Live your best life. It’s a saying that many people are familiar with but how many follow the mantra? What does “live your best life” truly mean? For those who feel they are just going through the motions daily, life feels rather monotonous, there isn’t anything to look forward to or get excited about, you haven’t reached your full potential, and your mental and/or physical well-being isn’t at peak form, then that’s not the definition of living your best life.
If you’re ready to explore the idea further and find ways you could make positive changes in your life, these tips are for you. Here are some simple and actionable tips that will help you to transform how you live and allow you to say you’re living your best life.
Define What Your Best Life Is?
It’s hard to work towards a goal and better yourself and your life without defining what your best life is. What does that mean to you? Does it mean you work less, make more money, are happier, make more friends, spend more time with your kids, and challenge yourself more, there are so many different ways to define it? Your best life is exactly that, it’s unique to yours, therefore, it’s not like anyone else’s definition.
Pick a Career That Is Challenging and Fulfilling
One of the most transformative changes you can make in your life is to choose a career path that allows you to give back to your community, is challenging, is fulfilling, and makes you feel like you’re making a difference in other people’s lives. Many industries allow you to do this, but perhaps the most popular is the healthcare industry. Depending on the job you choose you may be dealing with people at their lowest points, their scariest times, and when they are most in need of help.
The good news is that the healthcare industry is booming right now, with many careers showing massive job growth – well above the national job growth average. For those already working in the field, why not choose this time to further your education and level up, allowing you to change careers while sticking within the industry.
One route worth investigating is jobs that focus on bettering a patient’s mental health. Mental health is a topic that is all over the news in the past few years, and people are becoming more aware of how important it is. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, almost 50% of Americans currently lack proper access to mental health care. It’s a staggering statistic and one that you may wish to change by taking an active role and entering the field.
There are online psychiatric nurse practitioner programs that give you the ability to add to your experience and education and walk away with a Master of Science in Nursing – Psychiatric Mental Health. If you want a job that is challenging and fulfilling, what’s more fulfilling than helping patients with their mental well-being?
It is truly incredible what a career change can do for you, affecting every aspect of your life. Feeling satisfied at work helps you to feel happier overall, which spills over into your personal life. And while the healthcare industry is a prime example, it’s certainly not the only one. Other jobs that allow you to give back to the community and allow you to make a difference are:
- Teacher
- Lawyer
- Human Rights Advocate
- Non-profit charity
- Research scientist
- Firefighter
- Social worker
- School counselor
Strive for a Work and Personal Life Balance
While on the topic of work, it’s also important that you don’t let your job take over your life. This is something that can happen so quickly and easily that you don’t even recognize it at the moment. It’s one thing to go through busy periods with work, that’s normal, but it’s entirely different if there is never a break and your life is always out of balance with work always taking priority.
So, how can you learn to bring balance back to your life? What if you have a demanding job that requires a lot of you? Well, this is when it’s important to learn how to say no. It’s okay to put yourself first sometimes, it’s what keeps you healthy and focused.
A few practical tips you can use as you strive for balance include:
- Use a scheduling app
- Schedule in free-time
- Schedule time to socialize with friends/family
- Learn to say no
- Stop feeling guilty for saying no
- Learn to delegate at work
- Ask for help at home
The more you use these tips, the easier they will be. Soon it will become a habit and before you know it, you’ll have balance in your life.
Embrace an Active Lifestyle
To live life to the fullest, you need to have good health, stamina, and energy. One of the best ways to achieve this is to embrace an active lifestyle regardless of your age. For some people, that can mean joining a gym and visiting it five days a week or finding ways to be active outside such a setting.
There are so many benefits to leading an active lifestyle, with some of those being:
- Reduce your risk of certain illnesses and diseases
- Manage your weight
- Increase flexibility
- Increase strength
- Help prevent injuries and falls
- Create stronger joints, muscles, and bones
- Lower your cholesterol
- Lower your blood pressure
- Boost your mood
- Sleep better
- Increase your stamina and energy
It’s hard to find any activity with that many benefits, so there is a very strong case for introducing exercise to your routine. If you’re new to an active lifestyle, experts recommend you aim for at least 30 minutes of continuous activity, at least five days a week. Once it becomes a habit, you’ll find that hitting that target is easy and it won’t be long until you increase the amount of time.
Healthy Eating Shouldn’t Be an Option
In your quest to live a healthier lifestyle, so you can enjoy life to the full extent, your diet also needs to be addressed. It’s important to understand this doesn’t mean going on a diet; rather, it means being mindful of what you put in your body. The very best eating plan is one that is well-balanced giving you all the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals your body needs.
If you’re trying to make better food choices but feel overwhelmed about where to start, try downloading a meal tracker app. Look for one that comes pre-loaded with foods and includes the breakdown of the nutrients. Using a tracker tool allows you to identify areas you are lacking and those that you may be getting too much of one thing. If you are currently trying to lose weight, these apps also do a great job at tracking calories consumed, which will help you reach your health goal.
Some food tracker apps worth checking out include:
- MyFintessPal
- ControlMyWeight
- MyNetDiary
- Lifesum
- Calorie Counter by FatSecret
When looking for the ideal food tracker app, look for one that is user-friendly, will encourage you to use it, and offers all the features you need.
Surround Yourself with Loved Ones and Friends
It’s very easy to get caught up in the responsibilities of life such as work, chores, errands, and so forth. Before you know it, you have little to no free time and socialization is nothing but a distant memory. This is far from living your best life.
Again it goes back to balance. You need to give yourself those times to kick back, enjoy, and be with your friends and family. Start saying “yes” to get-togethers, date nights, going out for a meal, and hosting people in your own home. You need to give socialization the credit it deserves – as it can do wonders for your mental well-being.
Everyone is busy nowadays, but that can’t be your excuse for missing out on a chance to make memories with others.
Make Learning a Lifelong Quest
For many people, the moment they finish school they celebrate and vow to never set foot in a classroom again. The problem with this approach is that you end up closing off your mind to progress. In reality, learning should be a lifelong journey that never ends. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be in a classroom to learn, it just means your mind is open to learning more and expanding your breadth of knowledge.
There are many ways you can accomplish this. You can embrace reading, watching documentaries, traveling to various places in the country and around the world, learning about other cultures, watching how-to videos, joining an evening class, attending conferences and seminars, and so forth. All of these steps will broaden your knowledge yet they won’t feel like the typical school environment.
The more you learn, the more you can start to appreciate the environment around you, the people, and even yourself.
Don’t Let Fear Hold You Back – Learn to Take Risks
Fear is a very real thing. It can be debilitating and so strong that it holds you back from succeeding in life. The thing about fear is that it’s not usually rooted in reality; rather, it’s the perception that something bad will happen. Being fearful of some situations that truly pose a risk to your physical or mental well-being is wise, but you need to learn to distinguish between the fear that makes sense and the irrational fear.
There are some techniques you can use to help address your fears and move past them. You can try the following steps.
- Admit to yourself what you are scared of.
- Write down your fear, go ahead and add detail if needed.
- Let yourself feel the emotions of that fear once you write it down.
- Ask yourself what the scariest thing about that action is?
- Give yourself permission to fail, fear of failure is huge among many people.
- Push ahead and do the thing you are most fearful of.
All of these steps can take time and repeated attempts. It’s not easy to face your fears and then go ahead and do the very thing that paralyzes you. The fact is that once you do face your fears it is incredibly freeing and it also shows you there is very little to be scared of. You can push forward and you are a strong person. There’s no reason fear should dictate how you live life and essentially determine what experiences you’ll miss out on.
Go Ahead and Catch the Travel Bug
Traveling has been mentioned a couple of times here and for good reason. Learning about the world outside your home town or city is essential to living your best life. It allows you to connect with others, have a greater understanding of how people live and what challenges they face, experience different cultures, and, of course, take in the beauty of the world around you.
You can always start small and visit other states, then work your way to other countries as time and budget allow.
Pick Up a Hobby
The final tip that will help you to live your best life is to pick up a hobby. This can be tied in with lifelong learning if it’s a new-to-you hobby. Hobbies are a wonderful way to fill your free time, help to create a calm and soothing state of mind, and they can be enjoyed all through life. You can choose a mixture of solo hobbies and those you can do with others.
If you’re worried about the cost of a new hobby, many are budget-friendly, so there’s no need to invest hundreds of dollars. It’s all about personal choice, what speaks to you, how much time and energy you’re willing to put into it, and what you want to take from it.
Some popular hobbies you may want to dip your toes into include:
- Cooking
- Gardening
- Scrapbooking
- Sewing
- Knitting
- Painting
- Drawing
- Writing
- Reading
- Collecting
- Video gaming
- Puzzles
- Bird watching
Living Your Best Life Should Be a Priority
As the saying goes, you only get one life so it’s important to live it to its fullest and not take anything for granted. These tips can be transformative in helping you on the journey.
