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Thursday, September 13, 2012

Lifestyle: What If We Live Well?

We live well when we live more actively, more appreciatively, and more happily here and now.

The Collins English Dictionary defines lifestyle as a set of attitudes, habits or possessions associated with a particular person or group. In his book The Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle, Jim Rohn discussed his views about lifestyle. He wrote: “Lifestyle is how we choose to live and how we design our lives. It is the sophisticated understanding of the difference between life's trinkets and life's treasures.” He explained that our lifestyle, “a reflection of who and what we are”, is “a reflection of our attitude and our values.” Whereas a positive lifestyle can bring happiness, a negative one can lead to sadness. What if we live well?

We will surely have different ideas on how to live well but my hope is to convince you that we can all afford to live well right here and now. To live well, we do not need to have more. We just have to live more actively, more appreciatively, and more happily. We live well when we are happy and grateful for feeling so alive each moment of our life. We live well when we live here and now. According to Jim Rohn, living well involves “developing a unique focus on the current moment, and drawing from it all of the substance and wealth of experience and emotions that it has to offer.” Jim Rohn recommends that “Wherever you are, be there.” We miss on life when we fail to appreciate the people and the things around where we are because we think that life would be better if we were someplace else with whoever else doing whatever else. Where we are right now is the best place to be. This is exactly where we can renew our character and become a better person. Let us make the most of who we are with right now even if it is just ourselves. Whatever we do, let us joyfully focus our energy on doing a good job making whatever we do more rewarding and more meaningful to us. Let us make a habit of all of these. According to Jim Rohn “Until we learn to be there, we will never master the art of living well.”

To live well is to live in the present. Let us learn from our past experiences. Once we have gained the valuable lessons that our experiences can teach us, let us not recall everything in the past that hurt us, that we regret, or that we cherish, going back to the past in our memory and living in it at the expense of the present. This is what those who brood over their past do. The future will soon come but while it has not, let us stay focused to what is going on right now. Both eagerness and worry over what is to come can rob us of the treasures of the present. Think of eating a meal. Focus on what is in your mouth and savor it. When you eat something but your mind is on what will be served later, you will not get the most and the best experience of eating that meal. To live well is to explore new ways of bringing joy, excitement, and richness into our lives and into the lives of those we care for while we are working on our goals, not sometime in the future when we have achieved them.

To live well, to actively, appreciatively, and joyfully experience life, and to experience life we must let it touch us here and now.

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