4 Reasons why you better live life to the full!

I was prompted by a video this week from the wonderful Darren Hardy about living a life of regret. The truth is it is all too easy to fall into a routine, to settle, to just ‘accept’ everything as it lands in your lap. But why when you have the power to fulfil your ambitions, your dreams, your life?

The question is, how many times do you want to hear yourself say ‘I should have’, ‘I could have’, ‘Why didn’t I’, ‘What if’…

In the US surveys have shown that some of the most common regrets relate to romance, family, education, career, finance, parenting, health, friends, spirituality, community, leisure and self.

Most regrets are either based on things you did or things you didn’t do. My take on that is that if you did something you regret, the best you can do is learn forgiveness, take the lesson learnt from the situation and work to not make the same mistake again because these things are not erasable. Living with that kind of regret will make your life miserable and life is too precious for that to be the way forward.

On the other hand, you have regrets about what you didn’t do. Fortunately, you have time to do something about these!

I often imagine what it would be like to die not having fulfilled, or at least strived to fulfil, my potential and it spurs me on to get up and do. I challenge myself to be more of the best version of me and to do so with gusto! So what if the relationship doesn’t work out as I hoped, so what if I fail to get the top honcho job I applied for, so what if my parenting skills aren’t as amazing as I would have wanted them to be… at least I put in the effort, I worked at it. And that’s better than not even trying.

Regret is a weighty cloak that leaves you questioning yourself and your abilities. Regrets bring no joy but plenty of pain. Is that the life you want to live? I doubt it and here are 4 reasons why NOW is the time to live your life to the full:

1. You don’t know what tomorrow will bring

Imagine you are told you have 7 days left on planet earth. Next week things will change forever and you don’t know if that is going to be a good thing or the end of life. Today, however, with no concerns about money, you can do anything you want to; what are you going to do? Who will you spend time with? Where will you travel to? What would you say to the people you love? What one thing would make life feel completely worthwhile if you did it in the next 7 days?

Assumptions: We often assume tomorrow will come and we go through the motions accordingly. We argue with loved ones thinking we can sort it out tomorrow. We go to jobs we hate and tell ourselves it is what it is, the rat race; I’ll leave someday. We long to do something meaningful for our community but put it off because right now we are too busy.

Well, it’s time for a wake-up call! We don’t know what tomorrow has in store so start living, loving and doing today…

2. Your past isn’t your present

Take some time in the coming week to see how many of your conversations with people (and your good self) are focused on the past. Clearly, if you are reflecting on the past positively and it brings you joy… great – lap it up and share the love. Unfortunately, most of us talk about the past and it’s about the ‘awful people’ we met, the crappy relationship we had, the useless boss we endured, the unsupportive friends we did so much for… you get my drift. Negative vibes running wild and killing the joy of life, bringing up all kinds of regrets; what we should have said, done, not done.

Reality check: life is full of highs and lows and of this one thing I am certain. But just as the highs pass so do the lows. We do not have to wallow in every bad moment for long stretches of time bringing other people down with us and talking about how bad life is, like we regret being born. We are resilient and we can bounce back; it’s called choice.

3. Your potential is limitless

Do you ever wonder what is possible for you? If you put your mind to something if you had the resources if you were in the right circle of people? What would that look like? What might you be doing now that you currently are not? What great challenges would you take on? Think about the late great Muhammed Ali – died ‘The Greatest’; Victoria Wood– died ‘respected & loved comedienne, writer, musician’, David Bowie, Prince – died ‘Game changers in the world of music’. Was it pure luck? Was it pure talent? I believe they rolled up their sleeves and dug deep to find out what they could do, what was possible for them, how and what they could do to impact their world and they didn’t stop until they died.

Fact: we are limited by our beliefs. There is a famous quote by Henry Ford ‘Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are right. We have every single day we are here to discover what we can do. Some things we will do extraordinarily well, some things we’ll do satisfactorily and other things we will struggle to do… but if we don’t try, if we are so fearful of failure we don’t see the point, we can pretty much remove the opportunity to do anything extraordinary because that often takes commitment, focus, desire and acceptance of failure. Our human potential is growing, not diminishing. The greatest resources we need to unleash our human potential are our bodies and our brains. No excuses then!

4. Life is a gift

I don’t know your beliefs so this might be a personal perspective more than anything else. I believe in God just as much as I believe we are energy. I believe we have this one opportunity to live life as we know it and that this opportunity is a gift. And I love a gift!

Simply refuse: refuse to be half as good as you can be, refuse to accept life is nothing more than a rat race, refuse to believe that you can’t do more, be more, have more. We have an amazing world to explore, so many incredible people to meet, life changing experiences to have.

Simply put, ‘In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take’

Live Blissfully,

YvonneB