There are 2 types of people in the world.
The first type doesn’t like to rock the boat and goes along to get along. They like to feel that they are part of the ‘flock’.
The second type like to break the rules, rock the boat and don’t give too much of a damn what others think about who they are or what they are doing. This type is the rarest, yet they have the most potential to really live their lives to the fullest.
Why? Because they have the courage to stand out from the crowd and dare to be different.
Being yourself is not always going to be easy because it really means that you know that you are here to do something with a deeper purpose than just get a job, pay the bills or raise a family.
It’s true that these everyday things are a part of the world we live in and certainly have their place but what happens when your employer decides they don’t need you anymore and the kids leave home? You can be left with a gaping hole in your life which you have no idea of how to fill. This hole can often feel like fear, uncertainty, depression or any number of unpleasant states.
To live a life filled with passion, purpose and power is to walk on the edge never really knowing what tomorrow will bring. It is the courage to live from your heart, instead of your head and let your creative intelligence fly free from within. It is also the secret ingredient to making sure that your life never feels empty or meaningless again.
The challenge with living this way is that it means taking risks and not always doing what you or others think you ‘should’ be doing with your life.
Taking risks doesn’t mean doing things that can potentially cause harm.
Quite the contrary… it means to doing things you have never done before and to get out of your ‘comfort-zone’ a little each day so you can explore new horizons and open up new doorways of opportunity in your life.
To get up each day and do the same old stuff that isn’t helping you to live your true potential is the definition of craziness. Heck, we could drop dead tomorrow and then what would it all have been for? Would you feel that you lived your full potential or even 50% of it?
If the answer is no, then the answer is to understand that it really does take courage to be yourself and follow your innermost dreams and desires.
The courage that I’m speaking about here is the courage to give yourself permission to unleash your inner creative genius. Creativity is the joy of life. Take a look around you and notice that people who have routine lives that are void of any creative spark in their life are the most stressed, tired and unhappy that you will come across. Even having all the money in the world pales in comparison to the richness that a person who lives their creativity enjoys.
being creative doesn’t mean we all have to be a Michelangelo. It can look like you spend some time each day writing poetry, playing a musical instrument, singing, dancing, acting, gardening, inventing, cooking, building a business, creating new recipes, or anything at all that gets your creative juices flowing.
And if you can find a way to make your passion your vocation then you will literally be in Heaven on Earth.
But courage is more than just being creative. It also takes courage to stand out from the crowd and be or do things other than what people expect of you. When push comes to shove those people that are supportive – keep them in your life, those that aren’t – either limit your time with them or ditch them completely because life is too short to be dragging needless baggage along with you.
5 Simple Steps To Live Your Life To The Fullest
1. Take a risk to do something different every single day. It doesn’t matter how big or small it is as it’s more important that you think about it and then just do it. Don’t forget that risks are not just physical. They can also be mental and emotional as well. By choosing to think in new ways or face your fears that too is taking risks.
2. Face Your Fears. One of things that holds us back from moving forward are our fears. If you’re not yet aware the acronym F.E.A.R stands for ‘False Evidence Appearing Real’. In other words, most of our fears are simply imagined. When I realized this many years ago and started to walk towards them, instead of avoiding them that’s when life got a whole bunch easier and more fun.
Yes, it can be scary looking into the face of your fears and showing them that you are now the boss but the upside is that your self confidence and personal power will grow in leaps an bounds. If it helps, just start with baby steps and tackle the smaller fears that you can handle right now. As you get stronger, it will get easier.
3. Make happiness a way of life. A lot of people put happiness on hold until this, that or the other happens in their life. The downside of this is that happiness then becomes a future experience that may ot may not happen dependent on whether the desired outcome is achieved or not. Even if it does happen, the likelihood is that the happiness will be short lived as achieving goals has never been about being creating happiness, it has always been to do with the journey of who we become.
By learning to be happy with who you are and what you have in your life right now, then you are already deeply fulfilled because what human being doesn’t really just want to be happy with their life?
4. Listen to your heart. This sounds easier than it is for most. There are so many demands on our time and energy each day that it can be challenging to have just 1 quite moment let alone get still enough to let our heart open and feel into what we truly want to have, be or do moment to moment.
A simple way to start listening to your heart is to either sit or lay down, close your eyes, place your hands gently over your heart and ask yourself any question that is important for you to have an answer to. Then just be quiet and listen. The answer does not need to be a loud booming voice in your head as after all it is your heart you are talking to. It can come as a feeling, or an impulse or an image or an idea. But make no mistake that the moment you ask the question, your heart has already answered it.
It may take time to learn how your heart is communicating with you and trust what it is saying but if you stick with it you’ll soon be able to do it at will anytime you like just by stilling yourself for a moment and waiting for an answer.
5. Say ‘Yes’ To Yourself. ‘Yes’ is one of the most powerful words in the English language. It puts a smile on peoples face when you say yes to them and it can build a bridge between two opposing sides when there was nothing but a chasm between them. However, what many people seems to have trouble with is saying ‘Yes’ to themselves. Whether this is because they have a deep seeded belief that putting yourself first before others is wrong on some level, who really knows, but until we can say ‘Yes’ to our needs, wants and desires first, then we become little more than sacrificial lambs.
Sacrificing your life to please others or to keep the peace is a lose-lose scenario. You lose because you give away your power to others and they lose because they think you are being yourself. Nobody wins in this scenario. Of course there will be times that you will need to do things that you don’t want to but they should be the exception rather than the rule.
By learning to say ‘Yes’ to your wants, needs and desires first as a way of life, you’ll start to march to the beat of your own drum. When this happens, you start to send out a powerful message to life that you are force to be reckoned with on this planet and then life responds in kind by sending your more to say “yes’ to. This is called the law of attraction — what you put out in thought, word and deed is what you get back.
When I first started saying ‘Yes’ to myself I couldn’t believe how quickly my life turned around. Instead of being boring and predictable, it became the most exciting adventure I could have ever imagined. Since then I have gone on to write books, do public speaking in front of thousands of people, build several successful business both online and offline and enjoy incredible health and relationships.
The first step in saying yes to yourself is really to just learn to say no when you mean it. Saying ‘No’ to others literally means you are saying ‘Yes’ to yourself and when you can do that without having to justify it or fell guilty about it, then you are on the path to greatness!
