want, it’s time to TAKE ACTION—and not just for a day, a week, a month, or a year. In order to manifest that life you LOVE, you must take action every single day for the rest of your life towards making your visions a reality.
I know that sounds intense. But that intensity is necessary. To realize that intense and passionate vision of joy in your mind, you have ATTACK your dreams and goals every single day with a hardcore tenacity.
I’m not saying that you have to spend all 7 days of your week 8 hours per day working to create your dream life. What I’m saying is, whether it’s big or small action, you MUST take steps towards creating that awesome future every single day.
If you want to be a full-time blogger, you’ve got to put in some blog-related work every single day. If you want to be a full-time chef, you better be studying up on your recipes every night. If you want to play pro ball, you need to practice or stay in the gym every day.
If you want to get into business school, you got to do some studying for your GMAT every single day. If you want to be part of an awesome relationship with your spouse, you better be spending quality time with her or him single every day or night.
Whether it’s small steps of big steps, you MUST take action every single day. That progress and momentum that you build up overtime is going to push you forward towards that phenomenal life that you can’t wait to wake up for.
3) NEVER GIVE UP On Your Passion. Work On It After Hours If Necessary
So let’s say you read step #1 up above and put every single thing that you could ever dream of down on paper. Now suppose you had this epic epiphany and realized that you want to do a complete 360 and pursue something totally different from your current fulltime job.
Well, congratulations! You have to take the first step towards loving your life. But there’s one small problem: you have bills to pay, a spouse to provide for, kids to feed, and responsibilities that have to be taken care of.
So you can’t just up and quit your 9-to-5 all of sudden. Because you have people who are depending on you.
If you are in this situation, all I can say to you is: Don’t quit! Don’t give up!
NEVER give up on your passion. Work on it after hours if necessary.
This is YOUR life. And you deserve to wake up to an awesome life full of passion, excitement, and wonder every single day just like anybody else. And you can still do that.
But because you have bills to pay, a family to feed, and responsibilities to take care of, your path is going to be a little bit more challenging than someone who is just fresh out of high school or college. But that isn’t a bad thing! You can develop a lot of character through the struggle.
So since you have this job you are working fulltime, you are going to need to work on your passion after-hours. As Gary Vaynerchuk passionately explains at the conclusion of my video Love Your Life, you are going to have to put work in on your craft after you get home from your 9-to-5.
To get yourself to that promise-land of passion, joy, and excitement, you are going to have to take full advantage of your weeknights and weekends as opportunities to make progress on creating that life that you love.
4) SHOW GRATITUDE for the Positives and for the Negatives
And lastly, in order to wake up every single day to a passionate life that you LOVE, you have to be able to show gratitude for the positives and for the negatives.
You need to be able to show gratitude and appreciation for the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, the great moments, the tragedies, the awesome victories, and the unfortunate defeats.
You have to be able to show gratitude.
Because the truth is, no matter how awesome your life is, there are always going to be tragedies, misfortunes, problems, and setbacks. No matter how happy, fulfilled, joyous, and passionate you become, your life will never be pain-free.
So in order to truly love your life, you have to be able to show gratitude for the epic victories and for the disasters that come across your path.
Your journey is going to include both incredible ups and misfortunate downs. So you have to show gratitude for both.
And you can do so by starting a gratitude journal. Take 10 or 15 minutes out of every day to write down 5 things that occurred that day, or 5 situations in your life that you are currently grateful for.
Expressing gratitude everyday will allow you to enjoy your life every single day – even when everything seems to be blowing up in your face.
Wrapping It All Up
So to sum this up, these are four ways to love your life:
- GET CLEAR on what you want and go after it
- TAKE ACTION everyday towards creating that life you love
- NEVER GIVE UP on your passion. work on it after hours if necessary
- SHOW GRATITUDE for positives and negatives
To get a more visual explanation of why loving your life is important, make sure to check out my latest motivational video LOVE YOUR LIFE featuring audio from Gary Vaynerchuk, Jim Carrey, Steve Jobs, and Bo Muchoki.
The post 4 Ways To Love Your Life appeared first on Everyday Power Blog.
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