How to Live a Great Life (7 Principles)

Naturally, we all want to live a great life.

We want to live up to our potential, grow, be successful, have great relationships, achieve admirable and memorable things. We want to live a life of meaning, purpose, contribution, and dignity. 

Do not become a wondering generality.

Zig Ziglar

While each person is different and unique, thus greatness and success may mean varying things to each one, in the end, we all just want to be happy.

Life, though, is like a rollercoaster; it has its ups and its downs. No one is always fortuitous, as no one is always unfortunate. 

For some time, things may be going wonderfully for us, and it may look like it will go on like that interminably; until, at some moment, suddenly, “life” turns the tables on us and gives us one blow after the other. It reminds us that things change, and that hardship is a “dish” on the menu, as is prosperity.

No one has a perfect life. Sometimes, sooner or later, “life” comes knocking on our door, and we have to answer the call and go through our distinctive challenges. 

And one needs to pause for a moment and consider, if everyone wants to live a great life, a happy life, and everyone can take certain action to achieve such a goal, why is it that most people don’t do exactly that? What holds us back? And what is it that will enable us to do that?  

In the face of this, how do we manage a great life? How do we live a life of fulfillment and happiness? 

People aiming at nothing in life end up hitting nothing dead on the head.

Les Brown

Here are 7 principles*.

• If you’re working on a job that is not going anywhere, you are not happy, and, maybe, you are not even making much money either, just enough to barely pass the month, you need to take a moment to reevaluate your life and reconsider your choices. There’s got to be more in life than that; than this boring, unfulfilling, meaningless version of it. You need to choose a different kind of future; and you need to work on it, to create it and build it. 
• You need to find your reason for being, the purpose for your life. You need to create a vision for your life; one that will inspire you and motivate you, it will get you out of you comfort zone and “push” you to take the actions necessary to be successful. When you don’t have a grip of purpose on your life, you have insecurity. Most people don’t know what their purpose is, but only subconsciously. Like birds find the north, we have an innate ability to find our purpose, our own “north”. But, we stop listening to ourselves as life goes on, and we never discover our true greatness, and capacity for creating miracles. So, find the things that will give you a sense of meaning, purpose and direction, a sense of fulfillment. Now you must go after them.
• Eyesight and mindsight: you have to release your past, your history, and use your imagination to see into the future. Give yourself a chance. As you begin to look toward the future, every time you find yourself saying that you can’t do something, putting yourself down, being negative about you and the possibilities for you, you got to literally catch yourself, and you got to affirm to yourself in the process, “I can make it. Someway, this can happen for me.” You got to remind yourself that you got powers within you, talents within you, that you haven’t even reached for yet. You’ve got to go out of your comfort zone. Once you give an opportunity to yourself, to try and to experiment, you will find that you can achieve things you couldn’t even imagine. It is practically impossible to eradicate negative thoughts; in fact, 87% of our thoughts are negative. In order to create what you want you need to change your inner conversation, and you will change the results. 
• When you are facing a difficult situation, or things in life have not turned out in the way that you’d like, you got to be willing to take action and do something about it, instead of just complaining. Life is like a grindstone, it can polish you or it can pulverize you, depending on how you position yourself. Just say “It’s possible!” That puts you in the playing field. You must look like you’re ready to give a fight for that dream, to hustle and grind. You can’t expect for everything to be perfect to go after your dream. say it’s possible and don’t let anybody turn you around, circumstances, hard times, whatever is happening, you know that this too shall pass, you have the ability and the capacity and a sense of entitlement. “I deserve to have good things happen to me”, and “it’s possible”. Once you have your dream, you inspire others to do it too. Once you’re defeated in you mind, though, it’s all over. You showed up with greatness in you, and most of us, because of the mindset we’ve been born into, and most of us, because we allow ourselves to be controlled by life, instead of being in charge of our lives, as opposed to taking charge of our lives, we are on automatic, just following the crowd. And, no matter what you do, you are going to have people criticize you. Joseph Campbell talks about the long night of the soul, you’re gonna have moments of feeling deceived and isolated, persecuted and condemned, even powerless. Long journey, long dark night of the soul, but you have to be ready, you have to endure, hold on to your dream. Don’t let anybody kill it in you, hold on to that dream, when it doesn’t make sense to anybody, including you sometimes, just hold on. Eventually help comes, in the middle of the night, help will come. And, when life knocks you down, sometimes you have to take two steps backwards to go forward. Find strength from somewhere deep down, It’s possible. When you’re facing defeat and disappointment, when everyone says you can’t do it, you don’t have what it takes, say, in spite of these odds, it’s possible, and I can do it. I can have my dream, I can have this new life, this new vision of myself. Remember, Adversity introduces a man to himself. And, wherever you find yourself, at some point and time you made an appointment to be there.
• Whatever you want, you got to focus on it, focus your thoughts. All achievement comes out of the human mind, constructive or destructive. You got to have a goal, a target to aim for. As you do that, you’re growing in conscience, and that will increase your manifesting power. You must say to yourself, “Good things are supposed to happen to me”, “It’s possible!” People are used to expect bad things to happen to them. It’s not “too good to be true”, it’s happening to the right person, you. 
• You must be grateful. You surely can think of, at least, one thing you are grateful for. And when you become negative about situations in your life, about people that you allow to push your buttons, catch yourself. That’s how you remain positive. The more energy you give, the more action you take, the more life can express through you, you are an outlet for all that life has. And as you change your mindset and believe that you have something to give, the act of giving makes you more alive and able to sustain life. “My life is good as it is and I can make a difference”. It’s important to be of service; think of what service you’re supposed to provide. “Service is the rent we pay for the space we take up on earth.” 
• Get counseling. Ask for help and don’t stop until you get it. Surround yourself with the right, positive people. There are those people who are always around when they need you, but disappear when you need them, you can not find them. You don’t want to just go through the tough times, you want to grow during the tough times. You want to determine who is it that you can count on, and who you should count out. Someone who will be there for you. Even if it’s not the ones you know now, if you ask for help, if you ask enough people, somebody will step in and help you out during the tough time. And it’s very important not to try and do it solo, not to try and go through it by yourself, there’s safety in counsel. You have to begin to surround yourself with positive people, and you want to ask for help, and find things that can encourage you. You want to become a part of a group of people that are united to “fight”, they are facing the same thing that you are facing, they come together with you, and are there to encourage and inspire each other. They are there to share the best ideas, methods and techniques. Don’t try and do this by yourself. They say misery loves company, but so does success. Surround yourself with achievement-driven people that have goals of getting on the other side of that challenge, whatever it might be (foreclosure, eviction, losing your job, sickness, etc.)

Tough times never last, but tough people do.

Rob Petula

Working on your mind is of the utmost importance, keeping your chin up, knowing and expecting that things will get better for you. Don’t just focus on the moment, hold a vision of being whole and healthy, hold a vision of being financially independent and debt-free, hold a vision of your relationships working out, hold a vision of things getting better for you. Don’t just focus on the now. Holding that vision will give you power, it will strengthen you, it will give you perseverance, it will give you patience, faith and determination. It will allow you to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Whatever the situation you may be facing in your life, you have to handle it, you have to face it, but you have to believe even if all is against you. Go into action, think of what is it you need to do, what adjustments you need to make, what is it you need to change. Maybe you need to make a radical change in your life, in your behavior, in your relationships, maybe you need to go to a new place. Maybe life is trying to tell you something and you have not been listening.

And before you do anything, you need to be still and quiet. Listen to the small voice within to give you directions. Maybe we need to ask someone to give us some direction, someone we trust, who believes in us, who maybe knows us better than ourselves, because it’s hard to see the picture when you’re in the frame.

You will always be faced with challenges in life, and series of situations that, if you don’t have enough courage and insight to know that you have outgrown that situation, and it is time to move on, then life will move on you.

I hope this post inspired you to take action and make some changes to improve your life, especially if you’re in a situation where you are unhappy.

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*Note: this post was inspired by material from motivational speaker Les Brown, included in the audiobook, “Breakthrough, Overcoming Obstacles and Breaking Barriers in Business and Life”.