Start Living

The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life

by Liz Strauss

Life — it’s what we do between the time we get here and when we go. We only get one, and despite what other folks might suppose, it’s ours to determine what to do with it.

We don’t measure life in hours and minutes. We measure life in memories and moments.
What do you think of when you read this sentence?

It was the time of my life.

We don’t say that often enough.

The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life

Life either happens to us, or we take hold of life and live it. Here are 10 Ways to get a life and start living it.

1. Give Yourself Permission to Claim Your Life 

That’s right — permission. You’re the only one who can decide you are in charge of your life. Even though it feels like you’re not supposed to do so, turn off the internal editors, the old tape recordings, the “shoulds, have tos, and musts”, and the rules that didn’t come from you.

2. Define What Living Means to You

It’s not as hard as it sounds. Just picture yourself at the end of your life looking back. What words would you want to describe how you lived your life and who you are as a person?

3. Stop Living in the Future

Every time you think “someday” or “when I have time I will,” stop. Ask yourself, “Why not now?” Think about this sentence, “I always wanted to, but never did.” Start doing the things you always planned to do. Choose your life every morning. Plan one thing you will do that day to feel alive.

4. Surround Yourself With People Who Enjoy Living

They’ve obviously discovered how to have a life and live it. Why not hang with the pros?

5. Lay Down Your Pain and Your Anger

Carrying them around makes living harder and less fun. It doesn’t bring anything, and it steals a lot.

6. Let the Losers Win

Don’t argue about things that you don’t care about. Unless there’s some real threat, let the folks who have something to prove, prove what they need to. Why waste your living time trying to fix what’s wrong with them?

7. Jump to Forgiveness and Love, Then Figure Things Out

Most conclusions we jump to are not only wrong, they’re negative. Negative conclusions lead us to prepare a defense. Being on the defensive isn’t living. It’s hiding from life.

8. Learn the Symptoms of When Your Head and Heart Become Disconnected

We know when we’re having a knee jerk reaction, when we’re feeling sorry for ourselves, and when we’re being blind to people’s feelings. We can remember how it felt physically while we were behaving badly. Get to know those symptoms, and you can stop the behavior. Living life will feel a whole lot safer because you won’t be in danger of shooting yourself in the foot.

9. Take Small Risks That Push Your Boundaries in Every Way 

The joy of life is packed in learning that matches our skill set. When we stretch just a bit intellectually, physically, emotionally, we grow. Living is growing. Even your cells know that.

10. Value and Protect the People and the Places You Care About

A job isn’t a life. It’s just a part of one. Let the people you care about come first, and let everyone know that you do. Re-read numbers 1 and 2.
We come into life with whatever we’ve got. It’s ours to do with. It took me a while to figure that out — that my life isn’t just what happens to me, that I could take hold of it.