#InspiredJoseph
Life isn’t about finding yourself.
It’s about creating yourself.
About Life
What gives meaning to a person’s life is as unique to his/her fingerprint. To live your own life, you must begin to identify and prioritise what is most meaningful to you in your life. It is important to ask yourself if you are really living the life that you want. Do you make life choices based on your desires, beliefs and values? Or do you live on the expectations of those around you and the recipes you’ve learned from the past? In other words, who are you really living in?. Finding your own path can be time consuming and can require a lot of trial and error. The process of becoming your true self takes a lifetime.
Here are 5 Steps to Live & Create Your Own Life!
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1. Think About What You Really Want in Life
For many of us, just knowing what we want in life can be a challenge. However, it is not possible to live your own life on your own terms, unless you define what your terms are. Being in touch with what you want and what matters to you helps you prioritise, develop goals and ultimately get where you want to go. Once you know what you want, you have a destination, and you can set course in that direction.
Discover what you truly want by asking yourself the following questions: What really lights me up? What matters most to me? Allow yourself to think freely, as you answer these questions instead of getting caught up in what you think you should be doing or what others would like for you to do.
We often make the mistake of thinking that we are selfish if we spend time contemplating what we want, however this is a fundamental aspect of getting to know ourselves. Asking yourself what your principles are doesn’t mean that you will ignore everyone else’s. On the contrary, deciding what matters to you includes recognising the people who matter to you and acknowledging that they are a priority in your life and that caring for them is big part of what makes you happy and gives your life meaning.
Advice such as “follow your passion” may sound cliché, however researches has actually proven that people are not only happier when they follow their passions, they are also more likely to excel in their chosen careers and activities. A recent study on the effects of motivation found that the stronger the internal motivation for doing something, rather than the external rewards, the more likely people were to succeed. So, think about what is meaningful to you!
2. Differentiate Yourself
We are all born genetically unique individuals. However, much of our identity is created by our early environments. We internalize characteristics of our caretakers and often take on their personalities rather than developing our own. In this sense, we often spend more time reliving the lives of others rather than living our own lives.
A person’s true identity is affected throughout their lives by interpersonal experiences that either damage or support the development of his or her personality. Throughout our development, we adapt ourselves to cope with pain and fears, as they arise. We adapt so that we can deal with our early environment and get our needs met. One way we do this is by incorporating negative aspects of our parents’ or caretakers’ personalities or developing psychological defenses in reaction to their negative traits. In order for us to live our own lives and fulfill our own future, we must differentiate ourselves from destructive family and societal influences.
Most people either take on the value systems and beliefs of the family and culture they grew up in, or they rebel and form defiant attitudes in direct opposition to their family or culture. However, in order to live your own life, it is important to develop your own personal values and beliefs, rather than simply accepting or rejecting the values and beliefs of your early influencers. You should then make an effort to live according to your own principles, which will infuse your life with more meaning.
Differentiating from the negative influences and identities from our past allows us to become who we truly are. To the extent that we are able to differentiate, develop our own unique identities and follow our own unique desires, we will be able to live the most fulfilling lives. We must strive to live our own lives rather than the lives prescribed by our parents, our families or our society.
3. Set Realistic Goals
Once you are in touch with what you want and what your core values are, it is important to set some goals for yourself. What do you need to accomplish to live your own life? It is helpful to write down your goals. Start with just a few, rather than overwhelming yourself with a large list of things that you would like to change. Think about specific actions you can take to achieve your goals. Start small and set waypoints that you can accomplish along the way. These waypoints will make it easier for you to keep yourself accountable and track your progress. For example, if your goal is to write and publish a book, your first waypoint could be to finish one chapter in the next two weeks.
A recent study showed that people were significantly more likely to accomplish their goals if they wrote them down, formulated actions to achieve them and sent weekly progress reports to a friend. To effectively tackle your goals, you may want to use that method. Do you have a friend who could help keep you accountable to your goals? Ask him or her for help.
Pursuing goals is an essential aspect of living your own life. Many of us have a tendency to fantasise about achieving our goals rather than taking the actions to achieve them. The actions aren’t always easy, and they often force us outside of our comfort zone, but there is no shortcut to creating a meaningful life. If you want to live your own life, you must be proactive about creating it.
Have difficulties set your life goals?
Download the Comprehensive Goals Setting Pack (PDF) here.
5. Harness Your Personal Strength
As you overcome your inner voice, you will develop more personal power. Harnessing your personal strength is essential if you want to live your own life. “Personal strength” is based on power, confidence, and competence that individuals gradually acquire in the course of their development. It is a healthy form of self-assertion that reflects a natural striving for love, success, satisfaction, meaning in one’s life and “an attitude or state of mind.”. Personal strength is an expression of the real-self, and it is characterised by movement toward realisation and transcendent goals in life.
The quickest way to understand one’s strength is through personality assessment, understanding your personality traits can help you to understand your preferences and the preferences of other people and how or why these might be different. Personality traits are useful to recognise our own strengths, our thoughts, feelings, and many more.
