Here’s The Secret To Living Your Life To The Fullest Every Day
We all have one thing in common…we want to live life, full.
No, I don’t mean full of delicious food, although I do cherish this near and dear to my heart (especially pizza). What I do mean, however, is living life full of energy, hope, longevity, freedom, joy, and any other wonderful adjective you choose to describe your version of living life to the fullest.
What exactly is this though? If you could rate your level of living life to the fullest, 1 being not at all and 100 being living life-like there’s no tomorrow, wouldn’t all of us be at a solid 75? – and that’s if you’re satisfied. Maybe that’s even lower. Especially while you’re reaching the depths of the dark parts of your soul after the 7th hour in the library re-reading your personal finance notes in order to JUST PASS the 40% final.
What is stopping all of us from considering ourselves to be living the fullest possible life, 100% of the time?
Statistics from a global online quiz, conducted by Abbott Global Healthcare, on how full people live their lives, has interesting results. The top 3 reasons people feel are hindering their ability to live their life fully are, 1. Money, 2. Time, and 3. Work.
You are probably reading this and thinking yup, fricken’ right it is. If I was a millionaire, damn, would I live life to the fullest. There would be nothing on my bucket list that I hadn’t gotten to.
I guess I started wondering why I felt this way, that the only moments that I were considering to be living “full” was when I would be leaping off of a cliff face in Greece, feeling liberated, or surfing on a wave in Morocco, feeling the salty water beneath my toes. Living fully to me was connected with adventure, almost as if it was a destination.
If I am consistently considering my day-to-day life to be sitting at a solid scale of 75, am I even really living? Why am I considering my journey and all elements of my life not as pieces of living fully – as if it doesn’t count.
“Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling” – Margaret Lee Runbeck
All of the everyday little things I do, I almost take for granted. I don’t consider that I need to focus on these little pieces, like cooking my best chicken curry, or going for a coffee with a dear friend, in order to see that I AM living life to the fullest.
I wonder if living life to the fullest is not a state of physical space but a state of your mind. Maybe it is changing your perspective to focus on what you need to change, to continue or to try out to foster an everyday in which life is full.
Sure, some days we really aren’t going to think we are living life to the fullest. When it’s raining from the moment you wake up to the moment you lay in your bed to rest (which is way TOO late because you’ve spent all night writing a term paper, or e-mailing your grumpy boss back, or trying to get a crying baby to fall asleep). But, these moments are what makes us stronger and what brings us to every different stage in our lives. I consider this living full.
“No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you’ve come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself” – Madonna
Maybe we shouldn’t be taking advice from Lady M, considering our dreams are probably not to be kissing Drake at age 57 onstage at Coachella (well actually, on second thought…) but she does have a point. We are constantly changing into better versions of ourselves and that’s what makes the journey great – let’s enjoy this journey for what it is and start recognizing the pieces of it that we need in our own individual lives to create a full life.
On that note, Abbott has this really neat idea surrounding full-osophy that I began to use for all those small moments in my life that foster my happiness:
My full-osophy is to step outside more often, enjoy nature, do it with friends and people I love. My full-osophy is to read a little every night before bed, from a novel I am excited about. My full-osophy is to treat myself to a night out for dinner every so often, because it heightens my senses and brings me joy.
And now I want to ask of you, what is your full-osophy?