10x Your Happiness: Critical Lessons to Help You Live Life Properly
It’s time for you to learn how to live, and die.
From the moment you were born, you were destined to do 2 things.
Live and then die.
Everything else is a complication that takes away from the essence of your existence.
It’s that simple and yet few know how to do either.
By learning to accept this simplicity, you can learn to do both of these things freely. That’s when your quality of life will dramatically improve, and you will feel free.
How to live
Every day, you are constantly distracted from the most important part of your life: living.
You’re filled with regret over mistakes you made yesterday (or last year).
You’re worried about an assignment you have coming up, bills that need to be paid, and a random scenario you dreamt up in your head that you know very well won’t ever happen.
It only gets worse when you don’t even enjoy the life you are living.
You begin to fill up your calendar with things that don’t interest you and spend time with people you don’t enjoy in an attempt to distract yourself from the real problem…
You don’t know how to live.
If I asked you, “How does someone live?”. I bet I would get one of these 2 answers.
“They breathe, move, and their heart beats until it stops and they die.”
“You take it one day at a time until you have no days left.”
Which one of these camps do you fall into?
While I would argue that both are true, and most people would fall into one of these categories, I would also argue that most people aren’t doing either properly.
Yes, we all breathe, move and our hearts beat, but how often do notice your breath?
I know you are breathing to stay alive. But, when was the last time you paused to take a few deep breaths and truly felt the air going in and out of your body?
This art of focusing on your breath re-connects you with the present and yourself. It brings you back to your life so you can love properly.
Even if you pause right now, and breathe, your whole physiology will change. You’ll be more calm, present and at peace.
It’s so simple and yet most people are breathing without realizing it only to stay alive.
What about those in the 2nd category?
You’re taking it one day at a time, but that sounds like you’re only doing it because you have to. You’re struggling to survive and trying to make it to the end.
To live a pleasant life, you do need to take it one day at a time, but you need to be present at every moment throughout the day.
You do this because today may be your last, not because you are avoiding the future.
The best way to live is to live in this moment.
When you live in the moment, it is easy to hear what your heart, mind and body are telling you. In those moments, you’ll notice they’re asking you to say one of 2 things…
Yes or no.
Yes and no.
This concept applies to more than just your daily activities.
It is important to tell people no when you have no interest in whatever they’re asking you to do. That is how you take control of your time.
In the same way, it is equally important to say yes so that you can experience new things, be social and not become a hermit.
But, what is most important, is learning to say yes and no to yourself.
You need to say yes to thoughts and feelings that make you feel happy.
And you need to say no to the thoughts and feelings that are holding you in the past or making you worry about the future.
This skill can be worked on with a simple mindfulness practice.
Mindfulness practice
Close your eyes and breathe. Let your mind wander and acknowledge whatever thoughts come to you.
As random thoughts come into your mind, talk to them as if they were a person.
But, the only thing you can say in return is yes or no.
Your thoughts are real, and often they’re weird or scary, but they're not necessarily you.
You can have these thoughts and not act on them. It’s having the power to say no is what matters.
Likewise, you can have nice thoughts, but it doesn’t make you a good person unless you make those come to reality.
So, as your thoughts come through your head, say yes to the ones you like, and no to the ones you don’t.
This simple practice will help you throughout your ordinary day.
It will help you build your self-knowledge, and it will help you live.
How to die
I’m guessing you got uncomfortable reading that heading.
How to die… who wants to die, let alone think about it? And when you die… you’re dead so why even learn how to do it?
By learning how to die, I mean learning to be comfortable with the inevitable end and how to ensure your fear of death doesn’t prevent you from living in the first place.
For centuries, humans had religious beliefs which told them what happens when they die.
As religion loses its hold on society, people have lost belief in general.
I’m not religious and would not try to convince you to be either. What I am suggesting though is that belief is what helps people become comfortable with death.
No one knows what happens when you die. That is why you believe something.
Belief is what happens when you do not know.
It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve talked to god, dreamt of death or died and come back to life.
No one knows what happens. Some people just believe something specific will happen.
What I’m getting at is that you should believe in whatever makes you happy.
And most of all, whatever makes you comfortable with death, so that you can live while you are alive.
Personally, I have a lot of trouble believing that whatever this human experience we are having is, is the end.
It’s likely that whatever comes next is different, perhaps a new kind of “life” - the next stage in our soul’s/self’s existence, but not the end of it.
That simple yet powerful belief gives me so much comfort in dying that I can live.
It’s time to start living
If you can learn how to live, and how to die, the quality of your life will 10x.
You will enjoy every day for what it is, not fear what has yet to happen, and dwell in the mistakes of your past.
This is the most important task you could have.
You can try to block it out with work, Netflix and social media, but if you want to find real happiness, you need to learn how to live and die.
Thanks for reading.