Savor Life: 26 Ways to Live With Passion

uJust how much of your time do you use up worrying over the past or fretting about the  future, doing things you don’t like, or frittering away valuable time with mind-numbing activities? Consider it for a moment and be honest with yourself.

• Could you be an over-thinker?

• Do you come up with never-ending to-do lists?

• Do you commit lots of time watching TV or surfing the net?

• Do you work too much or too long?

Since I have gotten a little older and the inescapable fact of life’s fleeting nature has become more real, I’ve begun to see each day, each moment as an amazing opportunity for joy, contentment, and love. Oh how I wish I had felt this way in my younger years.

If we all live to age 90, from birth to death most of us have 32,850 days of living. Our Earth has existed 4.55 billion years. Our existence here is merely a blip of time.

This realization has provoked plenty of soul searching for me. (Some might call it a mid-life crisis!) I have thought, read and studied a lot about what comprises a purposeful life.

1. Living in integrity. This is something you must define yourself by creating your individual operating system. But in general it includes living in alignment with your values and your personal/spiritual beliefs; being authentic and honest with yourself and others; and moving into balance financially.

2. Creating a contribution. Whether through our work or elsewhere, we all need to feel we’ve got a purpose and have made some mark on the world. Our everyday life should be infused with some intrinsic meaning. Developing a passion and sharing it with the world provides tremendous joy and fulfillment.

3. Having good relationships. We need loving, supportive, and healthy relationships with romantic partners, family, friends, and co-workers. We certainly know the impact of bad relationships. Good ones offer us joy, contentment, and connectedness.

4. Being healthy. When we feel great physically, we are bound to feel good mentally and emotionally. We we feel bad physically, we feel bad all over. It is hard to enjoy life if your physical health is poor.

5. Having pleasure. There are a myriad of things to enjoy in our amazing world — more than we’re able to ever experience in one lifetime. As long as we are living in the framework of our integrity, then pleasurable experiences should be pursued and enjoyed regularly — without guilt. Having fun is critical to savoring life.

As you examine these five areas in your own life, keep in mind that first defining your integrity and creating your own personal operating system will make it much easier to define the other four areas. When we live outside of our integrity, it casts a shadow over all other areas of our lives.

Allow me to share 26 ideas for savoring life and living it to the fullest in these five critical areas:

1. Define or refine your values and personal operating system. Understand what is essential to you, and aim to live in accordance with this.

2. Restore your integrity wherever you have stepped out of it. Make amends, correct the situation, shift the balance. This will likely reduce agitation and guilt.

3. Be true to yourself. Be authentic. Look for ways in which you are pretending, acting to impress, or living out some other person’s expectations instead of your own.

4. Examine your job. You spend many hours a day in this job. If you don’t adore it, or at best like it, you’re frittering away a good portion of your life. This really is imperative for a happy life. Take control of your career.

5. Know your passions. If you do not really know what you’re passionate about, learn. Invest time to make this happen, then find a way to regularly incorporate your passion into your daily life. Take time to discover your passion.

6. Give to others daily. Share your knowledge, passions, skills, and time with another person on a regular basis. This doesn’t demand a grand gesture. Impacting one life can make a huge ripple around the world. It feels good.

7. Show kindness. In the smallest interactions, be kind. Choose kindness over being right, indignant, smarter, richer, or too busy. Kindness feels good to you and also to the recipient. And it’s really infectious.

8. Release some stuff. When you have lots of material things that you do not use, release them. Give them away to someone who can use them.This really is tremendously satisfying.

9. Release some money. If you have plenty of money, use it for good. Contribute it in a manner that makes a person person or the whole world an even better place.

10. Just listen. Pay attention to someone’s story, their pain, their joyful event, their boring anecdote, their fears. Give someone the gift of really hearing them.

11. Nurture your friendships. Become the initiator. Express your feelings for them. Learn more about your friends. Be there for good and bad times.

12. Be the person you want in others. Define what you want in a relationship, then be that person yourself. Like attracts like.

13. Let it go. Be quick to forgive and quick to forget. Holding grudges and nurturing old wounds is unhealthy and makes you unhappy.

14. Know when to let go. However, some relationships can pull you down. Examine those in your life. Is it time to let go? st how much energy are you giving away to them?

15. Expand your network. Actively make new friends. They can improve your life, introduce you to new ideas, pleasures, and other new friends.

16. Love yourself. A healthy love for yourself with healthy self-confidence creates healthy relationships.

17. Communicate often. We so often misunderstand and misinterpret each other. Or we say things we don’t really mean. Learn healthy communication skills and use them often, particularly in your primary relationship.

18. Get educated on nutrition. Read books, blogs, or magazines about proper eating for good health. Then eat that way. If you’re unhealthy, it will undermine your happiness in every areas of your life.

19. Go outside every day. Sunlight boosts your mood and supplies vitamin D. Being in nature enlivens your soul and enables you to feel connected to the world surrounding you.

20. Get moving. You already know this. Get some exercise. Walk, bike, run, swim, dance, stretch, use resistance training. You can also make it fun. Care for this remarkable house for your soul.

21. Cut back, simplify, reduce stress. Find balance in your life allowing some things go. You can’t do or be everything. Choose a few things, and enjoy them fully. Identify where you are stressed, and deal with it.

22. Find an outlet. You will find difficult times in each and every life. Find someone, a coach, counselor, minister, or friend, who can help you through them. Discussing your problems with someone trusted can help you heal and cope and stay mentally and emotionally healthy.

23. Play often. Play shouldn’t end at childhood. Have fun regularly. Define what exactly is fun for you personally and go do it weekly.

24. Increase your travel. The whole world truly is your oyster. There’s so much to explore and see and revel in. Pick many places that intrigue you. Save your money. Plan some trips.

25. Unplug. Television and computer have pulled us far from real living. Actively decrease the length of time you spend in front of them. Fill this time with pleasurable activities instead. Read, cook, play a sports activity, meet up with friends, do something creative, make love, meditate, go to the theater, look at the stars, chop wood, carry water.

26. Think less. Be more. Act more. Negative thoughts create negative feelings. Actively seek to stop negative thinking, and simply be in the moment. If negative thoughts and feelings are getting intrusive, do something distracting. Select one of the activities above and savor it.

It requires thought, planning, and a dose of wisdom to create a happy and passionate life — a life you can savor. Experience teaches us these lessons, and wisdom helps us to embrace them.