Deliberately Choose How You Want To Live Your Life

Nov 2
10:22

2009

Iyabo Asani

Iyabo Asani

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This article asks the question, "Is your life worth living?" This simple question, when asked often, creates more abundance in your life. Here are practical tools to remind yourself that you are in control of creating a wonderful quality of life regardless of your circumstances.

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Many people live reactionary lives where they find themselves always putting out fires and never living the life of their dreams. Is that you? Make the choice to deliberately start living life on your terms by choosing to be proactive about your life choices.

How proactive are you when it comes to how you choose to live your life?

Stephen Covey,Deliberately Choose How You Want To Live Your Life Articles in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, says the first habit is be proactive. I read that book in 1989 and that principle still resonates with me. Many people live lives of default. They wake up in the morning and life just happens to them. They do not make choices. Instead they spend a lot of time trying to get out of things that happen to them. They invest their time and energy reacting instead of being proactive.

Each of us has to choose to change our mindset to be more proactive instead of reactive. It takes awareness and a desire to really improve the way your life is, in order to make these changes effectively.

These days, we seem to have lost our capacity to revel in “choice.” We are overwhelmed with choices and we end up not making any choice at all. Or, if we make a choice, we have escalated expectations and if the choice does not feed our expectations, then we feel we are responsible for making the wrong choice. And then, we shy away from making choices. So we do not make the wrong choice.

Psychologist, Barry Schwartz spoke on the Power of Choice at The Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference. He said when he was growing up, you bought one type of jeans and you wore them and washed them several times and then they fit perfectly. These days, you have the choice of slim fit, wide legs, low riders, regular riders and when you buy one and take it home, if it does not fit, it becomes your fault, because you made the wrong choice. Well, the truth is, the clearer we are about what we actually want, the clearer we are about the choices that we make. 

When you proactively and deliberately make choices, you are signifying to everyone around you and to the Universe at large that your life is worth living.

This may sound like a bizarre question but do you live your life as if it is worth living?

Being proactive and being clear about your choices will help you live your life fully and exceptionally.

Being clear on who you are will help you be clear about your choices.  In my law practice and in my coaching practice, I have discovered that most people are just not aware of the value of their lives.

This is part of what is going on when you hit midlife and your parents die, or your body betrays you and you realize you have spent most of your life trying to attain an elusive goal and you have not spent enough time just enjoying the small things. You realize that you have not spent enough time just being happy and just having a plain old good time. 

The point is this, no one is going to come into your life and tell you how valuable and wonderful you are. That is a job for you. You have to do that for yourself. You have to remind yourself every single day that you have a phenomenal life worth living. This is critical if you actually want to reinvent your life.

This is where affirmations come in. You may not feel as if you have a phenomenal life but you do. With all the scientific breakthroughs, the fact is no one can create life. Life itself is a mysterious. So use affirmations to direct your thoughts and focus on where you want to go.

Here is how you use affirmations. You want it to be close to what you want. Take the time to discover the hidden desires behind what you want. So for example, if you want a new car, what is the want behind that? You probably want the reliability and dependability of a new car. You are  looking forward to the clean car smell and you may even have in mind a high end car that would signify your level of success. 

The perfect affirmation for this would be: I enjoy a reliable and dependable new car. Affirm this to yourself all the time. In addition, envision what you want and experience the emotions of what you want now.

Use these tools to help you to help you deliberately choose how you want to live and reinvent your life.