10 Beliefs You Should Adopt For A More Fulfilling Life
I often find myself asking: Is life ever easy? In theory, life could be easy -- you can have everything set for you. You could have money. You could have great looks. You could be a genius. Nevertheless, you could, if you so choose, to find reasons as to why you are unhappy and as to why your life is difficult because you are unhappy.
More often than not, we are the reason it’s difficult to get through life. Why? The way we perceive things, the way we choose to interpret them and understand them, prevents us from accepting that our lives are pretty awesome. Of course, there are many people in countless situations who are, indeed, living difficult lives. There are people who are in truly bad situations and are truly struggling to either stay alive or stay sane. But the majority of you reading this are not either of those people.
You almost certainly have a difficult life only because you believe you have a difficult life. Or, better yet, you actually do have a difficult life because other things you believe end up yielding results that aren’t in your favor. It’s your beliefs screwing everything up for you. Your beliefs bypass true perception and understanding of things. We all have them and the further away they are from the reality of things, the more difficult your life will be to lead.
Here are 10 beliefs you should seriously consider adopting:
1. The Only Thing You Can’t Do Is What You Can’t Physically Do, And That You Can Work On
You can’t get anywhere in life thinking you are incapable of achieving things. It’s easy to admit you have weaknesses and to write off your dreams as impossible, but that only leads to the death of dreams. You are capable of anything; the only thing that differs is how long it will take you to get there. If you aren’t capable at the moment, then figure out what you have to do to be capable, and then go do it. Excuses aren’t for the living.
2. Healthy Is Fun
It’s not that it can be fun, or should be fun; healthy is fun. But it takes time to make the transition. Healthy also doesn’t mean having to let go of all the things you enjoy most – those things might tend to be less healthy, but only when in excess. Treat yourself rarely, but take care of yourself regularly. You will be happier for it because your body will feel better and feeling good is what happiness is. Plus, you’re more likely to live longer and enjoy that happiness for longer. What doesn’t sound fun about that?
3. The World Is Made Up Of Idiots And You’re One Of Them
Accepting that the majority of others are idiots will leave you feeling less frustrated, less often. You won’t get annoyed when people do dumb things because you are only confirming your belief. If they happen to surprise you and act intelligently, at least it’s a pleasant surprise. Accepting that you, yourself, are an idiot, which all of us are to one extent or another, will help you laugh off your mistakes rather than punish yourself for them. Nobody is perfect and anything short of perfection is partially stupid.
4. You Only Lose When You Give Up
You need to believe you can’t lose; only then will you never lose. If you don’t believe in yourself and your capabilities, and throw in the towel whenever things get tough, then don’t expect much out of life. The fear of failure can, and often does, stop us in our tracks. It makes us question ourselves and convinces us to give up. More often than not, we reason with ourselves as to why we really threw in the towel, but it always boils down to a combination of three things: fear, laziness and uncertainty with what we want out of life.
5. You Are The Only Person You Can Ever Depend On
Others are guaranteed to disappoint you, at least from time to time. It may not be their faults -- things that are out of a person’s control do happen. Nevertheless, depending on another individual adds another variable to the equation, a variable that is volatile. They may get caught up. They may forget. Or they may simply choose to please themselves rather than to please you. Pick your poison.
6. Happiness Is A Decision
Lasting happiness, when looked at logically, must be a resting state. It can’t be something that is the result of something else; it must exist independently as a basic, starting-point emotion. Otherwise, after every moment of happiness, unhappiness must follow. Happiness cannot be the high point because we always regress to a lower point afterwards, a neutral point.
This leads us to feeling unhappy because we feel as if we have lost the happiness; in reality, what we lost was the joy and excitement experienced during and just after the moment of experience. In order to be happy forever, you have to be happy with nothing. You have to be happy doing nothing – just simply being, living. When you’re literally doing nothing, happiness becomes a choice.
7. Knowledge Is Power
If you’re looking to be successful in life – regardless of what it is you are aiming for – there will always be competition. All success requires competition because success is measured in relevance to others who are after the very same thing. Most things in life don’t have intrinsic value, but instead, are given value by those who covet those things.
If no one in the world wanted to be president, then being president wouldn’t be worth anything; it would be a burden. Therefore, in order to be successful you have to perform better than those gunning for the same goal. There’s only one way of winning and staying a winner: by not only being smart, but by being smarter than the competition and by getting lucky from time to time. Unfortunately, success isn’t completely in your control, either, but you can’t be unlucky forever.
8. Life Is Only Worth The Love
Love is the greatest thing in the world. Why? Not only does it feel incredible, it does a lot of good. I’m not only talking romantic love – this goes for all love. Romantically, love allows you to connect with another individual in a way unique to all others. You are able to share your life and make it mean something to someone other than you, alone.
That’s basically what love does in the unromantic sense, as well. When you love and that love is reciprocated, your life has meaning. You are connected with another living being – that in itself is incredible. You are affecting another person's life – without you, his or her life would be completely different. You no longer could be forgotten from complete history.
9. Negativity Should Be Entirely Removed From Your Life
Things that happen, happen. That which is, is. If you can’t change it, there is no reason to worry about it. There is no reason to view it in a negative light at all; it’s the way the dice landed. It’s the hand you were dealt – or one of any other of a million clichés. Things can be sad; sadness in mourning is not negativity. Negativity is the lightest form of hatred.
It’s so delicate that we can disguise it as something else completely. However, negativity is hatred in its most basic form. Sadness is an emotion. Negativity is a thought -- an unpleasant, hateful thought. It’s because our language allows us to interchange these feelings of sorts, we often mistake something for what it’s not. You can be both sad and positive, but you can’t be hateful and positive. Why remove negativity? It doesn’t feel good and leads us to make poor decisions.
10. You Have A Purpose In Life
It can often feel like we were born for no apparent reason. The truth is, however, there is a beginning and ending to all life. This goes for any parallel universe where life exists: There is always a beginning and end. There are many ways to reach the end from here, but the fact is, you are necessary for this version of reality to end the way that it is meant to end.
In a way, if you didn’t exist, this exact universe would not exist. What you do with your life decides the story of the universe. The beauty is, you can write the story nearly any way you see fit. Everything has some sort of possibility of happening, literally everything. The question really is in which reality you’d love to live. That’s your purpose.
