By PAUL HUDSON
Everyone loves life. People may not love their lives in particular, but they do love the concept of life. We believe that everything and anything in life is possible. Unfortunately, we don’t always believe we hold those possibilities in our own hands.
The reality of it is that we do – we do live a life that has endless possibility. The only problem is that we choose to believe it otherwise. We choose to believe that we are incapable of living our lives the way that we want to live them.
We choose to accept our reality as it’s painted by those who took charge of their own. We don’t have to be complacent. We don’t have to fall into line. Why not stir things up a bit and live by your own rules?
1. Today can be a good day, but only if you make it so.
Why do we often feel so powerless? Because we convince ourselves that we are. We wait for things to be given to us – handouts. In life, there are no true handouts and the reality is that if you want something then you need to make it happen for yourself.
It all starts with today. Whether or not today is a good day doesn’t depend on the weather. It doesn’t depend on your “mood” (that’s also in your control).
It doesn’t depend on outside sources. If you want to have a pleasant and wonderful day then choose to have one. It’s all about your perception and what you allow yourself to believe.
2. Greatness is a lifestyle, not a race.
We all want to “achieve” greatness. But who ever said that greatness was an achievement? Greatness isn’t crossing over the finishing line – it’s the ability to fight the good fight day in and day out.
Greatness is strength, the strength to keep pushing and to keep living your life the way you want to live it. Greatness isn’t an end result. It’s a state of being. You don’t win great. You are great.
3. The fact that you haven’t yet given up is a success in itself.
It may give you little comfort to think about how you’re still waist deep in the struggle, but the truth is that you are one of the few people with the guts to keep at it. Most people give up before they even begin… but not you.
No, you wake up every day and get sh*t done. You crawl inch by inch against the current because you refuse to give up.
You refuse to accept failure. You refuse to listen to others when they tell you that you’re not good enough. You’re still in it. They’ve already dropped out. Who’s the loser?
4. The only things that you should do today are the things that you want to do today.
F*ck’em. F*ck’em all. People tell you that sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to do – that’s bullsh*t. If you’re not doing what you want to be doing – every second of every day – then you’re living wrong.
Sure, not everything we do in life is extraordinarily pleasant, but if we are living right then we still want to be doing whatever it is that we’re doing. The trick is not to want to do things the easy way.
5. Your life is your design.
There are plenty of things in life that are out of our control, but don’t let this fool you into believing that your life as a whole is out of your control.
The reality is that the life you are living is almost entirely by your own design. You have made choices along the way that led you down the road you’re currently traveling.
Saying that your life is out of your control is lazy and cowardly – it’s what other people want you to believe so that they have an easier time getting what it is they want out of their lives.
6. The important people in your life deserve both respect and attention.
The fact is that most people just aren’t important. Nevertheless, we sometimes forget this, allowing the wrong people to take up too much space in our daily lives.
We meet assh*les, jerks and schmucks regularly – especially when you live in a highly populated area or work in a large company.
These individuals will try to get to you, will try to influence you and become a part of your life because they find theirs to be mundane and useless. They already poisoned their own lives and now they are looking to poison yours.
7. Most people are idiots – don’t let them frustrate you.
This one took me a long time to accept. You need to resist the urge to “help” others and show them that the way they are thinking is incorrect. The fact is that people never want to be wrong and never want to hear that they are wrong.
Moreover, idiots will argue their points regardless of how absurd their argument or how close-minded and ignorant they themselves are. You can’t help all the idiots in the world because there are too many of them.
The best thing that you can do, to minimize your own stress, is to learn to deal with their stupidity accordingly. Use it to your own benefit.
8. Happiness is more a decision than anything else.
It’s easy to fall under the illusion that our happiness is the result of our environment, a result of what happens to us in life.
This is the sort of thinking that you want to avoid at all costs. You can be happy, right this very moment, but it does take an effort.
It takes an effort to see the world in the way that you need to see it in order to appreciate the fact that you are living in it. To be happy is to be content and then being happy about the fact that you are content.
9. Either forgive and forget or forget and remove.
As mentioned before, most people are idiots, and even more people have no place in your life. You have to also keep in mind that people are egocentric and are always looking out for themselves first and foremost.
With that said, when one of these individuals does you wrong or offends you, which is bound to happen, be careful with how you respond. What you don’t want to do is dwell on the unpleasant.
What you ought to do is either forgive these individuals and forget the instance ever happened, or you forget how they crossed you and then you remove them from your life entirely.
10. True love is rare – don’t take it for granted.
This isn’t to say that understanding what you have when you still have it comes naturally – our minds like to always consider the possibility that the grass on the other side may be greener. Life isn’t about doing our best to constantly upgrade.
To live a happy and fulfilling life, we have to learn to appreciate what we have and love those that we have. If you fall in love then do your very best to stay that way; eventually it will, as all other things, end.
11. Never expect a tomorrow, but be thankful when tomorrow comes.
Look at how many people die every minute of every day and you’ll notice that waking up in the morning is a blessing. We don’t live in a peaceful world, but one laden with havoc and chaos. On top of all of this, accidents do happen and people die because of them.
Getting another day to breathe, to experience life, and to be happy is the greatest gift one can receive. We may not know what happens after we die, but we can’t forsake the possibility that death is truly the end. Live while you can.
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