Do you love your life?

If I’m honest, there have been many times in my life in which I didn’t love my life at all. My mind goes to dark places and it wants to stay there.

I hate my life

I want to die

What’s the point?

This sentiment has been shared by many of the moms I coach and talk to a regular basis.

Going through pain is hard, so it’s only natural that we don’t exactly love it when life is painful. However, I’ve found that there are 5 steps we can follow to design a life you love, so you can experience happiness, hope, and healing, even through the pain.

I went through a lot of physical and emotional pain last year and I’m still recovering; however, it was also a year of lots of learning and joy. There is no one who leads a perfect life and I try to be as candid about my struggles as I can so others, because life is a gift, as imperfect as it is and as imperfect as we are.

The secret is to be deliberate about creating a life you love and being consistent in the practice of appreciation.

Dreaming up and designing a life you love may seem like a selfish thing to do, but when you live a life you love, you are happier and the people around you get happier, too!

5 Steps to a Life You Love

In order to build a life you love, you must dream, plan, act, let go, and trust. What does this mean? Let’s go through each step together!

Dream. Manifesting your dreams will take some deliberate dreaming. The process of building your dreams starts with a simple question: What Do I LOVE?

Lots of people will start building their dreams based on what they’ve always known, what they see others do, or what they believe is “realistic” for them. This life is the only life that’s yours to live, and yet, it takes courage to really claim it.

Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” and because this is true, sometimes it takes doing an assessment of each area and rating your level of satisfaction, before you can dare start dreaming.

It’s true that we are motivated by both pain and pleasure, fear and love, the carrot and the stick, but do make sure to keep your focus on the vibration of love, as you think of your dreams.

Write detailed statements of what your life will look like in every area in the near future (i.e. 3 years from now). Write in the present tense and start with “I am happy and grateful now that I am…” and put your heart and imagination into it.

Plan. After we have a clear picture of what we desire to have, do, be, experience, and contribute in our life, we must start the planning process.

Having a compelling vision of your dream life is not enough, just like visualizing your dream home is not enough to start building it. If your dream life had a blueprint, what would it look like?

What are the daily steps you must take to make sure your intentions, desires, and BOLD goals come to pass? 

A dream involves the heart and the plan engages the mind. 

Act. Faith without works is dead, so we must make a list of actions that we will take to co-create a life we love living.

Executing our plan will take some discipline and some flexibility. Discipline, because taking intentional action will require more effort, energy, and focus than we even think we possess. Flexibility, because we will need to rethink our plan and pivot as we move more than we expect it.

Taking action is about using the tools, training, and techniques available to us and being open to unconventional practices that activate our mental faculties, like mindfulness, gratitude, meditation, self-compassion, and self-forgiveness.

Let Go. If we are humble enough, we can all admit that we can’t even breathe without assistance.

In order to build a life we love living, we must let go of our preconceived beliefs of how it’s supposed to happen, when it’s supposed to happen, and even what is supposed to happen. This is such a hard step!!!

Letting go doesn’t mean quitting your dream or letting go of your quest; it simply means you don’t play God, expecting perfection and exerting extreme control. You simply write up your vision statements, create your personal action plan, and put in significant, consistent, and intentional effort in making it happen, and the rest will work itself out.

As you monitor your progress, you can let go of what is not working, what doesn’t serve you, and what is hindering you or stalling you.

Something I continue to learn is that nothing is worth giving up my peace, and that “what they’re going to say” or “how they’re going to judge me” is not really important in the scheme of things. Releasing toxic relationships has been liberating and strengthening for me.

Trust. Trusting is hard for everyone. Trusting is even harder for those of us who grew up without safety or certainty and/or have been constantly betrayed. However, trust is an essential ingredient to living a happy, fulfilling, and meaningful life. 

There’s a verse I really love that reads: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” When I look at things through the limited lens of my perspective, I get in trouble: I overthink, I worry, I predict the worst case scenarios that take me down the rabbit hole of anxiety, depression, and harming thoughts.

Trust is a process and it takes faith, but more than that, it takes awareness. Without being willing and open to look at our limiting beliefs, negative patterns, and toxic practices, we really cannot be open to what God has in store for us. 

As Byron Katie says, there are three types of businesses: God’s business, other people’s business, and my business. I’ve learned that as I trust people with their own lives, I trust that God knows his job as God, and I mind my own business, life doesn’t seem as dark, overwhelming, and unfair as it feels at times.

My business is to take personal responsibility for my thoughts, feelings, words, and actions, to nurture my relationships, take care of my body, magnify my life calling, and improve a bit each day.

I think we all struggle with letting go and trusting that it’s all in divine order and this is why we fail to celebrate the wins that seem small, to take in the joys that seem insignificant, and to be fully present in the moments that matter.

Are you ready to live a life you love?  Life mastery requires purposeful living toward our greatness and limitless potential. Share your thoughts with us in the comment box below!

[ela]