Living life in a rich and full way is often a mystery to many people; it may even be a mystery to you? Although living life to the full it is not as complicated as many people feel it is. The mistake that is often made is that they are expecting to have a single profound and significant experience and that they will miraculously live a full and rich life at the flicking of a switch or at the clicking of their fingers. Whilst being able to live a full and rich life and being able to lovingly embrace yourself and the way you are in the world doesn’t have to be a complicated process it is simply one that requires continual and ongoing commitment. There are some powerful and simple steps to be able to make this happen.
Feel all of your feelings.
Allow yourself to feel all of your feelings, we often get caught in the trap of choosing which feelings we feel are best for us to experience. Constantly compromising, choking down feelings that we feel are negative; feelings such as anger, sadness and hurt. Whilst feeling these feelings isn’t always great, it means that we teach ourselves to disconnect from experiencing these feelings. Which in turn means that we end up teaching ourselves not to embrace powerful emotions. There are many things in life that we can experience that are sad and that are hurtful but we have to remember that we don’t have to be sad and that we don’t have to feel hurt by them. We choose which emotions we want to embrace, choosing which powerful emotions to experience because we perceive them as positive or negative. What we end up doing is simply teach ourselves how not to experience powerful emotions, this includes the positive ones as well. As you slowly teach our unconscious mind how not to experience powerful emotions we end up with some unfortunate consequences. In a constant rejection of our desire to experience powerful negative emotions we end up teaching ourselves how not to experience any powerful emotions. This means that we limit our capacity to feel joy and happiness at a truly powerful level. So, embracing all our feelings, noticing what we feel and not judging them, we end up in a place where we can truly embrace the power of joy and happiness.
Being grateful, experiencing gratitude.
We have learnt to live in a world where the desire to seek and experience perfection appears to become the norm. This means that we’re often left feeling disappointed with a deep sense of dissatisfaction. A sense of perfection is often driven by an expectation that when we played the scenario out, the interaction, the performance, the conversation, this rehersal inside our minds eye and what we achieved, is often far, far greater than what reality can ever bring. I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t strive to achieve all the things that we want, to merely to be truly grateful and appreciative of what we have and what we do achieve rather than living our life in comparison to what we believe the simulator of our minds eye is tricked us into considering as possible. The sense of dissatisfaction that is often felt from living our life in a perpetual state of perfection minus rather than a joyful and grateful place living our lives from the perspective of gratitude for what we do have what we have achieved seems to fuel a growing sense of unease for many people. It was simply embracing our hearts all the things that were grateful for and grow upon this we are left to embrace the world and all of its experiences in a powerful and joyful way.
Giving and receiving compassion.
Compassion is a powerful emotion, which is truly misunderstood by many people. I am often left explaining compassion, it is that very noble loving kindness that we wish all those who make a positive contribution in our lives to feel. The most significant person that we forget in our journey is often ourselves. As many of us have steadily learnt to live our lives in a perpetual state of perfection backwards rather than gratitude forwards, it becomes increasingly easier to become harder and harder on ourselves. We embraced the concept of gratitude and being grateful for the contribution we make in our own lives, being grateful for being ourselves we can simply be left with a deep sense of loving compassion not for what we do, but who we are. We have steadily grown as a society to continually question what we have, what we do and how we contribute. We are often left asking these questions in a very monochrome way. Failing to choose to embrace the richness and the diversity of the contribution we make to our own and other people’s lives. What would happen if you were to take a moment and to embrace yourself with loving compassion? Imagine for a moment you could feel loving compassion for yourself deep in your heart and as you experience it there, simply inhale exhale deeply allowing that sense of loving compassion to flow around every corner of your body as easily as effortlessly as your blood flows around your body to nourish you.
Be kind to yourself
Expectations of perfection are everywhere, self-judgment is almost become a compulsory part of life for many people. Take a moment and simply imagine taking yourself for a coffee, just consider for a moment you were two people. One person is that individual that truly loves and embraces every single part of you, all of your in the idiosyncrasies and all of your foibles as well as all the amazing things that you achieve and do each day. The other person is that highly critical post the person is constantly dissatisfied with whatever you do. Who would you rather stay and chat with? Who do you believe you would seek counsel in. Which one of these characters would you ask to leave, as their behaviour in the coffee shop is no longer acceptable? Become kind to yourself, be gentle and always take a moment to consider how you can embrace caring and loving yourself a little bit more every day.
Connect to your community
Some of us are introverts and some of us are extroverts. Some of us need to feed off the energy of others, we need to be around and engage with other people constantly to grow develop and feel alive. And some of us need to spend time on our own to regroup, regather and to recharge. However, we choose to re-energise ourselves, no one is an island we are interdependent on the other human beings who are part of our community. Embracing and celebrating this however we choose to do it, is a vital and key component in our own self-care. Being attentive to the way we interact with other human beings, cherishing and respecting the interactions we have are few all the many, and often leave us with a deep sense of well-being.
Connect with nature
We spend so much time these days in the digital world, it’s often easy to forget about the real and very vibrant world is outside our door or just through the window. We have steadily grown not to embrace the natural world. However, there is so so much research that tells us that time spent walking in open country, being around trees and especially being by the sea has so, so many positive benefits to our sense of well-being.
If we were to simply follow these five very simple rules allowing ourselves to feel our feelings to be grateful hill and what we are to be kind to ourselves to connect those around us and to connect with the world that we’re part of. We would be well on our way to a greater sense of satisfaction with who we are in the world.
