I didn’t always love life.
In fact, if I honestly look back at it, I didn’t love life for most of my life.
However, at the point of writing this, I adore life.
Today, I have unconditional love and passion for life.
I love life with every fibre of my being.
Sadly, I don’t know a lot of people who share the same feeling as me.
But I can understand that.
I wasn’t born with a naturally cheerful and optimistic attitude. On the contrary. And there were quite a few life circumstances outside of my control that made me question whether there was any point in keeping this up.
In fact, it was not too long ago that I had a list of duties and responsibilities that, after completing, I believed I deserved to take a final, permanent rest from this thing called life.
Yet, today I am writing this, telling you that I welcome every day with open arms and a warm heart.
How?
Well, I would start by saying that love for life is not something that just happens. It’s not something you wait for to happen. Love for life is something that you make happen.
If you want to love life, you have to put some effort into it.
And, as much as I place value on the human ability to change their attitude in the face of unchangeable circumstances, as much as your mindset plays a major role in loving life, now I want to talk about concrete actions.
I am here to share the unglamorous truth: You don’t need a wild adventure or a magical stroke of good luck to start loving life; you need to organize your life.
What do I mean by organizing your life so that you may start loving life?
Let’s start by saying that if your life has little or no structure, it’s almost impossible not to be miserable, let alone love life.
But if your life has some basic structure, you’ve probably, at least once, thought about how to organize it so that it becomes better and more enjoyable.
And the type of advice that you most often come across is that you should do more of the things you love.
I agree with that. A significant portion of your time should be dedicated to finding or developing your passions and then pursuing them.
But I think this kind of advice is only half the story of making your life better, if that much.
Once again, an unglamorous truth, but a truth nonetheless: You shouldn’t only organize your life around the things that you enjoy and want to do. If you want to love life, you should also organize your life around the things that you need to do.
The biggest improvements in the quality of my life and my outlook on life as a whole came from fulfilling my duties and responsibilities.
And I know I am losing readers at this point because all of us want some magical and romantic solution for loving this life; we don’t want to roll up our sleeves and put some real-world work into it. But if you stick around for a bit more, I promise there are two things, almost magical, that happen once you start fulfilling your duties and responsibilities.
The first one might be expected. Fulfilling your duties and responsibilities gives you the freedom to do the things that you enjoy and want to do. Or, rather, it creates freedom for it. It’s not exactly easy to pursue your passion when your room is a mess, your daily schedule is nonexistent, you are struggling to pay the bills and buy food, and your relationships suck because of how unreliable you are.
The second thing that happens when you start fulfilling your duties and responsibilities is something most people overlook. Often, it leads you to the things you enjoy and want to do. You see, most people, even if they had all the time and resources in the world, wouldn’t know how to organize their life around the things they enjoy doing because they don’t have any. I am not talking about short-lived and superficial hedonistic enjoyment. I am talking about doing something that truly fulfills you. Most people have never experienced that. And, as unlikely as it sounds (even though it shouldn’t when you think about it a bit more), doing what needs to be done often points you to the thing that you want to be doing or even becomes that very thing.
Sorry if I sound like a party pooper, but loving life requires effort and discipline.
This is not coming from someone who is trying to give you a lecture.
It’s coming from a friend who wants to see your heart burn with passion.
I didn’t believe mine would ever burn so bright like this, so the least that I can do is help you by sharing what I’ve learned along the way.
I plan to write more on this topic and promise to put in the effort to give you concrete help, but for now, I hope this was enough to inspire you to rethink the way you view and live your life.
Thank you for reading.
P.S.
Even though I can’t give you a 10-step plan to make your life better, I have a damn good (and FREE) course on (re)building your life.
Join (Re)Build here for free.
After months of working on it, I released (Re)Build for the first time last month. Since the feedback was amazing, I kept working on it and finding ways to improve it.
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Spoken like a true Stoic - loved it!
Absolutely agree and look forward to hearing what you write next!