9 ways on how to make your life worth living:
1. Strive to become better, each and every day. You owe this to yourself – and to society as a whole. The world has altogether too much mediocrity – we don’t need any more. Constantly improve yourself – constantly challenge yourself. Make yourself better, each and every day.
2. Decide what you stand for – and then stand for it. Don’t be wishy-washy. Decide what you believe, what you stand for, and what you think is important, then actively work to make that come to pass. “Situational Ethics” has no place here – there are some things that are too important to leave to chance – there are things that someone has to stand up for – decide that it will be you.
3. Have a purpose in life. Ultimately, there has to be a reason why you’re alive – and having a purpose in your life can make all the difference in the world. Sure, you may not know what your ultimate destination may be – people change, events change, life gets better, life gets worse. Your perceived purpose is going to change from time to time – that’s a given. But research and experience has shown that people who have a purpose in life do better, feel better, live longer, and accomplish more than those people who aimlessly wander through their life’s travels.
4. Vow to treat others well. Let’s face it – life is really too short to bear a grudge – let alone hundreds of them. When we treat others well – even if it’s just a cashier at a drive-up restaurant window – it has a good effect on our personal esteem, our overall mood, our friends and families, and on the other people, as well. There’s really no good excuse to mistreat people – and yet some people do it as a matter of course. Think for a moment, though – does mistreating others actually work for them? Perhaps in the short term, but it will never work in the long term – and it will turn them into the kind of person that others don’t want to be around. In jobs such as sales and customer service, management and human resources, banking and even manufacturing, treating others well always pays in the long run. In fact, it’s hard to think of a job where this tip doesn’t pay off!
5. Plan for the future, but live in the present. We need to take care to plan for our future – nobody else is going to do it for us – but we must take care to live in the “here and now.” Ultimately, only the present day matters – the future may never come, and the past is long gone. Our future is made in the present – the decisions we make and the learning we acquire, the money we save and the people we impact for good – all of these things determine our future happiness, but they are all things that can only be done here and now. Countless science fiction authors have predicted a future that has never come to pass – countless scientists have predicted an outcome that has never come out. Mystics also predict the future – but they are mys-taken. When you come down to it, only the present really matters.
6. Have faith in your own abilities. For many of us, this is going to be the hardest item on this list. The truth is that many people are their own worst enemies – because they just don’t have faith in themselves. If you have a problem with this, do what I do – ask your wife (or husband) for an assessment of your abilities. They will either help you see your strengths, or help you learn areas where you could be better.
7. Learn to take calculated risks. A “calculated risk” is an event that has risks associated with it, but that you’ve decided that the good potential outcome outweighs the bad. As an example, at the time of the Battle of Midway in World War II, the United States Navy took a risk – they risked two carrier battle groups on the chance that their intelligence of Japanese naval actions was correct. Their risk turned the tide of the war in the Pacific at an early time, taking out four Japanese aircraft carriers while only losing one of their own. The battle could have easily gone the other way, but the calculated risk paid off. As an example closer to home: when you purchase a home, you take a calculated risk – you risk that you will be able to make the mortgage payments, pay the taxes, and pay the upkeep on the home, even though the future is uncertain. Even with a 30-year financial commitment staring them in the face, people decide to take that risk, because they have calculated (or have faith) that buying a home is the best way to go. Many people, sometimes including myself, are sometimes risk-adverse, even when everything is pointing to the likelihood that the rewards will be much better than any risk involved.
8. Cherish the good times in life. Bad times may come – and good times will come as well. Cherish the good times when they come – learn to love the good days. Treat each blue sky as a gift from God. Treat each rainbow as a pot of gold. Look at – and smell – the flowers you find on your way. Enjoy each good experience – and learn from each bad experience. Find the best in everything you do. Look for the silver lining in each cloudy day. Learn to love the challenges you encounter, knowing that your vision may be too limited to understand now what will prove to be good and prove to be bad. Live each day fully. Love each night as if it were your last night on earth. When you can, listen to the crickets, smell the sea air, listen for the melody of the meadowlark on a summer’s day – even if you have to find a meadow first. Travel to new places, enjoy new destinations, make friends wherever you go.
9. Love deeply. All of these tips have a personal component, but this one especially so. For too long in my life, I refused to allow myself to love deeply. Stung by a bad first marriage to a person who lied to me, used me, and verbally abused me, I vowed to never be hurt again (that really sounds like something out of Gone With the Wind, doesn’t it). That type of life is really living life in a shadow – by refusing to allow love into my life, I was refusing to really live. If you choose to love deeply, you’ll be hurt from time to time – all of us are hurt sometimes, often through the death of a loved one, other times through betrayal of one sort or another. That hurt should never keep us from loving again, because love remains the greatest power in the world today.
