We’re all looking for the same thing: How can you make your life the best it can be? How can you find happiness? How do you achieve your biggest dreams?
You feel stuck. Uncertain on how to answer those questions and confused about where to even start.
What’s the secret to success and happiness?
That’s the ultimate question.
Commercials and mass media will try and trick you into thinking that it’s buying a certain product, landing the perfect relationship, having a big house, having the perfect career, or losing X amount of weight and looking a certain way that society deems as “attractive” or “acceptable.”
The reality is that life is flawed. There’s literally nothing perfect about any aspect of these “keys to happiness.” There will always be a rose-colored honeymoon period, but these will wear off.
For example, no relationships are excluded from their challenges. Even if you’re in your absolute dream career, there will always be days that are harder and stressful.
I don’t know about you, but a perfect car or house would be nice, but those things won’t keep me warm and snuggly when life throws its challenges my way.
Before I dive into my complete guide to living a badass life you love, I want to give a disclaimer about the concept of happiness:
Happiness isn’t a constant state of being. I hate to break it to you, but not a single soul can feel happy every day, all the time. Life happens. You’re allowed to feel hurt, confused, troubled. Those are normal, human feelings, and you should never feel shame for your emotions.
When I help my students in the Kick-Start Your Life Academy, I rarely use the term “happiness” when helping them discover their dream life. I want them to live a life of purpose and alignment, 100% on their own terms and what they want.
The following suggestions in this guide are not only helpful from others who have achieved happiness in their badass lives, it’s a guide that has also worked personally for me when I experienced the most difficult period of my life. I would never give advice that I haven’t tried myself – that’s completely unfair to you!
Express Gratitude
We always want something else or are striving to achieve more. It’s extremely important to take time to appreciate what you’ve experienced already, what you have right now, and the possibilities that are waiting for you in the future.
Sometimes when you’re feeling overwhelmed or lost, it’s easy to forget to be thankful for where you are now.
In moments of stress, have you ever stopped to name one to three things that you’re grateful for? Try it sometime. You might be surprised how much your brain has been overthinking a situation, and how much taking a step back to express gratitude can help lift a weight off of your shoulders.
If you’re not experienced with practicing gratitude, I highly recommend creating a gratitude list of three to five things every day either first in the morning or right before bed. Add it to your morning or nighttime routine and simply take a few minutes to write down what you’re thankful for.
Try your best to think of something new every day. It can be something as basic as having a roof over your head, eating a good meal, or something special that happened recently. I did this during some of the most challenging times of my life and it really made a difference for my overall mental health and attitude towards what I was experiencing.
Make Time for What Makes You Happy
It’s so easy to get caught up in the daily grind and focus on the required: work, chores, errands, etc.
You need to make time for what brings you joy, even if you love your job. Balance is extremely important, and you can’t depend on your job to be your main source of fulfillment.
Are there any hobbies or interests that you enjoy doing that may have been pushed to the wayside during your day-to-day grind?
If you don’t have many hobbies or aren’t sure where to start, simply researching ideas on Pinterest or thinking about what you’re naturally drawn to is a great way to start learning more about what you enjoy outside of your job. Volunteering, creating a side hustle, playing an instrument, gardening, photography, and art are all excellent options.
Make Time for Self-Care
We’re all overwhelmed and working hard. If you’re not careful and making time to take care of yourself, you may experience burnout.
Burnout can creep up on you when you least expect it, after putting your nose to the grindstone and pushing yourself beyond your limits.
In order to avoid burnout and keep a more stable balanced state physically, emotionally, and mentally, you need to practice regular self-care.
Self-care isn’t about being lazy. In extremely basic terms, self-care is about taking care of yourself.
Related: Self-Care vs. Laziness: What’s the Difference?
Simply start with asking yourself, what helps you feel refreshed and energized? It can be as simple as sleeping enough through the night, or as deep as cutting out toxic relationships in your life. Other simple examples to get started include meditating, journaling, reading, drinking water, and more.
There are plenty of ideas for self-care online, but if you’re not sure where to start I have a free five day email course: Self-Care for Busy Millennials that can help you get started.
Take Care of Your Body
It’s so easy to push your health to the wayside when life gets busy. However, please exercise, feed it well, and appreciate your body. It’s doing so much for you and working so hard. Pay attention to what it needs.
Meal planning or finding quick healthy dinners actually aren’t that difficult, and this is coming from someone who used to be known for “burning water” or could really only make pasta. The app that helped me change this and start making healthy dinners at home more often is called Mealime, and I highly recommend. (Not sponsored, just simply love the app!)
Working out also doesn’t have to be a big ordeal. Simply making an effort to walk more throughout the workday or 15-30 minutes of activity can make a huge difference. If you don’t like the idea of working out, go outside and combine working out with an activity like swimming or hiking.
Let Go of the Need to Be in Control
You can’t control everything. Why waste time, energy, and stress over things that aren’t within your power?
Letting go of what you can’t control is an incredibly freeing experience. It can be hard, almost impossible. But taking baby steps to accomplish breaking the habit of needing to be in control is truly life-changing.
Meditation, watching your thought patterns, and focusing on the things you CAN control are big first steps.
Focus on Growth
If you’re not growing, what are you doing?
In what ways do you take time in your life to learn new things and grow as a person? This could include focusing on improving yourself in your career, your hobbies, physically through challenging yourself during workouts or working towards an important life goal.
Personal growth can be enriching, fulfilling, and help you discover even more about who you are, what you want in life, and what you will do to achieve it.
Books, podcasts, Youtube videos, Pinterest for blog articles, courses (such as the Kick-Start Your Life Academy *cough*) are all easy ways you can research personal growth. We have it so easy with the ability to access any information at our fingertips, take advantage of it!
Prioritize Relationships
This includes not only relationships with other people in your life, but also the relationship with yourself. Take time to learn how to love and be kind to yourself.
When it comes to relationships with others, spend time with those around you and nurture valuable connections with the important people in your life. Positive relationships are enriching, they help you grow in so many ways and help create balance in your life.
You aren’t guaranteed forever with them. Tell your loved ones how much they mean to you and express your gratitude. You’ll make their day.
If you’re looking to continue the deep work and really discover what’s missing in order to create a badass life you love, Kick-Start Your Life Academy doors are open NOW for a limited time (until Sunday, October 20th at midnight). Take your next steps with creating a life you love without the overwhelm by enrolling now!
Links from the Podcast
- The 3-Step Blueprint to Kick-Start a Life You Love [Free Workbook]
- Meditation resources:
- Self-Care for Busy Millennials [Free E-Course]
- Mealime meal planning app
- I’m Awesome. Here’s Why… self-confidence book
- Submit a question to be featured on the Be Your Own Badass podcast
- Kick-Start Your Life Academy
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